...but my primary concern are ALL those who don't/can't make it to college. And I think you'd have to agree that's MOST of those that attend school and get past, say, 6th grade, which is quite a remarkable voting bloc.
Here's the problem: In my mind, I think I'm a pretty unbiased guy. In fact, I tend to overthink stuff, which, of course, leads to its own problems. That aside, when I engage my own critical thinking skills and see the political landscapre before me, I'm continually boggled by the clear dichotomy between what people say they believe and how those "beliefs" are put into action. Very many conservative Christians, for example, say they vote Republican because of the party's "values," yet they CANNOT SEE that that party REFUSES to do all those things Jesus tells us to do for the poor in the Bible; they also refuse to see and hear the outright lies and duplicity with which the Shrub "adumbistration" rules so imperiously. Just watching Scotty McLellan's "yes, it's not/no, it is" act distills the hypocrisy and the sheer dissonance (I was SO trying not to use that word!) for all the world to see...and to wonder, "WTF?"
Sure, "smart people" also vote Republican and, in their world, it makes sense. I have what I modestly admit is a pretty powerful imagination (just ask the ex-Mrs. Snookers), but even I can't imagine how anyone, unless they are demonstrably wealthy, would ever "vote their pocketbook" for a Republican, given what they've done to Social Security, MediCare and the federal deficit. And even someone like my grandmother, who never got past third grade in Ireland, could see how the Republicans are. They play, by using fear and terror, against our reptilian/birdlike, "flight-or-fight" mind, more of an instinct than a learned behavior.

This just in from AP (via USA Today website):

Study: most college students lack skills
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.
Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

More than 50% of students at four-year schools and more than 75% at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
<snip>

Just sayin'...   ;-)