Perhaps the most dramatic change in polls this year is related to education levels. As seen above, voters with a college degree favor Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by an outsized ~20-30 points (including those with postgraduate education, among whom the advantage is 25-35 points). This is an astounding change from the past several decades, when college-educated voters have been more or less evenly split, and an even greater change from the Reagan years, when this was a solidly Republican demographic.
This is, of course, the good news. The bad news is the other side of the education gap: declines for Democrats among those without a college education.
Below, more data from the recent Pew report sheds light on this phenomenon.
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So what?
Why does it matter if we’re trading one segment of the voting public for another? Those with a college education are far more likely to actually show up and vote, as seen in the figure to the right. Should this current arrangement hold steady, that would mean it would generally get a little bit easier to turn out Democratic voters and a little bit harder to turn out Republican voters. Like all things in politics, however, what we see this year is not certain to be seen next year.
It also changes the electoral college landscape to some extent. This year, Clinton is doing quite well in Colorado and Virginia, for example, two battleground states with higher proportions of college-educated voters. In Nevada and Ohio, the opposite is true. (For details, see David Jarman’s story.)
Finally, there is the changing demographics of voters. In 1992, 50 percent of registered voters had gone no further than high school, according to Pew surveys. By 2016, that number was down to just 33 percent. In general, of course, it’s easier to win if the demographics that favor you are increasing as a share of the electorate.
A trend a long time in the making
The Pew survey mentioned above that came out recently has a wealth of data, discussed in part earlier. As with other demographics, when it comes to education, we see that both Democrats and the country as a whole are changing much more rapidly than Republicans, who are stuck in yesteryear. For instance, the percent of Republicans who have a college degree was 31 percent in 2016—barely changed from the 28 percent in 1992. For Democrats, on the other hand, this number nearly doubled, from 21 percent to 37 percent.
The opposite directions of the trends in party preference of voters with and without a college degree can be seen in this figure. Democrats have been shedding high school graduates and gaining college graduates since the beginning of President Obama’s first term in 2009. The change in party identification alone cannot entirely account for the large jump in presidential preference seen in the graph at the top of this story, however. That is clearly inspired in part by the particular candidates in the 2016 race. Nonetheless, it also appears to be a rapid enhancement of a trend already in place.
A trend among certain voters in particular
The trends noted above are especially clear when looking specifically at white voters. The movement among white voters with only a high school education since 2009 is nothing less than stunning. As recently as 2007, Democrats had a four point edge in party affiliation among these voters; today, it is a 26 point deficit.
Some of this change, of course, may be from voters who were Republicans in all but name finally changing how they identify themselves. From polls of voter preferences, however, there is clearly movement in voting behavior as well. Indeed, this may be the first year in almost forever that the Democrat wins among white college educated voters. Should this pattern of a split vote by education hold through this election and into the next one, it may be the final piece of a realignment in progress since the 1990s.