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Heres_Waldo3 t1_jbkzujf wrote

Hmmmm. What an interesting correlation. Wonder why that is???

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ArbitraryOrder t1_jbl4hv9 wrote

Replying to Heres_Waldo3 (#2,195,509)

Your implication is intelligence but the correct answer is shared political interests. It's because Republicans aren't interested in appealing to the college educated crowd anymore, which used to be a strong suit of theirs.

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anusty t1_jbl510b wrote

Who say the college/university system indoctrinates?

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LSeww t1_jbl6xk7 wrote

Replying to gc3c (#2,195,719)

I don't think he knows. If people with degrees voted dems, that would be a 1:1 ratio, instead it's 1:3 (5% more people with adv. degrees give 15 percent dem lead).

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gc3c OP t1_jbl7mpa wrote

Replying to anusty (#2,195,759)

Everyone is being indoctrinated into something.

Edit: That is to say, everyone is conforming their mind to some external standard and calling it learning. Indoctrination used to have the connotation of simply learning, but now it means learning uncritically, accepting something without critical thought. Which side is teaching students to think critically, and which side is teaching students to accept a set of alternative facts that the fall apart under scrutiny?

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SilentSun69 t1_jblbf7i wrote

Is it intelligence.. indoctrination.. debt..? What could it be!?

Also.. higher degree != intelligence.. it means money, correct circumstances, and time.

Edit: I have a masters and am working on my second.

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Zitarminator t1_jblbtfd wrote

Replying to Heres_Waldo3 (#2,195,509)

One reason I've heard and very much agree with is that going to college exposes you to a great variety of people of different races and backgrounds and experiences. Same with travel. And the more you get those shared human experiences, the more you can empathize with other people. The more you support social programs, etc.

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[deleted] t1_jblc5yb wrote

You displayed your R squared!

Good for you!

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MMBerlin t1_jblcbtt wrote

General question: Do I understand this correctly that only ten to twenty percent of the population have a formal education beyond high school?

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Comfortable-Potato79 t1_jbo5gjv wrote

Cool chart! Definitely implies democrats get elected in highly educated states / smart people vote democrat (virtuous cycle). But! Could there be other factors skewing the data? Don’t K-12 teachers in blue states needs an advanced degree? Aren’t there more colleges (per capita) in MA than any other state? Just having all those teachers and professors could move the needle without contributing to the blue-state=smart story.

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gc3c OP t1_jbof7hv wrote

Replying to Comfortable-Potato79 (#2,200,111)

Interesting thought. If you had more colleges per capita, would you necessarily have more professors per capita? Perhaps the count of colleges is not 1:1 with the count of professors (some colleges may be small).

I think that it is likely that there is an amplifying factor outside politics, which is that (in my estimation and experience) highly educated people are more likely to have advanced degrees. I know that sounds self-explanatory, but it's a compounding effect. For example, the more high school graduates you have, the more college graduates you have, and the more college graduates you have, the more advanced degrees you award.

So, having good basic education is going to lead to a higher number of advanced degrees awarded at the end of that cycle.

I think that rather than the "Democrat = Smart" story, this is telling a story of economic differences that goes back to the fundamental differences between the states. This is a story of rural vs urban. The more urban a state is, the more white collar jobs it has. And, it may be that the Democratic perspective resonates more with people in those jobs - that their policy ideas and values more align with urbanites.

I think if you were to do another graph with advanced degrees plotted against percent of population living in an urban environment, you'd find a strong correlation, and we may find that urban population is a better predictor of D-ticket votes than educational attainment.

Did a quick Google search and found this: https://engaging-data.com/election-population-density/

Being closely packed in with other people makes you far more likely to vote Democrat. (Unless you live in Staten Island, apparently. What a strange outlier. I don't know enough about NYC to explain this.)

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Commercial-Brief9458 t1_jbomqrp wrote

when the gatekeeper is cost, all educational correlations are also socio-economic class correlations

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sarbaddict843 t1_jc0jpqv wrote

Replying to Comfortable-Potato79 (#2,200,111)

Or red states have a lot of trade workers. I’d be curious to see the median income for these states as well. Not very smart to get a degree in basket weaving then work at McDonalds when Bobby from the Midwest can make six figures being a welder with no advanced degree.

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