Education: Kryptonite To Republicans?

The dumber we are, the more likely we are to vote Republican. That’s a fact. Indisputable and irrefutable. Ok, Im being deliberately provocative and I fully recognize that the country has many, many smart Republicans. But the figures don’t lie - voters in blue states (2004 Presidential election) are on the whole smarter than voters in red states. So I pose the question at the end of this analysis: why?

The following chart is derived from the 2004 Census Report On Educational Attainment. The full report, from which I stripped this data, is here. I added to that report the way the state voted in the Presidential election of 2004, and I then calculated the number of people per state with the level of education specified. (This information came from the 2004 Census - I divided the over-25 population in each state by the percentage of graduates to come up with the numbers.)

I then tallied the numbers of people with the specified level of education and divided by the total red or blue population to derive an overall percentage of people with either a college or high school education across the country, broken down by party.

The result, as you will see below, is very telling. In states that voted for Kerry, the average percentage of college graduates is 30.177%. In states that voted for Bush, the average percentage of college graduates is 24.932%. If we assume that a college education is an indicator of intelligence, we can then hypothesize that the average voter in a blue state is 21% smarter than the average voter in a red state. (24.932 x 121% = 30.168).

Ok, that's silly. I retract. The disparity between Republican states and Democratic ones is smaller when one analyzes the High School results. Red states had an average of 83.145% High School graduates, compared to the blue states’ 85.903% average graduate rate. It is interesting also to note that red states occupy the bottom 10 places in the state ranking, and only 2 of the top 10. (Colorado, of course, bucked the national trend by voting for Democratic control of both its House and Senate, while still inexplicably voting for Bush - and Colorado has by far the largest percentage of graduates, at 45.7%, some 9% ahead of Hawaii at #2.)

Seriously for a moment, do you think that this does, to some extent, explain why education suffers major cuts under Republican administrations? Are the Republicans afraid of a more educated populace? Again, my question is WHY is this dichotomy so clear... my conclusions will not be yours, and quite rightly so - it's intelligent debate on this subject that interests me.

RED STATES: Total Number Over 25 – 97,180,000 Total Number H/S Grads – 80,801,000 Total Percentage H/S Grads – 83.145% Total Number College Grads – 24,229,000 Total Percentage College Grads – 24.932% BLUE STATES Total Number Over 25 – 91,201,000 Total Number H/S Grads – 78,345,000 Total Percentage H/S Grads – 85.903% Total Number College Grads – 27,522,000 Total Percentage College Grads – 30.177%

Comments

[Chris]

I find it very ironic that a liberal is claiming that liberals are smarter than conservatives yet his logic for the argument reflects the very opposite, at least as far as he is concerned. Actually, it’s as far as all liberals are concerned. Having read this argument I felt compelled to do my own research. But before I get into it let me disprove his logic. Using “Blue states” and “Red states” to determine the percentage of voters with a college degree is just as flawed as using the Electoral College itself. This author suggests that, “In states that voted for Kerry, the average percentage of college graduates is 30.177%. In states that voted for Bush, the average percentage of college graduates is 24.932%.” Maybe so, I won’t argue the numbers, in fact I’m sure they’re probably correct. But let’s examine the logic shall we. It could be entirely possible that in a state that voted for Kerry, 60% of the 30.177% of Americans with a college degree voted for Bush with only 39% of those voted for Kerry. In my example the percentage of voters with a college degree would have very little impact on the outcome of the state’s election. Rather, the other 70% would have a much bigger impact. If we were talking about a state such as New York or Illinois with a very large population of poor inner-city Americans that other 70%, could have broken down to let’s say 58% Kerry, 41% Bush. Thus, the overall vote would have been 52.3% for Kerry and 46.7% for Bush, giving the state to Kerry even though he lost the vote between Americans with a college degree. Those numbers are purely fictional, yet they serve the purpose of showing the shortcomings of my liberal counterpart’s intellect. Now on to my research. I have to say, finding the percentage of Republicans and Democrats with college degrees is not easy, most likely why this author resorted to his flawed method. However, using a report dated May 10, 2005 from The Pew Research Center, http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=943, I was able to calculate the exact percentages. The report claims that 45% of Americans lean towards Republicans, while 46% of Americans lean towards Democrats. It also goes on to break the American public up into nine classes of people and shows how each class tends to vote, and the percentages of each with a college degree. When you do the math and multiply the percentage of each class with college degrees times the percentage which leans both Democratic and Republican you get the following. 14.17% of Americans with a college degree lean Republican while only 9.08% lean Democratic. So when you use real logic instead of some defective red state, blue state supposition you find, as this author would put it, that Republicans are 56% smarter than Democrats. And if you step back and take a look at the demographics you can really see the big picture. Democrats swallow up virtually the entire vote from lower middle, and lower class Americans, which if they were removed from the electorate would produce almost an entirely Republican government. It’s the vote from the uneducated lower end of society that gives liberals any hope of getting elected. And it’s also my theory that many of these lower middle and lower class Americans are obliged to vote Democratic because of their economic condition not because their ideology is in line with the liberal platform, making the far left an increasingly inconsequential part of society that leaches off of the poor to gain power. I will post again when the research is complete to back up that theory as well.

[Robert]

A Liberal making obvious flawed conclusions! Who would have thought... Of course, there's no corrollation between the education levels of a State and the education level of registered voters either, hey, that would be a logical fallacy. Of course, all liberal arguments depend on logical fallacies, don't they teach Critical Thinking in Blue States? Liberal ideals fit on a bumpersticker. Conservative ideals require a textbook.

[Jeff]

Hey, Robert. You came up with a nice bumper sticker phrase of your own. I think you may have a future in the Democratic Party. Did you use a text book to think that up? Let's forget about education levels. The truth is if it weren't for the Religious Right - or Christian based religions in general, for that matter - there would never be another Republican president.