AEI’s political analysts have posted an eye-opening analysis of the midterm election results, and this fact caught my eye.
Postgraduates, by which I believe the AEI analysts mean those with something more than a bachelor’s degree, were 20 percent of the electorate. They went for Democrats by 52 to 46 percent. No surprise there. Obama, after all, is himself a creature of the university ecosystem, and the way he talks reminds me of nothing more than a professor at a faculty meeting talking about changes to the grading curve. All those folks out there with M.A.’s and Ph.D.’s know one of their own when they see one.
Voters without a high-school diploma were only 3 percent of the electorate, and they voted Democratic 60 to 36 percent. Presumably, this group benefits the most from the redistribution of income going on under the Obama administration.
Everyone else (high-school grads, some college, college degrees) voted Republican. Democrats lost the middle class and more.
I’ve been trying to figure out what this means (aside from the amazing educational achievements of the electorate — 97 percent had a high-school degree or more). Does it mean that the over-educated have no more common sense than those with no education? Does it mean that Obama only really appeals to the extremes of the educational distributional curve, because neither end is really responsible for making ends meet and balancing budgets?