Libertarian Man of Mystery: Education and voting behavior

February 10, 2005

Education and voting behavior

In the post about Jewish liberalism, commenters couldn't help but point out that in the exit poll, people who claim their highest level of education as "college graduate" voted 52% for Bush, but for people who say "postgrad study" (note it's study, not a graduate degree) is their highest level of education, they voted only 44% for Bush.

I am using the presidential election exit poll as a proxy for being liberal or conserverative because it's a convenient and recent source of data, even though not perfect. But from the same exit poll, observerve that 85% of those self-identifying as liberal voted for Kerry, and 84% of those self-identifying as conservative voted for Bush.

Now, going back to the education issue, the problem is that some people, especially liberals, confuse education with intelligence, but they are actually two separate things. Liberals want to say, "LOOK, WE ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE ON THE RIGHT!" Liberals tend to have more formal education, but that doesn't make them more intelligent.

Going off on a bit of a tangent, I should point out that intelligence has surprisingly little to do with political philsophy. If there was one correct philosophy which could be reasoned out by being smart, then you would see a much stronger divide. But no, you see the opposite. You may find one Ivy League economics professor saying that the right has the better economic plan, and then you see another Ivy League economics professor (who unfortunately has a column in the NY Times) saying that the left has the better economic plan. Clearly one can achieve a very high level of economics knowledge and be smart enough to write many books, yet still come up with the wrong answer at the voting booth.

So back going back to the exit poll data, here's the explanation:

(1) A lot of people with postgraduate studies are school teachers, and teachers are a liberal voting bloc, and also not so smart. Teachers have low SAT scores compared to other college graduates.

(2) Many types of graduate degrees appeal more to liberals than conservatives. PhDs, especially, are for those wanting to be college professors, and academia primarily attracts liberals.

(3) Formal education is more highly valued in blue states. In the DC area, many people have graduate degrees, and those without them feel ashamed of their lack of education. But in a place like Oklahoma City (a solidly Republican place), there's less peer pressure to engage in "postgraduate studies."

(4) There's self-identification bias in the poll. Because liberals value formal education more, the liberal is morely likely to say he has "postgrad study" if he has taken one graduate course, while the non-liberal is more likely to ignore the one course and and just self-identify as a college graduate because he doesn't feel the silly need to impress the poll taker with his education.

Finally, one should remember that graduate education is specialized and usually doesn't give the the student any knowledge that would lead him to knowing that one political philosophy is better. For example, a medical doctor has spent years studying the human body and learning how to perform medical procedures. But what does that teach the doctor about war in Iraq or gay marriage or tort reform or any of the other things competing political philsophies fight over?

February 10, 2005 at 11:31 PM | Permalink

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Libertarian Man of Mystery

I used to pretend to be a gorgeous blonde "libertarian girl", but the hoax has been unmasked

February 10, 2005

Education and voting behavior

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