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Party Affiliation Versus Education Level
Oct.06, 2003 in
Politics
For ages I have searched the net for charts of party affiliation versus education level (highest degree attained.) Well, thanks to Berkeley’s SDA I was able to produce this chart myself! Click below to see tha table
| Frequency Distribution | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 LT HIGH SCHOOL |
1 HIGH SCHOOL |
2 JUNIOR COLLEGE |
3 BACHELOR |
4 GRADUATE |
ROW TOTAL |
||
| 0: STRONG DEMOCRAT | 23.5 2,408 |
13.6 2,861 |
13.1 234 |
11.1 575 |
15.4 359 |
15.9 6,437 |
|
| 1: NOT STR DEMOCRAT | 25.3 2,592 |
22.8 4,799 |
21.0 376 |
19.2 995 |
20.0 466 |
22.7 9,228 |
|
| 2: IND,NEAR DEM | 9.7 993 |
12.7 2,666 |
13.5 242 |
12.6 656 |
14.6 341 |
12.1 4,898 |
|
| 3: INDEPENDENT | 14.6 1,495 |
14.1 2,955 |
13.5 242 |
9.7 501 |
9.6 225 |
13.3 5,418 |
|
| 4: IND,NEAR REP | 6.3 643 |
9.4 1,985 |
9.3 167 |
11.4 590 |
10.7 250 |
9.0 3,635 |
|
| 5: NOT STR REPUBLICAN | 12.1 1,243 |
17.4 3,656 |
16.6 297 |
20.8 1,077 |
16.0 373 |
16.4 6,646 |
|
| 6: STRONG REPUBLICAN | 7.3 750 |
8.6 1,817 |
10.9 195 |
13.8 716 |
11.7 272 |
9.2 3,750 |
|
| 7: OTHER PARTY | 1.3 133 |
1.3 282 |
2.0 36 |
1.5 76 |
2.1 48 |
1.4 575 |
|
| COL TOTAL | 100.0 10,257 |
100.0 21,021 |
100.0 1,789 |
100.0 5,186 |
100.0 2,334 |
100.0 40,587 |
|
The data is taken from GSS 1972-2000 cumulative survey. My interest in this chart was mainly for the anecdotal evidence that Democrats draw mostly from those with little education and with a graduate degree, while Republicans draw from the middle.
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January 11th, 2006 at 7:11 am
then why would a republican government want to cut education programs? just curious…..
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January 11th, 2006 at 9:28 am
I think you are talking about the “old republicans.” In the last Bush term spending on the Department of Education has doubled! I think it also increased by fifty percent under Clinton. And this isn’t even factoring in the real effect of no child left behind, which basically an unfunded federal mandate which whose cost is born by the states.
But it is still a good question! I think the old republican reason for wanting to cut federal education funding was based mainly on wanting the states to retain control of education. Thus I don’t think most republicans want less spending on education as much as they want more local control (I include here, I guess, voucher schools and such as well.)
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January 28th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
Could you please provide more info on the source of this data. I assume GSS stands for General Social Survey, do I assume correctly?
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January 28th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
You might find this Pew Research study from May of 2005 interesting. Full party affiliation/demographics tables available. The data looks significantly different from that presented here.
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January 28th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Ooops. Forgot the link. Here it is: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=242
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October 9th, 2006 at 2:49 am
Here’re some 1990 Gallup poll numbers relating education to political affiliation:
Rep = Republican
Dem = Democrat
Ind = Independent/Unaffiliated
Grade school education:
23.4% Rep, 54.6% Dem, 22.5% Ind
Some High School:
22.8% Rep, 51.3% Dem, 26.0% Ind
High School Grad:
29.4% Rep, 40.5% Dem, 30.2% Ind
Some College and/or Tech:
36.0% Rep, 35.0% Dem, 29.3% Ind
College Grad:
42.0% Rep, 30.7% Dem, 27.7% Ind
(Source: The World Almanac of U.S. Politics, 1991-93 edition, p.25)
As you can see, in 1990 the better educated you were the more likely you were to be a Republican, and the less likely you were to be a Democrat.
Sorry, I don’t have more recent numbers.
-Dave
dave146 at burtonsys dot com but please no spam
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October 9th, 2006 at 4:21 am
It would be nice to see the numbers with graduate degrees. That’s the interesting “liberal bias” statistic.
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April 19th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Can you provide the methodology for your chart? Like why you have two sets of sample points but only show the relative frequency distribution for one of them?
Set A: top to bottom.
Set B: left to right.
Here are the numbers I get for the mean relative frequency of both sets…
[A_(i,j) + B_(i,j)]/2 (Matrix addition)
30.4% 29.0% 8.4% 10.0% 10.5%
26.7% 37.4% 12.5% 15.0% 12.5%
15.0% 33.6% 9.2% 13.0% 10.8%
21.1% 34.3% 9.0% 9.5% 6.9%
12.0% 32.0% 7.0% 13.8% 8.8%
15.4% 36.2% 10.5% 18.5% 10.8%
13.7% 28.5% 8.0% 16.4% 9.5%
12.2% 25.2% 4.1% 7.3% 5.2%
P.S. I can’t find the data source you used to calculate this chart.
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August 24th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Why should we believe that you have accurately compiled the data of “tha [sic] table”?
What are your qualifications?
And why are you grouping approx 28 years into a single chart?
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September 1st, 2008 at 3:51 pm
“Why should we believe that you have accurately compiled the data of “tha [sic] table”?”
You shouldn’t. Do it yourself if you want to. But please, before you ask this question, why don’t you check it out yourself first before accusing.
“What are your qualifications?”
If I said I was a patent clerk, what would that matter? What the hell do qualifications matter in assembling a table?
“And why are you grouping approx 28 years into a single chart?”
Because it was the most easily accessible data set.
Any more questions?
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September 25th, 2008 at 11:30 am
This is very interesting data. It seems to be in line with all the other unbiased articles I have found. This is the only one that had this much detail in the data. I would have liked to see the average number of years for the drop outs. I used factors of 9 for drop outs, 12 for HS grads, 14 for JC, 16 for BS, and 18 for advanced degrees. I then multiplied the numbers in each cell by the corresponding factor, summed the products, and divided the sum by the total of the respondents. This gave me a weighted average. The Dem group averaged 11.98 while the Repubs averaged 12.59. Do you think the media and the pollsters doing the surveys ignore this informantion intentionally because they do not like the results? Or is it because no one is interested period. There is very little documentation on this subject.
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September 25th, 2008 at 11:44 am
No one likes to talk about education level versus political affiliation. It sounds way too elitist.
But I’m sure that political consultants have this data and know what to do with it 
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November 9th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
This seems very suspect to me seeing as that every single college professor I’ve ever spoken with, with the exception of ONE, has been a very strong democrat, and because conservatives themselves seem to espouse the popular notion that college “brainwashes” young adults into being liberal. I have always heard it was the exact opposite, that the more educated you were, the more likely you were to be a democrat and the less likely you were to be religious.
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November 9th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
What exactly are you objecting to MNstudent?
Not everyone who has a post undergraduate degree is in academia (doctors, lawyers, etc.) In fact I’d wager doctors are more conservative than liberal.
Also I think there are many reasons that liberals dominate faculty at research institutions (and a lot less so as you go down the totem pole of academia related to research.) These include things like selection effects (liberals only hiring liberals), the nature of research (state sponsored funding for science is not high on many fiscal conservatives agendas), the flight of conservatives to think tanks (which pay much better), the role of money in the lives of the different constituencies (strong capitalist component of the conservatives don’t want to take such low pay for the amount of work), etc.
It’s interesting that you are so quick to label your professors academic leanings. Did you ask them about it or did you just guess? I’ve always wondered about this as I don’t ever bring up politics in the classroom (I teach CS). I’m pretty sure our students couldn’t identify the libretarians and conservatives in our CS department, but maybe I’m wrong.
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August 11th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I have seen another table that shows the less formally educated you are, the more likely you are to be democrat, but this could be more because of SES. However, if you look at the graduate degree level (greater than bachelor level), then, YES, there is a greater chance of those grads being Democrat, than people who only have a Bachelor level education. I would argue that the more formal education one has, the more critical of a thinker they are, thus, the more macro level thinking involved. Democratic values tend to focus on macro level concerns for the whole of society (gender, poverty, etc.) while conservative values tend to focus on the micro level (how much money can I make if I get a BA, or how much would I have to pay for taxes, etc.)
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August 29th, 2009 at 5:34 am
I think it also needs to be pointed out that one’s income level is strongly correlated with party affiliation, and also with one’s opportunity for higher education. Those in higher income brackets tend to be more republican, and also more able to afford college. Financial situation is only one of many important factors not normalized in this data, so not too many conclusions can rightly be drawn from it. It is interesting, though. I think it should be explored more, even if some consider that taboo or elitist.
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September 1st, 2009 at 2:51 am
This Data is clearly skewed. One can easily realize this just based on the sample sizes from each group. Well over half of the sample leans left. My guess is that this was most likely gathered in a liberal area where the breakdown of education levels would match that of the general population, but the overall populatin is slanting left. As far as education being correlated to income, that is a good point, but wouldn’t we all agree that government should be run by the most knowledgeable people? In other words, I agree that the data carries little informational value.
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September 3rd, 2009 at 8:21 am
For those who come to this post they might also look at
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/07/democrats_do_be.html
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