So who’s smarter, Democrats or Republicans?
That’s quite the controversial question, of course. According to a blogger at Watchblog.com, though, it seems that Democrats are more educated than Republicans. Or hey, let me rephrase that. People in the “blue states” (states that typically vote Democratic) are collectively more educated than people in the “red states” (states that typically vote Republican).
According to Watchblog.com:
- States that voted for Kerry in 2004 had 21 percent more college graduates than states that voted for Bush.
- The states that ranked the lowest for high school and college graduates were all red states.
- Eight out of 10 of the states that ranked the highest for high school college graduates were blue states. (The number one state, by far, is Colorado — technically a red state because it went for Bush by a small margin, but effectively a “purple” state because it’s become so politically mixed.)
Is this a bunch of hooey, or is there something to this? What do you think?
You can also see the educational background and alma maters of the Republican candidates, John McCain and Sarah Palin, and Democratic candidates, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, to see how they compare.
posted on September 26th, 2008 by Naomi
Tags: blue states, democrats, Politics, presidential election, red states, republicans
Posted in News | 17 Comments »
September 26th, 2008 at 10:33 am
It’s obvious Republicans hate education, consider “No Child Left Behind”
September 26th, 2008 at 10:42 am
That might be scarier than the idea of Palin being in the White House.
September 26th, 2008 at 10:57 am
No surprises here…A pretty obvious finding but interesting none the less.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
An analysis of the 2008 Presidential Election returns by state (source New York Times and CNN), compared to the percentage of adults over 24 years old with bachelors degrees (source Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the 2003 Current Population Survey) suggests that Democrats have changed from those with lower education to those with higher education: 24% of those over 24 years old in the states that voted for McCain had bachelor’s degrees and 29% had bachelors degrees in the states that voted for Obama (a highly significant statistical difference by the Chi Square test). The median rank on the bachelors degree scale of the states that voted for McCain was 35 and the median rank for Obama was 16. A linear regression of the percent with bachelors degrees within a state correlated with the percent voting for Obama was also highly signficant statistically with every 1% increase in the percentage of those with bachelors degrees predicting a 1.3% increase in percentage of votes for Obama. Variation in college education alone statistically accounted for 43% of the variation on percentage of votes for Obama vs McCain (Rsquared=.426).
November 7th, 2008 at 2:00 am
If Democrats are so smart, then why do they do such dumb things. Example? They are responsible for ALL violations of the human rights of Blacks on record, yet they say they want help Blacks. And their policies have not done ONE thing for Blacks who have supported them overwhelmingly for six decades. I dare you to name me ONE! And if you say, “The Civil Rights Act”, then you will be revealing your ignorance, because as most Democrats DON’T know, ALL legislation in the history of America to protect Blacks has been sponsored and passed by Republicans! To me, that’s just plain dumb!
November 7th, 2008 at 8:12 am
That was the old more libertarian based republican party not the new neo con right wing nut job republican party….the tides turned in the 70’s where the dems because more liberal.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:24 am
The “Blue” states also have large cities with high percentages of poor people. I am a Republican and I am also well educated, Bachelors Degree and currently working on my Masters. But as a college educated person I can tell you that I spent class after class defending my political position against my liberal teachers and class mates. Classmates that went with the majority and wouldn’t stand on thier own two feet. Why are there so many liberal democrats perhaps we should look at who is educating our children. Most teachers belong to unions. Unions that protect thier rights to NOT teach our children. Don’t take it out on them if a child is failing. I don’t know about anyone else but if I had failed in my job I would be replaced. How do you expect programs like “No Child Left Behind” to succeed when the teachers hide behind union contracts. When will this country wake up. Ask all the employees from Ford and GM if the unions protected them.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:00 am
With respect to recent history, Bill Clinton and Obama are obviously more educated than Bush Jr. (moron) and his father. It seems the Republican rhetoric is macho blind ego tough talk, and the democratic talk is sophisticated and highly educated.
January 27th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Complete gibberish!
http://powinca.blogspot.com/2009/01/myth-of-democrat-intellectual.html
I suppose when Ronald Reagan won 49 out of 50 states, you concluded Republicans were geniuses! Or were you simply retarded if you voted for Mondale?
John’s response above seems to demonstrate the most facility with statistics, but my Reagan counterexample shows the folly of his analysis. It’s a spurious regression. Barack Obama won because of horrid economic conditions, unprecedented black voter turnout (finally matching their % of the population), a fawning media which passed up all opportunities to challenge Obama, and a lackluster campaign by McCain.
Education levels had absolutely nothing to do with the election results. There’s no doubt Obama ran a brilliant campaign, but given all his advantages, an overall margin of victory of around 7% (a 3.5% swing) is pretty disappointing. Obama won 74 electoral votes by less than 5% of the popular vote in those states. Even without those, he would have won and McCain won 14 EV by less than 5%, but this was not the runaway it appears to be (or should have been).
The contentious Democrat primary, the race of the Democrat candidate, and a bad economy clinched it. My prediction is that Hillary would have lost to McCain.
February 27th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
LOL! Looks like dems are smarter. Repubs are trying to use stats from decades ago to disprove modern stats. LOL!
April 11th, 2009 at 11:30 am
You didn’t even bother to read the link I provided, did you Bobby? It uses statistics from the 2008 and 2004 presidential elections.
The Reagan comment was only a counterexample of fallacious arguments relating to red state/blue state comparisons. Aggregation by state is an idiotic way to do an analysis about the education of voters.
Reading… it’s fundamental, even for dimocrats.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:41 am
1. The Black Sphere against democrats? The KKK is the radical right wing made up of the Neo Conservatives who are running the Republican party.
2. POWinCA – Complete gibberish!? Reaganomics brought about massive wealth for the elite, but at what cost? Reagan de-regulated the financial sector. That “liberal” policy directly caused the predicament we are in today. i.e. AIG and large banks’ greed all but collapsing the world economy. Any educated person can see that the bad economy is clearly the result of the republican ideal based on pure greed.
3. POWinCA – Aggregation by state is the only way to perform a relevant analysis pertinent to voting results. Our country counts votes based on the electoral college which directly correlates to state by state aggregation.
Oh and by the way when will you republican folk learn to rebute facts with facts instead of your pathetic attempt at sarcasm “dim”ocrats? Please!
I left the republican party because the party no longer represents educated conservatives with a common goal to keep government in check. It has been taken over by blowhards with separate agendas. Remember separation of church and state? Remember when we didn’t spend money we don’t have? Why is it OK for republicans to borrow money recklessly and raise the national deficit to continually higher records? Why does it take democrats to balance the budget?
If any republican can begin to answer these challenging questions with truth, then let’s see some facts. Otherwise, the statistics speak for themselves.
June 13th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Republicans differ from Democrats in that Republicans care about the students, and Democrats care more about the students. So, no, No Child Left Behind is a great measure, but only for students whom the education system is for.
July 1st, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Gee, let me guess….whoever is reading this is actually trying to ‘get a read’ on me….trying to put me in either the blue folder or the red one. I could keep on typing with the warm fuzzy feeling that (oops, that touchy feely pop psych lingo albeit sarcasm might have blown my cover) you still can’t find me on your political gps. Well, enough suspense…as if. Ok, let me simplify the republican/aryan party for you all. It is now basically comprised of 3 groups….the rich (top 2%), the middle group (small business owners driving SUVs, listening to Rush and Hannity on the way to the golf course), and the super poor….all 3 of which are white. The rich group is at the wheel of the party. Their main purpose in life is to get into power and calibrate those tax tables to maximize their bounty. Oh and also so they can hijack the military to ’spread freedom and liberty’…translation, so these business owners can create more free markets in order to ‘free up’ a cheaper labor force than the American worker so they can ship jobs offshore. I wasn’t supposed to tell you that. So….the game is….how can this 2% fool the uneducated masses (the middle and the super poor) into voting for them so they can get into power? Well, ….through the culture war. They get their Karl Roves to go into the thick and study the natives in their habitat…noting all their religious hangups, xenophobic insecurities, phobias in general, bad eating habits, and residual judgmental attitudes from watching too many Waltons episodes and listening to the red, white and blue Americana script administered by the elders in the pride (this just in…it’s not the greatest country in the world…get over yourself). So they write down this shopping list and take it back to the GOP cave and they engineer their Ronald Reagans….a trojan regular Joe type of good guy everyman who just knows what is right and wrong and the way it should be and how to give a good wholesome hearty days work and ….. wake up red state America! Step away from the voting booth with your paws in the air! The Waltons got canceled. You’re getting taken for a ride.
August 5th, 2009 at 10:56 am
[...] Democrats More Educated Than Republicans?…..YES!!!!!!!!!!!! Are Democrats More Educated Than Republicans? | Edu in Review Blog So who?s smarter, Democrats or Republicans? That?s quite the controversial question, of course. [...]
October 7th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
No child left behind = no teacher left standing.
December 16th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
POWinCA: One of the things we educated people learn is the difference between “significance” and “statistical significance.” If you read John’s Nov 6 post here, you will see that education as a factor in voting by state is of statistical significance by at least two well known statistics measures. In my MBA statistics class, I too conducted statistical analyses on election results by state based on education level (and a number of other factors, demographic and otherwise) – and the level of education was by far the most significant, statistically speaking.