The Education Factor

[JohnStOnge]

You know I've got a bunch of numbers I could put in a table but I decided the best thing to do is just say things. Trump did better among the lowest educational attainment group that can be isolated in this year's exit poll (High school grad or less) than any of the past three Republican candidates. He also did worse among the top two educational attainment groups than any of the past three Republican candidates.

Actually I'm pretty sure he did better among the lowest educational attainment group as well as worse among the top two educational attainment groups than any Republican candidate in the history of exit polling but I can't confirm that because I can no longer get to the 2000 exit polls and my link to 1975 - 1996 exit polls is on another computer that I don't have with me.

But just to compare to last time Trump won by 6 percentage points among those with a high school education or less while Romney lost by 7 percentage points among that group. That's a 13 point swing. He lost by 4 percentage points among those with Bachelors degrees while Romney won that group by 4 percentage points. 8 point swing. And he lost among Post Grads by a whopping 21 percentage points while Romney lost that group by 13 percentage points.

So it's as I expected. As compared to the past, for some reason, Republican support shifted to be stronger among the less educated and weaker among the more educated. Most of the time what you see in exit polling is a trend where the Democrat does best among the least educated then the Republican does better as education level goes up until you get to Post Grad when it shifts back to Democrats. This time it looks pretty much like just a straight association whereby likelihood of voting Republican went DOWN as education level went up.

It's an unusual pattern.

[CAA Flagship]

Show me numbers. What do you mean "better" or "worse". Is this numbers? Is this percentage?

[OL FU]

The "We are smarter than you" crowd is one of the reasons trump won. Thx for joining

[JohnStOnge]

It gets arcane and I know you guys don't like that but it's looking at how a candidate does within various groups compared to how they do overall. Here is a table:



Here's how it works:

In 2004 George W. Bush won the popular vote by 3 percentage points. He won among those with a High School diploma or less by 5 percentage points. So he overperformed in that group by 2 percentage points (see High School or Less minus Overall). Trump overperformed among that group by 6 percentage points.

You'd get the same general trend just by looking at the raw margins. For instance Bush won by 5 among the lowest educational attainment group, McCain lost by 10, Romney lost by 7, and Trump won by 6. But I think it's fair to adjust it to account for how they did overall.

I'm pretty sure I've never seen anybody lose by 21 percentage points among Post Grads.

I can tell you this much: If only voting by the "Cognitive Elite" I described in a post I made a few days ago were allowed Clinton would've won in a landslide. As noted that's the top 15 percent of the intelligence distribution. If only those people would've been allowed to vote Trump would've had no shot.

That doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of people with IQs at 115 or above wouldn't vote for him. Millions did. But percentage wise it wouldn't be close.

[JohnStOnge]

BTW one thing that is unfortunately missing is the "no high school" category. In the past exit polls have included that. Now they've combined it with high school grads to make a "high school grads or less" category.

[JohnStOnge]

Another BTW: When I look for High IQ proxies I look at educational attainment level and income. When it comes to educational attainment level the Post Grad group was overwhelmingly for Clinton. 58% to 37%. My recollection is I've never seen a gap that big in that group.

When it comes to income the Republican usually controls. For example Romney won the $100K or more income group by 54% to 44% in 2012. But this time it's pretty much a statistical tie. Trump by 48% to 47% in the sample. But obviously that's essentially a draw.

So in 2012 Post Grads favored Obama by 13% points while the top income group defined favored Romney by 10% points. This time Post Grads favored Clinton by 21% points and the comparable income group favored Trump by 1% point in the sample. To me it's pretty obvious that when you're talking about the "Cognitive Elite" they were more in favor of Clinton over Trump than they were in favor of Obama over Romney.

Unfortunately Democracy demands that we have to allow those who are not among the Cognitive Elite to vote. And so we must suffer this atrocity.

[93henfan]

Man, it's crazy that so many smart people voted for a loser.

Or, as we dumb people spell it, "looser".

[Pwns]

Did he just play the "lib'rals do better on IQ tests" card?

[CAA Flagship]

There is not enough information here for me to assess. I need numbers (votes) with the percentages.

[JohnStOnge]

There is not enough information here for me to assess. I need numbers (votes) with the percentages.

Here are the exit polling results from 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/ ... lls.0.html

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1

http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/result ... president/

http://edition.cnn.com/election/results ... /president

I think the quality of the reporting of the results is decreasing over time. But you can still get what you need.
It's pretty darned clear that Trump did better among less educated people than he did among more educated people. I should mention that Clinton did better among the lowest income people. But there was no big advantage for Trump among the higher income people. It was pretty close to a tie there.

[JohnStOnge]

Did he just play the "lib'rals do better on IQ tests" card?

They do on average. But it's more extreme this time. What I'd say is that normally when I look at exit polling data my best guess is that Republican voters have a slightly higher iQ on average but the highest IQ people break Democrat by a modest margin. Maybe something like 55 - 45. This time it looks to me like Clinton voters both had a higher average IQ and the highest IQ people broke for Clinton by an overwhelming margin. Closer to something like 60 - 40.

[93henfan]

I saw an exit poll that said that Trump did better with Electoral College graduates by a margin of 306-232.

[JohnStOnge]

The "We are smarter than you" crowd is one of the reasons trump won. Thx for joining

Trump won because for some reason a whole bunch of people ignored the obvious. I don't know why they did it. But they did.

Well...that and he was running against such a bad candidate on the Democrat side. If he'd been running against Obama like Romney had to do he'd have been destroyed. Also probably would've been destroyed by Sanders.

I'm sure Clinton at this point has realized that her decision to have a private server may very well have cost her the Presidency. She's way more qualified for the job and we'd be a hell of a lot better off if she'd won. But she screwed up big time by doing that.

[JohnStOnge]

I saw an exit poll that said that Trump did better with Electoral College graduates by a margin of 306-232.

Dude, Trump won because of ignorance. Often willful ignorance as in this sort of thing:



Just some kind of social phenomenon whereby a whole bunch of people ignore the obvious warning signs flashing all around this guy. Someone who has spent his entire life being dishonest, cheating people, lying repeatedly, and displaying obvious evidence that he's got serious mental problems. And for some reason he ends up having a Jim Jones like influence on millions of people.

When this guy gets in expect for him to continue is modus operadi; which is lying repeatedly and blatantly while trying to control the narrative. My expectation is that he will try to control what agencies report. For example: He is not going to want the Bureau of Labor Statistics to report anything that makes him look bad. So he is going to look into seeing what he can do to make sure we don't get honest reports.

I'm sorry, but if you supported him and contributed to this situation you really DID do a stupid thing. You may not be stupid. But you did a stupid thing.

[93henfan]

I saw an exit poll that said that Trump did better with Electoral College graduates by a margin of 306-232.

Dude, Trump won because of ignorance. Often willful ignorance as in this sort of thing:



Just some kind of social phenomenon whereby a whole bunch of people ignore the obvious warning signs flashing all around this guy. Someone who has spent his entire life being dishonest, cheating people, lying repeatedly, and displaying obvious evidence that he's got serious mental problems. And for some reason he ends up having a Jim Jones like influence on millions of people.

When this guy gets in expect for him to continue is modus operadi; which is lying repeatedly and blatantly while trying to control the narrative. My expectation is that he will try to control what agencies report. For example: He is not going to want the Bureau of Labor Statistics to report anything that makes him look bad. So he is going to look into seeing what he can do to make sure we don't get honest reports.

I'm sorry, but if you supported him and contributed to this situation you really DID do a stupid thing. You may not be stupid. But you did a stupid thing.

U mad bro.

[93henfan]

When this guy gets in expect for him to continue is modus operadi; which is lying repeatedly and blatantly while trying to control the narrative. My expectation is that he will try to control what agencies report. For example: He is not going to want the Bureau of Labor Statistics to report anything that makes him look bad. So he is going to look into seeing what he can do to make sure we don't get honest reports.

I thought this thread was about Trump, not his predecessor?

[JohnStOnge]

When I was in college I wrote for the school newspaper. Our office received English Language copies Gramma, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. I've told my wife a number of times that the Trump campaign called that newspaper to mind. Just total dishonest propaganda. Way beyond the pale of what the admittedly dishonest normal range of what political campaigns do. Just a bunch of really obvious, blatant lies and bluster.

We have effectively elected a Castro...a Hitler...a Mussolini...as President of the United States. Well, not "we." I can proudly say I had no part in it. But the People.

It's a really, really good thing that we have a system that will probably keep that horrible decision from becoming an Irréversible problem. At least I hope so. I really AM worried about him trying to control what agencies report in order to maintain his chosen narrative in the face of reality. I really do think he's going to try to do that.

Our free press needs to gird itself because it is about to be seriously challenged. We have a person with a dictator mentality in the White House.

[Skjellyfetti]

Uneducated white men are voting like a minority (they've been a minority, but they haven't always voted like one).

74% for Trump is voting in a bloc like blacks tend to vote in a bloc.

[CAA Flagship]

If you are so hung up on exit polls, Dems would never win if you set age 30 as the minimum age for voting.

[93henfan]

We have effectively elected a Castro...a Hitler...a Mussolini...as President of the United States.

[JohnStOnge]

When this guy gets in expect for him to continue is modus operadi; which is lying repeatedly and blatantly while trying to control the narrative. My expectation is that he will try to control what agencies report. For example: He is not going to want the Bureau of Labor Statistics to report anything that makes him look bad. So he is going to look into seeing what he can do to make sure we don't get honest reports.

I thought this thread was about Trump, not his predecessor?

Deep inside you know better than that. If not you need to open your eyes and see what Trump is. Yes I know it's too late to correct your past mistake in supporting him to begin with but you need to realize that this is a very dangerous person. Way more dangerous to our system of government than Obama or ANY of his predecessors were.

You and others like you, my friend, really screwed up. And I suspect a time is going to come when you're going to realize it even if you never admit it on this board.

[93henfan]

you need to open your eyes and see what Trump is

I did. He's a far superior choice to the Clinton dynasty/crime syndicate.

[ALPHAGRIZ1]

Racist bigot

[CAA Flagship]

When I was in college I wrote for the school newspaper. Our office received English Language copies Gramma, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. I've told my wife a number of times that the Trump campaign called that newspaper to mind. Just total dishonest propaganda. Way beyond the pale of what the admittedly dishonest normal range of what political campaigns do. Just a bunch of really obvious, blatant lies and bluster.

We have effectively elected a Castro...a Hitler...a Mussolini...as President of the United States. Well, not "we." I can proudly say I had no part in it. But the People.

It's a really, really good thing that we have a system that will probably keep that horrible decision from becoming an Irréversible problem. At least I hope so. I really AM worried about him trying to control what agencies report in order to maintain his chosen narrative in the face of reality. I really do think he's going to try to do that.

Our free press needs to gird itself because it is about to be seriously challenged. We have a person with a dictator mentality in the White House.

No Presidential candidate had a bigger campaign advantage than Hillary. She had a MASSIVE ground game. Full financial support from the DNC. Spent much more money on her campaign than Trump. Had insiders cheating for her. Had the sitting President and First Lady campaign for her. Had pop stars support her. Had the biggest resume than any candidate before and was running against someone with NO public experience. Had a 9 to 1 media advantage. Had the "advantage" of multiple verbal gaffes by her opponent.

Yet.......

.....SHE LOST.

is that because of a lack of education by the voters? Or is it because SHE had more flaws and the voters recognized it?

[Ivytalk]

Just give JSO his goddam stapler, put him in the basement, and turn out the lights.