Political Facebook

Everyone has those friends who post incessantly on Facebook about their political opinions. Most of the time they are ranting about someone or group of people for being or saying something senseless. It can go as far to call the person ‘stupid,’ ‘insensitive,’ or ‘uneducated.’ Education is consistently a factor that is studied among large groups, which remains true when looking at political affiliations. Polland says that “education doesn’t tend to predict Democratic versus Republican” (Polland). However, while it may not be discussed in the way that your Facebook friend might be fuming about, it plays a noticeable role in party affiliations and this year’s election may have the most divided educational gap between voters than in the past few decades.

Rob Suls, of the Pew Research Center, wrote, “Today, it is the more educated voters who are more likely to favor the Democratic candidate, and the gap between the groups is far wider than it was 20 years ago” (Suls). This alignment of well-educated voters with the Democrats was evident in the 2008 when the majority of well-educated voters elected Obama for presidency. Since 2008, the Pew Research Center has seen even more of a “shift in lower-income, less-educated whites towards Republicans” according to a study completed in 2012, and voter’s identification as Democrats continues to increase with higher levels of education (Suls) (A Deep Dive).

This shift of less educated people voting Republican and those with a higher education voting Democratic traces back to the 2012 election, and this trend seems to remain consistent with the current election as a predictor for people’s votes. Though these articles are not discussing a person’s education in the same ways that your Facebook friend may have used the term, institutional education levels could be an indictor of one’s political partisans and their support for a candidate.