It will come as no surprise to see Democrats in the lead in polls of Washington state voters due to be released this week.
But if we look underneath the surface, we see big divides among Democrats in our state. Some divides are widening fast, raising fundamental, unanswered questions: Why, for example, aren’t parties making more of an effort to reach out to their opponents?
The biggest divide isn’t about gender or race or urban-rural divide or income levels, which have become hot topics in recent political debates. It’s about degree gaps.
Having a college degree is the single biggest determining factor in determining voting behavior.
Today’s Washington state presidential poll shows Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by 14 points, a result that’s pretty much what you’d expect in the tropical state.
But the gap in college graduation rates is an outlier: While Trump loses by double digits in that category, the former Republican president leads by 32 points among those with less than a high school diploma, 59% to 27%, according to a Survey USA poll of 708 Washington voters.
Among those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, Biden leads by an even more astonishing 46 points (67% to 21%).
In the end, the gap between the two was 78 points. Even a 20-point difference in votes is a big deal. A four-fold difference is almost unheard of, but this time it’s so big that it may never be bridged.
The college-educated/non-college-educated divide has become a fixture of campaigns involving Trump, as college-educated voters run in the opposite direction, but the party’s overreliance on the camp is now prevalent in other races, too.
A Washington state poll shows Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell leading her Republican opponent, Raul Garcia, by 21 percentage points. But let’s look at the evidence. Though Garcia trails by a wide margin, 30 Points Among voters with a high school education or less, Cantwell’s approval rating is 72% to 26%, but he is stronger among those with college degrees.
That’s a 76-point difference in degrees. And Garcia isn’t a MAGA holler; he’s a doctor trying to appeal to the suburban, educated elite with a more scientific, pro-abortion rights message.
When I wrote about this degree gap two years ago, the difference was about 40 percentage points. That it is now nearly double that suggests a seismic shift in politics.
Political scientist Rui Teixeira says this is a conflict between the “Brahmin left” and the “populist right” (“Brahmin” means “those who hold social and economic power” and “populist” in this context means the working class).
Both parties are dangerously dependent on this constituency.
Of the Democratic Party, he writes, “The loss of working-class voters cannot be offset by gains among college-educated and professional voters beyond what is possible, and the model is fatally damaged.”
He was speaking to a national audience: Washington state is one of the most college-educated states, and Democrats are doing well here even as they lose touch with working-class voters.
But alarmingly, polls show that both Biden and Cantwell are losing support among Hispanic voters, and Trump’s 13-point lead among Hispanic voters in this heavily Democratic state should sound alarm bells in Democratic headquarters.
In the end, this likely turned out to be another factor in the degree gap: Biden still holds a sizable 32-point lead among Hispanic voters with college degrees. Among the much larger population of Hispanics with less than a high school diploma, Biden trails Trump by 29 points.
“Working-class and college-educated Hispanics have very different political views and interests, but this is hidden by thinking of them as an undifferentiated mass or, worse, as ‘people of color,'” Teixeira wrote in another analysis. “The days when Democrats could think of Hispanics as one of ‘their’ minority groups without being punished are over, or should be.”
This is certainly true, and to their credit, I have heard many Democratic politicians and organizations discuss these trends. One consultant lamented to me this spring that the Democratic Party has become “the party of Wallingford” — urban, educated, affluent and (with apologies to my Wallingford friends) committed to politically correct preaching and idealism.
“how [bleeped] “Are we not going to respect or listen to people until they have a college degree?” Rep. Marie Grusenkamp Perez, the state’s newest Democrat, accused her own party.
Conversely, we have heard very little soul-searching from Republicans: Why did the GOP lose out to university graduates? How can they revise their messaging and policies to appeal more effectively to the two-thirds of WA voters who are tertiary-educated? There is no response.
Democrats at least talk about winning back the working class, but do any Republicans pretend to talk to PhDs?
You might find that last bit funny — I laughed when I wrote it — but a top Republican candidate who denounces scientific concepts like climate change as hoaxes and talks about women’s reproductive health care as a “states right” is devastating the Republican Party’s prospects in the highly educated Puget Sound state.
Meanwhile, Democrats seem to have misjudged how high school graduates would respond to, say, carbon-control plans that would send gas prices soaring or to forgiving college loans.
Teixeira said the Democratic Party’s “Brahmin left” model has reached its limits nationwide, and “it’s entirely possible that this election will bring it down.” In Washington, polls suggest the Republican Party’s “populist right” approach is likely to fail again.
The polarization of education has become the largest political divide I have ever seen, far larger than the urban-rural rift that prompted a journalist to make 1,000 restaurant visits eight years ago.
Until something or someone unconventional with cross-class appeal comes along, politics is likely to remain polarized.
The WA Poll is sponsored by The Seattle Times, KING 5 and the University of Washington Center for Information and Public Affairs. The WA Poll was conducted online by SurveyUSA from July 10 to July 13 among 900 adults. Respondents were weighted according to U.S. Census proportions for gender, age, race, education and homeownership. The poll has a margin of error for the presidential election question of +/- 5 percentage points.
