Trump May Become The First Republican In 60 Years To Lose White College Graduates

One group, however, stands out for its inconsistency: white voters with a college degree. I re-created Abramowitz’s work and found that Clinton does about 17 percentage points better among whites with a college degree in the CNN survey than we’d expect based on the 2012 exit polls. Neither Trump nor Clinton does greater than 9 points better than expected among any of the other 16 demographic groups studied. The average difference from the expected result in the CNN/ORC survey based on the 2012 exit poll is just 4 percentage points.2

The 2016 election is being contested along a different battle line than presidential elections usually are. Well-educated white voters say they’re going to vote for the Democratic presidential nominee in numbers that just haven’t been seen over the past 60 years. That could have big ramifications for our political discourse, creating a class-based divide among white voters that isn’t akin to any other American election in recent memory.

This split between white voters with and without a college degree could also make a big difference in where this election is decided. As Margaret Talev, Jennifer Epstein and Gregory Giroux wrote at Bloomberg Politics, Clinton’s strength among white voters with a college degree could aid her in swing states like Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. She may do worse than Obama did in states where whites without a college degree are more plentiful, like Iowa and Ohio.

In terms of the national vote, Clinton’s strength with white voters with a college degree could win her the presidency. Even using relatively conservative estimates for how well Obama did among whites with at least a college degree in 2012, Clinton expands her overall margin by 3 percentage points compared to Obama because of how well she is doing among white voters with at least a college degree. For now, that’s making up for her lack of support compared to Obama among white voters without a college degree. We’ll see if that’s enough in the months to come.


http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-may-become-the-first-republican-in-60-years-to-lose-white-college-graduates/