Reader Kenny F. sent us this startling infographic sure to infuriate exactly half of our audience. Apparently this election was not only divided along racial and financial lines, but on intelligence lines as well. Our favorite thing about this graphic is that the data Kenny used came from Fox Business, so if you're a Romney voter, this is basically Neil Cavuto accidentally calling you an idiot. Of course, Nevada voted for Obama despite being one of the least educated states, but we can probably chalk that up to the fact that he was the safest bet.
It doesn't follow that from a state's voting patterns that the well-educated people in it vote one way or the other. For a very long time, the pattern was that Democrats owned those with doctoral degrees and those with high school education or less while Republicans owned the college educated and had a slight advantage in the "some college education" category. If you took a survey of some of those Democrat states in the 90's, the college educated in them would've been predominantly Republican. New Hampshire might go Democrat, but college educated in the state would go Republican. Democrats would take the educated elite and win on the backs of the undereducated.
Starting seriously around the Bush vs. Gore election, Republicans started doing better among the undereducated while Democrats made in-roads into the college educated, so this pattern no longer holds as neatly. This coincides with the rise of rightwing populism driven by right wing media along with the solidification of evangelicals into the religious right. That tends to appeal to the less educated and likely plays a significant role in the shifting demographics.
