Is Partisanship a matter of degree?
Identifying as a Democrat or Republican may depend on whether you have a college degree, or not. How might that drive public policy?
The Pew Research Center has released a comprehensive multi-decade study into political partisanship in the US, exploring the demographics that might help explain why voters identify as, or lean, Democrat or Republican.
While Americans who identify as one or the other are evenly split – with 49% identifying as Democrats and 48% as Republicans, the demographic make-up of each party differs dramatically according to the Pew Study.
“Many of the factors long associated with voters’ partisanship remain firmly in place,” according to Pew. “For decades, gender, race and ethnicity, and religious affiliation have been important dividing lines in politics. This continues to be the case today.”
And, says Pew, “As has long been the case White voters are much more likely than those in other racial and ethnic groups to associate with the Republican Party. Hispanic and Asian voters tilt more Democratic. Black voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic.”
So, nothing really new here. Or is there? While many of the traditional lines of partisanship persist, “the relationship between education and partisanship,” Pew reports, “has shifted significantly since the early years of the 21st century.”
According to Pew, the Republican Party now holds a 6 percentage point advantage over the Democratic Party (51% to 45%) among voters who do not have a bachelor’s degree, and voters who do not have a four-year degree make up a 60% majority of all registered voters. By comparison, the study found, “the Democratic Party has a 13-point advantage (55% vs. 42%) among those with a bachelor’s degree or more formal education.”
This is, says Pew, a recent pattern. “In fact, until about two decades ago the Republican Party fared better among college graduates and worse among those without a college degree.”
Both parties have a “shrinking” problem.
As the percentage of college graduates in the electorate with a four-year degree continues to climb -- college-educated voters now make up 40% of the voting public – so does the gap in partisanship, especially among White voters. “More than six-in-ten White voters who do not have a four-year degree (63%) associate with the Republican Party,” the survey found, “which is up substantially over the past 15 years.”
While voters without a college degree have shifted towards the Republican Party, however, the share of voters without a college degree has dropped. For voters with a college degree, it’s the opposite. This presents a Catch-22 dilemma for Republicans. While the party is attracting more non-college-educated voters, non-college-educated voters are becoming a smaller percentage of the electorate.
But as the share of non-college-educated voters is shrinking, which is bad news for Republicans, new voters – traditionally young, non-white, and Democratic leaning – are also shrinking as a proportion of the electorate. That’s bad news for Democrats.
“The Democratic and Republican parties have always been very different demographically, but now they are more different than ever,” Carroll Doherty, the director of political research at Pew, told the New York Times.
Brother, can you spare 20K?
Demographics can explain a lot about politics and policy. Take, for example, President Biden’s recent announcement that he would cancel more than $7 billion in student debt for 25 million student borrowers. Not to be cynical. Well, ok, I’m being cynical. But is this really about helping out college students “struggling” with student debt, or helping out the Biden campaign struggling with young and college-educated voters?
The plan, which provides targeted relief for the majority of student loan borrowers, comes as Biden looks to deliver on his campaign promise to cancel student loan debt after his more sweeping plan was thwarted by the Supreme Court last year.
You might remember that the court ruled that Biden's $400 billion loan cancellation plan, yes $400 billion, was unconstitutional. Under the plan struck down by the court, Biden had tried to forgive the debt for nearly all 40 million federal student loan borrowers.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s rebuke Biden promised to try again. And in a statement released by the White House last week, the Administration said it “would fully eliminate accrued interest for 23 million borrowers, would cancel the full amount of student debt for over 4 million borrowers, and provide more than 10 million borrowers with at least $5,000 in debt relief or more.”
Borrowers who originally took out $12,000 or less in loans and have been in repayment for 10 years are eligible, according to the new plan, to get all their remaining debt canceled. Excuse me, but if you borrowed less than $12,000 and haven’t paid your loan off yet – after 10 years – it doesn’t sound like you’re trying very hard. Or that going to college was a very good choice in the first place.
If non college-educated voters are drifting to the political right, and if fewer new voters are leaning left, shoring up your base to attract young college-educated voters by cancelling their college debt sounds like a good political move. Two birds, one cancelled loan.
“Where is the relief for the guy who didn’t go to college but is working to pay off the loan on the truck he takes to work?”
But not unexpectedly, there’s pushback. Eighteen states, led by Missouri and Kansas, have already filed lawsuits against the Biden proposal. Rank and file Republicans have also criticized Biden, and Democrats, for ignoring those who didn’t go to college, or who did and paid off their loans - like they agreed to do.
“Where is the relief for the guy who didn’t go to college but is working to pay off the loan on the truck he takes to work?,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee told the Associated Press. “What about the woman who paid off her student loans but is now struggling to afford her mortgage? Instead the Biden administration is sticking these Americans with the bill of someone else’s student debt.” Good questions.
So, in the end, maybe going to college, and becoming a Democrat, does pay off – especially if you haven’t paid off your student loans.