Presidential Politics: More Educated Vote Republican
Contrary to Liberal Mantra, Bush (2004) and McCain (2008) Received the More Educated Vote
As demonstrated below, there is a statistically significant positive correlation between the percentage of residents in each congressional district who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for Republican presidential candidates. Comparatively, there is a statistically significant negative correlation between the percentage of residents in each congressional district who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for Democratic presidential candidates.
As a point of probable interest, seven of the ten most educated congressional districts are partisan Republican districts and three are partisan Democratic districts. All ten of the least educated congressional districts are partisan Democratic districts. As a preliminary matter, the following is a list of these twenty congressional districts, their general geographic areas, high school (or higher) graduation percentages, and their Cook Partisan Voting Index (CPVI) values:
Most Educated
1. Colorado-6 (Littleton-Castle Rock, 96%, CPVI Republican +8);
2. Minnesota-3 (Edina-Maple Grove, 94.7%, CPVI Republican +0);
3. California-30 (Beverly Hills-Malibu, 94.2%, CPVI Democrat +18 );
4. Washington-1 (Redmond-Edmonds, 94.1%, CPVI Democrat +9);
5. Wisconsin-5 (Waukesha-West Bend, 93.6%, CPVI Republican +12);
6. Minnesota-2 (Apple Valley-Lakeville, 93.6%, CPVI Republican +4);
7. Massachusetts-10 (Cape Cod, 93.6%, CPVI Democrat +5);
8. Georgia-6 (Dunwoody-Canton, 93.5% CPVI Republican +19);
9. Minnesota-6 (Woodbury-St. Cloud, 93.4%, CPVI Republican +7);
10. Illinois-13 (Downers Grove-Orland Park, 93.4%, CPVI Republican +1)
Least Educated
1. Texas-29 (South Houston-Baytown, 53%, CPVI Democrat +8);
2. California-34 (East Los Angeles, 54.4%, CPVI Democrat +22);
3. California-20 (Fresno-Lamont, 55.2%, CPVI Democrat +5);
4. California-47 (Garden Grove-Santa Ana, 55.8%, CPVI Democrat +4);
5. New York-16 (Bronx, 58.5%, CPVI Democrat +41);
6. California-31 (Northeast Los Angeles-Hollywood, 59.2%, CPVI Democrat +29);
7. Illinois-4 (Chicago-Cicero, 61.7%, CPVI Democrat +32);
8. Arizona-4 (Phoenix-Guadalupe, 63.6%, CPVI Democrat +13);
9. Texas-15 (Corpus Christie-McAllen, 64.7%, CPVI Democrat +3);
10. Texas-28 (Laredo-San Antonio, 65%, CPVI Democrat +0).
Null Hypotheses
1. There is no correlation between the percentage of residents in each congressional district who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for Republican presidential candidates.
2. There is no correlation between the percentage of residents in each congressional district who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for Democratic presidential candidates.
Alternative Hypotheses
1. There is a correlation between the percentage of residents in each congressional district who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for Republican presidential candidates.
2. There is a correlation between the percentage of residents in each congressional district who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for Democratic presidential candidates.
Statistical Correlation Measure
The statistical correlation measure used herein is the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (denoted by r) which measures the linear correlation between two variables X and Y, giving a value between -1 and +1. The nearer the r statistic is to +1, the greater the positive correlation between two variables. The nearer the r statistic is to -1, the greater the negative correlation between two variables.
For purposes of the studies herein, an r statistic of +1 would indicate a perfect positive correlation between the percentage of residents in each congressional district who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for either Republican or Democratic presidential candidates. Alternatively, an r statistic of -1 would indicate a perfect negative correlation between the percentage of residents in each congressional district who are high school graduates (or higher) and support for either Republican or Democratic presidential candidates.
An r statistic of 0 indicates no statistical correlation.
Data
X variables are the percentage of residents in each of the 436 U.S. congressional districts who are high school graduates (or higher). Y variables are the Cook Partisan Voting Index (CPVI) values of the 436 U.S. congressional districts: measures of how strongly the voters of each district leaned toward one political party compared to the nation as a whole in the last two presidential elections.
Statistical Significance: Critical Value Range
-.09 to .09 (434 degrees of freedom at an alpha of .05; two-tailed test)*
*Explanation: In order to reject either null hypothesis and accept the corresponding alternative hypothesis, the r statistic for X and Y must be < -.09 or > .09. In such a case, there is at least a 95% probability that the correlation did not simply occur by mere chance. Any r statistic between -.09 and .09 indicates no statistically significant correlation between X and Y.
Findings
Percentage of residents in each congressional district who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for Republican presidential candidates. r = .23 (p-value=.000001)
Percentage of residents in each congressional districts who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for Democratic presidential candidates. r = -.23 (p-value=.000001)
Conclusions
The alternative hypotheses are accepted because the respective r statistics of .23 and -.23 are outside of the critical value range.
There is a statistically significant positive correlation between the percentage of residents in each congressional district who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for Republican presidential candidates. There is a statistically significant negative correlation between the percentage of residents in each congressional districts who are high school graduates (or higher) and support by those districts for Democratic presidential candidates.
The p-values for these studies are .000001; therefore, there is a 1 in 1,000,000 chance that these correlations occurred circumstantially rather than because of a true relationship.
Source(s):
"Cook Partisan Voting Index," The Cook Political Report
"2006-2008 American Community Survey (ACS)," U.S. Census Bureau
Embedded Links
Published by J.C. Grant
A writer interested in education, finance, health, history, law, music, polemics, politics, satire, sports, statistics, travel, and trivia. View profile
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24 Comments
Post a CommentOne District? You may want to read the article this time.
"that tells you all that you need to know about Democratic districts."
yes, one district tells us everything we need to know about the hundreds of Democratic districts.
good job, Mr Statistics!
Each congressional district has nearly the same population, Luis. You'd do well to read the study and review its sources at the end of the article before commenting. That way, you can actually offer some meaningful commentary rather than look silly.
If this study was done using exit polls then scratch my illegal alien theory. Exit polls can be very unreliable, especially about education questions. People tend to lie in order to save themselves from embarrassment.
This so-called study is enormously flawed. The areas of the "Most Educated" that favor the GOP are in sparsely populated, mostly rural areas. The areas of the "Least Educated" are all minority ghettos where up to 1/3 of the inhabitants are illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are included in the education survey but at the same time they are unable to vote. It is fair to say that the Democrats have groups of poor, minority voters within their voter bloc and Republicans have large swaths of poor, white, uneducated voters whom reside in mostly the South and Midwest. In other studies that I have read, it showed that Republican men, on average, are slightly more educated than Democratic men and that Democratic women, on average, are slightly more educated than Republican women.
Only brillant Conservatives could take an unsupported and flawed premise, to prove a fatuous conclusion; then pat themselves on the back.
The muddled thinking processes of the Right never fail to amuse.
VOTE BY EDUCATION
TOTAL Democrat Republican
No High School (3%) 64% 35%
H.S. Graduate (21%) 55% 44%
Some College (31%) 51% 47%
College Graduate (27%) 49% 49%
Postgraduate (18%) 58% 41%
From:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/pages/results/states/US/H/00/epolls.0.html
To belabor the obvious, you have to graduate high school (a basic level of educational attainment) before you can think about college. Democrats have an extraordinarily high dropout rate. A relatively small percentage of Americans have earned college degrees (27%), let alone graduate degrees (just 10%). Even so, the difference between the parties with respect to college (and higher) graduation rates is marginal. Links to the data are at the end of the article.
This research only goes by high school graduation rates. What about college grads? Post grads? PhDs?
Here's my hypothesis: Dems make up the majority of the least and most educated. In other words, I believe, generally speaking, most high school drop outs are democrats and most multiple masters/doctorate degree holders are democrats. But, most high school and college grads are republican. Just a hypothesis based on my personal experiences...
Well im 2 classes away from my MBA. And i have to say in most of my economics, finance and business classes. 75% students were on the conservative side and 25% on the liberal side. Im sure the numbers would be reversed if the major was sociology or something. Kinda off topic but still intresting i think.