By Will Marshall, President of PPI
Democrats and Republicans couldn’t be farther apart in political outlook. With distance comes fear and loathing: Each party views the other not just as misguided but as an alien menace to their idea of America.
Nonetheless, neither party is monolithic. Each has internal cleavages, varying shades of opinion reflecting differences in race, class, ethnicity, gender, religion and age. When it comes to deciding elections, the fault line that matters most is the diploma divide.
Since 2008, white voters with college degrees have gravitated steadily toward the Democrats. According to researcher Zach Goldberg, they outnumbered non-college white Democrats for the first time in 2020, and now probably also exceed the GOP share of college-educated whites.
Republicans already have a massive advantage among blue collar whites, and in recent elections cycles have made inroads among non-college Hispanics, Asians and (on the margins) Black men.
