It’s the college degree, stupid!

TAKE a ride on the time machine to sometime in the 1960s and 70s, and be introduced to a typical Democratic Party voter then. He works in the car industry in the Midwest or is a construction worker in New Jersey. He is white and Catholic, a member of a labour union, and has a high school degree. He’s also married with children, and is a regular churchgoer, and very patriotic, with an American flag set in front of the house he owns. He believes in the American dream and is confident that his children would do better than himself when they grow up and raise their families. He voted for Democrat Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election.

And then there is your Republican Party voter. A lawyer in Chicago or an accountant in New York, he is white and Protestant, and married with children. A member of the local Rotary Club, he is moderate in his political views and believes that free enterprise, and not big government, is the economic engine of the nation and the reason for his professional success. He owns a house in the suburbs where he raises his family and attends church on a regular basis. He voted for the Republican candidate Richard Nixon for president in 1968.

And now back to present-day America, on the eve of the 2024 presidential election. Your typical Democratic voter is a young African American professional woman who resides in a rented apartment in New York City. She is a university graduate and works in the knowledge industry, in a medical laboratory. She is secular and very liberal, a feminist, who is committed to the values of diversity, equity and inclusion, and is very worried that a Republican president would nominate conservative Supreme Court Justices who would place even more restrictions on abortions. She therefore plans to vote for Democrat Kamala Harris in the upcoming election.