Will “uneducated” voters determine the 2016 Presidential election?
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The most recent Washington Post poll – showing Hillary leading Donald by a couple of points — provides some very interesting drill down data … it’s worth some browsing time.
Buried in the numbers is some interesting data…..
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MSM headlines frequently stereotype Trump’s supporters as non-college degreed whites … and often, the label is shorthanded as a more pejorative “uneducated”, i.e. mind-numbed dummies.
According to the WaPo poll, it’s true that Trump is favored by “white non-college” almost 2-to-1 … 60% to 33%
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No surprise there …
But, here are some findings that did surprise me a bit since they never gets spotlighted in the mainstream media…
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Based on the WaPo poll:
Donald and Hillary are statistically tied among the “white college degree” folks … in fact, Trump edges Clinton 43 to 42 in the raw data.
Technical note: WaPo doesn’t break out “non-white college degree” and doesn’t report the demographic breakdown of the survey’s sample
Hmmm … that’s interesting.
One reasonable interpretation: Trump’s support is not just among dummies.
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Another finding that surprised me a bit is that Donald and Hillary are statistically tied among the “no college degree” folks … 47 to 45 … slight edge to HILLARY.
How can that be if Trump is favored by “white non-college” almost 2-to-1 … 60% to 33%?
Easy … but, buried in the numbers…
Clinton is favored by “non-white non-college” by over 4-to-1 … 73% to 18%.
You just don’t see that in the headlines much, do you?
I thought all of her supporters were savants…
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So what?
Let’s run some numbers …
According to the 2010 Census (summary chart at end of post), there were about 200 million adults (over 25) in the U.S. …. roughly 154 million white; 46 million non-white.
As a group, 29.3% of the white adult population had a bachelor’s degree or higher … so, 70.7% didn’t … that’s about 109 million “white non-college degree” folks.
Of the 109 million, 60% are inclined to Trump … that’s about 65 million.
Of the 109 million, 33% are inclined to Hillary … that’s about 36 million.
That’s a 29 million advantage to Trump if the 109 million turn out to vote.
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Let’s run the same numbers for Hillary …
As a group, 23.2% of the non-white adult population had a bachelor’s degree or higher … so, 76.8% didn’t … that’s about 35 million “non-white non-college degree” folks.
Of the 35 million, 78% are inclined to Hillary … that’s about 27 million.
Of the 35 million, only 18% are inclined to Trump … that’s about 6 million.
That’s a 19 million advantage to Clinton if the 35 million turn out to vote.
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Netting the numbers out, Trump has a voting pool advantage of about 10 million non-degreed adults.
That could, in fact be determining since – according to the WaPo poll – Clinton & Trump statistically tied among the reported college-degreed folks (chart above)
Interesting …
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