I remember looking up Iowa’s county results right after a past election, and Florida too, and thinking: it is very easy to see the university towns. One or two oddities I had to look up… it turns out they were small universities. The correlation between education and liberalism is extreme. Austin vs. Texas at large would be another example.
Whereas I do believe that it’s not just “education” but moreso intelligence that is the predictor of liberalism today, the “where the people are” as well as the age bracket make a big difference. Most small colleges are in small towns, but these colleges have a commanding presence in the population of the area. They can be gerrymandered into oblivion tho.
To use a caricature example: a literally genius 10-year old who is still relying on argument-by-authority may think one way, before after a few years of thinking by themselves switch sides, so there really is something to the combined heft of a few thousand years of collected human knowledge, even if absorbed only by osmosis by people who never finished high school yet exist side-by-side with professors in those small college towns.
Also, wrt to Congress at least the two sides did not used to be as extreme as they are now - case in point: when the economy got really bad, Obama’s solution was to bail out the banks (yeah in return for concessions but still, how “liberal” are Democrats, really?). So anyway, I could see a selfish farmer strategically voting for their own short-term best interests, in a manner consistent with being intelligent - i.e., it’s not entirely IQ that may have been the driving force, so much as EQ.
In the past at least, though you did say “today” so… yeah, I have to agree, I just wanted to add that caveat that being exposed to other cultures and other ways of living by way of education may have been the more important factor not too long ago.
I remember looking up Iowa’s county results right after a past election, and Florida too, and thinking: it is very easy to see the university towns. One or two oddities I had to look up… it turns out they were small universities. The correlation between education and liberalism is extreme. Austin vs. Texas at large would be another example.
Whereas I do believe that it’s not just “education” but moreso intelligence that is the predictor of liberalism today, the “where the people are” as well as the age bracket make a big difference. Most small colleges are in small towns, but these colleges have a commanding presence in the population of the area. They can be gerrymandered into oblivion tho.
Not as much as you might think.
To use a caricature example: a literally genius 10-year old who is still relying on argument-by-authority may think one way, before after a few years of thinking by themselves switch sides, so there really is something to the combined heft of a few thousand years of collected human knowledge, even if absorbed only by osmosis by people who never finished high school yet exist side-by-side with professors in those small college towns.
Also, wrt to Congress at least the two sides did not used to be as extreme as they are now - case in point: when the economy got really bad, Obama’s solution was to bail out the banks (yeah in return for concessions but still, how “liberal” are Democrats, really?). So anyway, I could see a selfish farmer strategically voting for their own short-term best interests, in a manner consistent with being intelligent - i.e., it’s not entirely IQ that may have been the driving force, so much as EQ.
In the past at least, though you did say “today” so… yeah, I have to agree, I just wanted to add that caveat that being exposed to other cultures and other ways of living by way of education may have been the more important factor not too long ago.