Analysis is going around, concluding that it was education, not income, that predicted who would vote for Trump. This conclusion fits well with research that shows that people become more liberal as their educational level increases.
Why does education make people more liberal?
In saying this, I am talking about people's foundational beliefs, not simply their political orientation. But it all fits together. It is not very common to find a Unitarian Republican.
When a person does not know much about a subject, it is natural to think about it in simple terms. The more is known about the subject, the more complex and nuanced it appears. This understanding is domain-specific. A farmer will have complex understanding of a combine, whereas a concert violinist would likely perceive the combine as a mystery that either works or does not.
But in college, we learn that knowledge is complex and changing, requiring extended work to master. Someone with less education is likely to see knowledge as simple and fixed, and gained quickly or not at all.
But these are also the deep down world views of liberalism versus conservatism.
The differences are even more pronounced in people with graduate degrees. When you have to write hundreds of pages and tens of thousands of words on one topic for a doctoral dissertation, there is no way you can understand it in simple, black-and-white terms.
There are many other factors that also affect your liberal versus conservative world view, including your personal experiences and how you were raised.
For the record.....
Around 40% of Americans have a college degree. Another 22% have attended some college but not graduated. About 12% of Americans have an advanced degree beyond a bachelors. A little over 3% hold doctorates. In 2016/2017, women are projected to earn 64.2% of associate degrees, 59.9% of bachelor's degrees, 62.9% of master's degrees, and 55.5% of doctorates.
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