The Sweep: Reading Between the Lines on Voter Registration

You’ve Got to be Kidding Me
About That Education Gap
Race, gender … and now religion. Non-college educated minorities and women have been reliably shifting right, and we are seeing the same trend among Evangelical voters. What’s fascinating is that this isn’t an American phenomenon. It’s a Western democracy phenomenon, at least. Is it the rise of college graduates from a tiny minority to a sizable chunk of those populations? If so, why didn’t we see something similar around high school education between the Civil War and WWII when graduation rates soared from 1 percent to 78 percent? Is it something about the uneven impact of the 2008 recession? But why would education be a better predictor than income?
Let’s look at the shift among Evangelicals: