I gathered county level data on the vote count in the 2024 presidential general election (source) as well as educational attainment (source) and created a scatter plot using Google Sheets.

I derived political leaning of a county's residents by subtracting Trump's vote percent from Harris', meaning, if the difference is positive, Harris won, and as the difference increases, so too does the breadth of her victory; conversely, if the difference is negative, that means Trump won and as the difference increases, so too does his victory. I assume that as the gap between candidates gets wider, a county's residents can be considered increasingly politically polarized.

Educational attainment is measured by the percent of a county's residents that have at least a four year degree.

Only 10% of blue counties had a vote gap greater than 50%, compared to 71% of red counties. The greatest blue county vote gap was Washington DC with 86%, while 13 red counties had vote gaps greater than 86%.

It's important to note that the ratio of red to blue counties is 85:15, while the ratio of Trump to Harris votes nationally was 51:49. This means blue counties have on average much larger populations, and that fact probably accounts for some of the differences observed.

Conclusion: according to the chart, among conservative populations, as educational attainment decreases, political polarization increases dramatically; while among liberal populations, as educational attainment increases, political polarization decreases.

NB: The red county with 0% four year degrees is Loving County, TX, population 42.

Posted by JaraSangHisSong

17 comments

  1. Your conclusion, apart from being a somewhat nonsensical pithy turn of a phrase, does not actually follow from the data you present, particularly the second clause.

  2. If Maga could read this information would really tick them off.

  4. I have a Master’s degree and speak four languages, English was not my first. From my perspective, the emphasis many Americans place on a university education as a measure of intelligence is deeply flawed.

    Colleges today often operate more like assembly lines, focused less on intellectual growth and more on extracting as much money as possible from students. With only about 22% of graduates working in a field related to their degree, and many attending just to “get the paper,” the value of a college education has steadily declined.

    There was a time when higher education broadened minds, encouraged critical thinking, and introduced students to new perspectives. But in an era dominated by social media, endless streams of information, and echo chambers, that promise is no longer a guarantee.

    College or not, intelligence isn’t defined by a diploma.True intelligence lies not in the institution you attended, but in your ability to think critically, and adapt. Which from my view across the pond both sides seem to fail at.

  5. College degrees do not mean someone is smarter than others. I interviewed college grades who could not perform basic math and I know people who never went to college doing computer coding

  7. American colleges are a joke, they have an incredibly low bar to get a degree compared to other Western countries.

  8. And people wonder why they are attacking universities…

  9. This data has as much (or more) to do with age and population density than it does with education.

  10. Thank you for plotting the data!

    Of course, anyone who have glimpsed at the entries in the LeopardsAteMyFace sub in the last couple of months could not help but think that, if these people had paid a dat more attention in school, they would not have fell for the nonsensical election promises that got the current administration in place. Sigh.

  11. This should be rotated 90 degrees. Educational attainment should be the Y axis (higher up means higher education) and political leaning should be the X axis (blue on the left and red on the right). 

  12. I wonder why people who put themselves into massive amounts of debt vote for the people who constantly promise to relieve them of that debt (but never actually do it, so they can keep promising it in return for votes). There’s little economic or financial intelligence about going to a $50-80k/year school to major in something that pays $50k/year. I have a doctorate, very expensive, but I paid off my 10 year loan plan in 2 years. Forgive me for not wanting to pay for gender studies majors’ tuition as well.

  13. IIRC, professors are overwhelmingly woke liberals. So the more time you spend in college, the more you get indoctrinated into woke-liberal ideology.

  14. Why does more formal education translate to more likely to vote blue?

    I know some will see “more smarter = more bluer”, but I think it brings up why higher education pushes progressive policies, rather than EDUCATION. An economically literate population would laugh the red and blue clowns out of the room. They would trend right politically, but not anywhere near what the GOP has transformed into.

    But hey, anything that backs up “orange man bad” amirite?

  15. **Educated in:

    PhD in Postcolonial Basket Weaving
    Master’s in Safe Space Architecture
    BS in Gendered Food Studies
    Master’s in Pronoun Policing

  16. I think this is mostly an urban/rural divide. You have to account for lots of other factors if you want to have a convincing argument I think.

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