The thread where people are happy about the election results (Page 5)

I've always been curious about this correlation;  The states with the highest/lowest percentage of college-educated population and the election results.  The data comes from the most recent census.  Does this mean anything?

Why is it that 19 out of 26 of the HIGHEST percentage went for Obama?
Why is it that 17 out of 25 of the LOWEST percentage went for Romney?

*  Assuming Florida eventually goes for Obama
*  Including the Distrct of Columbia

Is it simply that rural voters tend to be less college-educated and rural voters are resounding Republican supporters?  That college-educated people automatically tend to live in more urban areas?  Would that mean that rather than college education, the political split in the nation is more about rural vs. urban?  And it's just a coincedence that states with more urban population centers are the states with more college-educated people?

I'm just curious...

     DC                  49% Obama
1   Massachusetts 38% Obama
2   Colorado         36% Obama
3   Maryland         36% Obama
4   Connecticut      36% Obama
5   New Jersey       35% Obama
6   Virginia            34% Obama
7   Vermont           33% Obama
8   New York          32% Obama
9   New Hampshire 32% Obama
10 Minnesota         32% Obama
11 Washington       31% Obama
12 Illinois              31% Obama
13 Rhode Island     31% Obama
14 California          30% Obama
15 Hawaii              30% Obama
16 Kansas              30% Romney
17 Oregon              29% Obama
18 Delaware           29% Obama
19 Utah                  29% Romney
20 Georgia              28% Romney
21 Montana             27% Romney
22 Nebraska            27% Romney
23 Maine                 27% Obama
24 Alaska                27% Romney
25 North Carolina     27% Romney
26 Pennsylvania       26% Obama
27 North Dakota       26% Romney
28 Wisconsin            26% Obama
29 Arizona               26% Romney
30 Texas                  26% Romney
31 Florida                 25% Obama
32 New Mexico          25% Obama
33 Missouri               25% Romney
34 Iowa                    25% Obama
35 South Dakota        25% Romney
36 Michigan               25% Obama
37 South Carolina      24% Romney
38 Ohio                     24% Obama
39 Idaho                    24% Romney
40 Wyoming              24% Romney
41 Tennessee             23% Romney
42 Oklahoma             23% Romney
43 Indiana                 23% Romney
44 Alabama               22% Romney
45 Nevada                 22% Obama
46 Louisiana               21% Romney
47 Kentucky               21% Romney
48 Mississippi              20% Romney
49 Arkansas                19% Romney
50 West Virginia          17% Romney

It's not just college educated, either.  It's % of people with HS diplomas, college degrees, and graduate degrees.  Median family incomes by state also largely follow the same correlation.  Just sayin'

Correlation does not equal causation.  Just sayin'

Honestly I think a lot of it is exposure to diversity. Colleges tends to be a melting pot, students get exposed to people and cultures they didn't get back home, as do cities and towns with a major university presence. I'd guess that people with disposable income travel more, also exposing them to diversity.

And here we have the whole more enlightened than thou argument.  Do you guys not see how arrogant that is?

It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that most college professors are quite liberal and teach that way almost to an extreme.

Because higher education can often rob you of common sense?

Exactly.  You can't say that "smarter people voted for Obama."  Thousands of highly college-educated people in the banking and financial industry heavily backed Romney.  And to say "a high turnout of Hispanic and African-American voters helped Obama win" doesn't fit the college-educated equation either.

So is it just that American has a whole lot of "empty space"?  While the map look predominantly "red", a few heavily populated "blue" areas that are high in college-educated people can turn an entire state?  Look at Wisconsin...

A lot of red except for Milwaukee, Madison, and the north suburbs of Deluth.  So I wonder if I'm back to my original question:  Is it urban vs. rural and urban just happens to contain the college-educated?

I never said it did.  You'll specifically note that I called it a correlation.  I can see how it might be an upsetting correlation to some, however.

No, honestly I don't. I'm not talking about education, I'm talking about diversity. You throw a bunch of kids in a dorm and force them to live together and they're going to adapt.

Actually, I would say to take it easy on 'BrianRunsPhilly'.  There is something in that argument.  The demographic results of the election show that Romney captured a majority of older, white, males, and he lost in almost every other area - Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Blacks... the diversity areas.  The Republican message certainly needs to be refined to appeal to a broader audience than white conservatives.  I think what he's saying is simply that living your life without an exposure to that diversity can shape your views and values.  As you get exposed to diversity, you broaden your views to include those different from what you were raised with alone.  The question would be, does a college education make you more empathetic to diversity issues and thereby make you lean more towards the Democrat message?

And I don't think there's some sort of college/media liberal agenda to indoctrinate kids.  Republican movements are just as much alive and strong on college campuses as are liberal ones.

Yes, that is what I was saying. But that's only social issues. I and a lot of people I know are also economically very conservative. We worked hard to get through school and become successful, and want to protect what we've earned. Were the Republican party to moderate their social platform they would recapture a good number of people just like me.

If the Republicans would moderate their social platform I might actually consider myself one.  I am an independent because of the Dems fiscal platform and the Reps social platform.

However there does not have to be any agenda and I am not a conspiracy theorist.  Many of them (college/media types) are however subject to group think and are as resistant to idea diversity as Reps are to social liberalism.

We all like to believe we are free-thinkers, but all types of people are subject to group think. That doesn't mean people can't be independent or different from those who surround them, but people do tend to think the way others around them think, especially if they stay with the same area throughout their lives. It's not an indictment on anybody's way of life or where they live, it's just the reality, whether that's in a small, rural community, a big city, or a college. 

I do think there is a bit of the chicken and the egg thing with this whole issue of where people live, their level of education, and how they vote. Many people are just wired more conservative and more liberal from the start so they tend to go to the places that better fit that comfort zone. For instance, a more liberal person is more likely to live in a larger community and people who live in larger community are more likely to be more liberal. I grew up in a relatively small community. I loved the area, but didn't fit with the conservative thinking of most residents. I went to college in a town of a similar size, but it was on the other (more liberal) side of the state and most of the other students came from the Seattle area and surrounding communities. I was amazed how different people were and the things they considered normal were completely new to me. I was pre-disposed to being more open to different things than the people I grew up with, but I was still amazed at the whole new world out there. I'm glad I was exposed to new things because it did make me more open different ways of thinking. 

I see the same thing when I look at the posts of old high school friends on social media. The ones who left the town or went to college (there is not a four-year college in the town) or moved to more populated areas tend to be more liberal and the ones who stayed are more conservative. Maybe the ones who left were like me and were more predisposed to liberal thinking and they gravitated towards those areas. Maybe the place they moved or went to college eventually changed how they look at things. Maybe it was some of each.

Absolutely correct. People in college or big cities do get exposed to more diversity and it tends to have the effect of making those people more open to different ways of thinking. 

For instance, I saw a very small example of this with my kids a couple of years ago when we went New York City for a week. We live in a relatively small town that has some diversity in people, culture, and the way people do things, but not much. The first couple of days there, they were shocked by a lot of what they saw. Not just the diversity of people, but how they get around the city, their attitudes, etc. They recoiled a bit. They couldn't believe people would choose to live in that concrete jungle and thought the whole city looked the same. They wanted to explore, but they weren't interested in looking too closely. They kept their distance, so to speak. By the time we left, they could start to see the differences in the areas of town, the kinds of people that were there, the things that make a neighborhood unique, and they became enthusiastic about checking out the details (shops, people, architecture, etc.).

After we had been back home for a while, one of them remarked how it seems like everyone here is the same and thinks the same way. Relative to New York, she was right. She could see the "group think" here the same way she could see the overall group think in New York in general and the smaller pockets of group think in different areas of that larger city.

None of the Cowboys fans are happy I can tell you that.

In other words you kids saw exactly how people in cities self segregate and insulate themselves.  That is not as easy to do in a small town where there are no black neighborhoods or hispanic neighborhoods because there are just not enough people to support that sort of segregation.

Every college I have seen does the same thing, self segregates.  This seems to be less the case when the college is in a smaller town though or is smaller in overal size.  Often the people at larger acedemic research institutions do the same though to a lesser extent but we have labs that are all chinese or all indian but not a single one that is all white american.

Look at FL.  Gainesville (that blue patch in the upper center) is home to the University of FL.  It's very rural.

I don't think this thread is what it says it is.

Not any more.

Once you throw a bottle into the ocean, regardless of where you started it and where you wanted it to go, it will go it's own way and end up where it ends up.

This is not natural evolution of a converstion.  It's the usual suspects hijacking a thread to push it the way they want because if they are not happy, no one should be.  And it's not an isolated case.