Trump loves the Poorly Educated - why this might kill democracy
63 % of the adult population have at least some college education; those who don't follow the news support Trump in greater percentages
According to a recent NBC News poll, President Joe Biden “is the clear choice of voters who consume newspapers and national network news, while Trump does best among voters who don’t follow political news at all. Biden holds an 11-point lead among traditional news consumers in a head-to-head presidential ballot test, with 52% support among that group to Trump’s 41%”.
However, among digital media consumers, Trump is at 47% and Biden at 44%. “And Trump has a major lead among those who don’t follow political news — 53% back him, and 27% back Biden”.
“Those who don't follow political news feel more positively about Trump and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and more negatively about Biden”.
The one bright spot on the poll: those who consume traditional media are more likely to vote. This is why Biden’s support rises from polls that cover all adults, to registered voters, to likely voters.
In another recent poll, most people had the economic performance of President Biden exactly backwards. They thought we were in an economic recession, that unemployment was the highest in 50 years, and that the stock market had collapsed.
This is the EXACT OPPOSITE of the truth:
- the U.S. economy is growing, the best performance among G-7 countries
- the stock market is breaking new records, it is the highest it has ever been
- unemployment is the lowest it has been in 50 years. More than 15 million jobs created under President Biden.
- real wages are increasing (especially for lower income workers)
- real net worth is increasing (especially for the lower quintile population)
This is perhaps why in polls people give better marks on managing the economy to Trump and the Republicans, whereas Trump lost nearly 3 million jobs (the first President to lose jobs since Hoover), and there have been recessions in all recent Republican presidencies.
What is somewhat perplexing is this level of lack of information. On the one hand, we could blame it on right-wing media (Fox, Newsmax, Breitbart, The Epoch Times, OAN, etc.). Or right-wing influencers, like Tucker Carlson (who just launched a program on Russian media!) or Nick Fuentes. Surely foreign powers (Russia, China, Iran) also have active disinformation campaigns on social media.
In a rally in 2016, Trump exclaimed “I Love The Poorly Educated”
But the “poorly educated” are a small fraction of the adult population.
The vast majority of Americans have completed high school (only 9% have not).
An additional 28% only have a high school diploma.
The rest (63%) had at least some university education.
The only demographic Trump clearly wins is the non-college white population, which is less than 20 % of the population (35 % of voters if you count some college, but no degree).
Some might say that the quality of high school education is lacking. However, in international standardized tests (such as PISA), the United States scores above the OECD average in Reading and Science, and only slightly below average in Mathematics.
In any case, this trend is concerning. And it poses a challenge to the Biden campaign - how to reach voters who don’t consume traditional media, only consume digital media (mostly social media), or who don’t follow political news. The Biden campaign did launch a TikTok account (despite the vote in Congress to force the sale or ban it), and has a very active and “rapid response” presence on Twitter/X and Threads.
More on the relative performance of Biden vs. Trump: