[Whites’ Views on Obama] By Education

Whites are mostly negative about Obama, as consistently only around 30% approve of him (despite the Nobel Peace Prize). This 30% figure is far from the whole story. Wide differences in outlook on Obama within the White population are worth considering.

Modern polling allows us to open up a window onto, and look closely at, these differences. There are some surprises.

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Using data collected by Reuters’ scientific polling in 2014 and 2015 (for a sample group of over 50,000 Whites), I present an in-depth analysis of White attitudes towards Obama:

1. Whites’ Views on Obama by Age Group, Sex, and Political Involvement
2. Whites’ Views on Obama by Religious Identification (and Race)
3. Whites’ Views on Obama by Sexual Orientation
4. Whites’ Views on Obama by Income
5. Whites’ Views on Obama by Marital Status and Children
6. Whites’ Views on Obama by Education Attained [This Post]

In this post:

Education Attained
Among Whites Over 30

Whites’ Views of Obama by Level of Education Attained. [Click to Expand]

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Summary of Key Points
The more education attained, the higher the support for Obama. White college degree holders vs. non-degree holders: Ten point jump in support for Obama among men. Fifteen point jump for women.

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Analysis
Note: This is only for Whites over age 30, in order to limit interference from those who may be in the process or getting around to acquiring a degree in their 20s.

Overall

• 62.1% of all White poll respondents over age 30 have no college degree. They support Obama at around 25% (give or take, depending on the metric used)
• 37.9% of White poll respondents over age 30 have a college degree or higher.They support Obama at around 37% (give or take)
• 14.3% of White poll respondents over age 30 have education “beyond college” (presumably this means at least some postgraduate-level study). They support Obama at around 43% (give or take)

Men

• 56.6% of White male poll respondents over age 30 have no college degree. They support Obama at around 27% (give or take, depending on the metric used)
• 43.4% of White male poll respondents over age 30 have a college degree or higher. They support Obama at around 36% (give or take)
• 16.6% of White male poll respondents over age 30 have education “beyond college”. They support Obama at around 41% (give or take)

White Men’s Education Gap on the Weighted Scale
+0.7 points : White man with (any) degree / White man with no degree.
+1.2 points : White man who has studied at graduate level / White man with no degree. Percentage gap much as 16 points.

Whites’ Views of Obama by Level of Education Attained. [Click to Expand]

Women

• 65.5% of White female poll respondents over age 30 have no college degree. They support Obama at around 25% (give or take, depending on metric used)
• 34.5% of White female poll respondents over age 30 have a college degree or higher. They support Obama at around 39% (give or take)
• 11.8% of White female poll respondents over age 30 have education “beyond college”. They support Obama at around 44% (give or take)

White Women’s Education Gap on the Weighted Scale
+1.1 points : White woman with (any) degree / White woman with no degree.
+1.6 points : White woman who has studied at graduate level / White woman with no degree. Percentage gap much as 20 points.

Women are More Affected by College(?)
White women’s “education gap” is much larger than men’s. This suggests that a “political socialization” aspect to college life may affect women more than men. White women are so strongly apparently affected by higher education that the data bears the following statement out:

“Take a White woman, put her through six or more years or post-high-school education, and she turns from the political equivalent of a Methodist or Presbyterian into the political equivalent of an Atheist or a Jew.” (For men, replace “Atheist or Jew” there with “Episcopalian” [all these are based on comparisons of weighted average approvals of Obama, here White Views on Obama by Religion]).

Cause and Effect of Education Gap Unclear
The italicized sentence directly above preassumes that education causes (“she turns from”) pro-Obama support. Rather, there may be a lot of self-selecting going on, with more left-wing individuals gravitating to academia to begin with. Academic life tends to be strongly left-wing today, especially at the graduate level. There is probably also substantial social pressure to approve of Obama to function normally at the level of society peopled by the college-educated. I am not sure of a way to test to what extent “college causes liberalism”.

Whites’ Views of Obama by Level of Education Attained. [Click to Expand]

The Future
If college-educated women do become more left-wing than college-educated men, what of the fact of women now getting more education?

In this dataset, for all Whites born up to 1984, 43.4% of men held college degrees versus only 34.5% of women. These percentages will be reversed in coming decades as older people die off. Already in the late 2000s among those 25-34 years old (born circa 1975 to circa 1985), nationwide 34.2% of women (all races) had college degrees versus 27.0% of men (all races). (See: The Most and Least-Educated Metropolitan areas).

In the medium term, this implies a more left-wing White “elite” (broadly defined). In the longer term, because higher education also reduces a woman’s fertility substantially, it may mean a less left-wing White elite.

The question is how much longer there will be a White elite in North America, as the USA sinks into non-White majority status (perhaps before 2030, eyeballing recent trends) and as the ruling ideology of “Multicultacracy” continues in its destructive mission, continues to take no prisoners, strangle the (intellectual) life out of enemies and dissidents, and remains on the hunt for new enemies (which it creates if needed, and then strangles). Opposition to the Multicultacracy must be intellectual, drawing from the same ranks as those Whites who are now most pro-Obama. This is a dilemma for opponents of the Multicultacracy.
 

[End of Analysis / Commentary]

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Methodology
This is the combined data for all Reuters polls, conducted in the six months up to January 20th, 2015, which yields a huge sample size of 50,540 White Americans. (In this post, an additional analysis between the dates January 20th 2013 and January20th, 2015 was done to get a bigger sample size for gays and lesbians.) Reuters polled all races, but its online database allows us to look at only data for Whites if we so wish. This large sample group yields a small margin of error for most demographic subsets. Two other benefits of this data are: (1) Lots of demographic breakdowns are available, and (2) a continuum of possible responses is provided rather than a clumsy “approve / disapprove” binary. The choices are: “Strongly Disapprove” — “Somewhat Disapprove” — “Lean Disapprove” — “Mixed Feelings” — “Lean Approve” — “Somewhat Approve” — “Strongly Approve”. This allows for more precise results. All this can be recreated at polling.reuters.com.

The three calculations on the right side of each chart are to help make sense of the data:

• “Core Approval” is the sum of a demographic’s “Somewhat Approve”, “Strongly Approve” percentages. So if Group A has a “Somewhat Approve” share of 15% and a “Strongly Approve” share of 10%, the “Core Approval” will be 25%.
• “Widest Approval” is Core Approval with “Lean Approve” and half of “Mixed Feelings” also added. Taking half probably as good a way as any to deal with the people with mixed feelings.
• Weighted Approval. This is a weighting of each demographic’s scores according to the scores on the charts. To account for intensity of feeling, “Strongly Disapprove” is weighted at -0.5 and “Strongly Approve” is weighted at 10.5.

 

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Other demographic breakdowns by:

• Age Group, Sex, and Political Involvement
• Religious Identification and Race
• Sexual Orientation
• Income
• Marital Status and Children
• Education Attained [This Post]