Mind the (Education) Gap
March 2025
Democrats might try to explain away the election results by blaming President Joe Biden or dismissing Donald Trump’s victory as a series of narrow wins in the swing states and the national popular vote. But that would be a mistake, because significant movement among a key demographic is setting up Republicans well for the future.
While some other vote indicators got plenty of attention ahead of the 2024 election including the gender gap (even though it wasn’t historically large) and Trump’s improvement among minority voters (which was real), the key factor to watch continues to be the education gap.
Whether someone has a college degree is increasingly an indicator of how they are going to vote, and Trump’s margin among voters without a college degree has been critical to his electoral success. Trump grew his margin among non-college graduates from 7 points in 2016 to 13 points in 2024, while losing ground among voters with a college degree. Hillary Clinton won college graduates by 10 points in 2016 compared with Kamala Harris’ 14-point margin last fall.
That trend is also evident in the swing states. In Pennsylvania, Trump won voters without a college degree by 7 points in 2016 and 17 points in 2024. In Georgia, Trump won voters without a college degree by 1 point in 2016 and 13 points in 2024. And in Arizona, Trump turned a 7-point win among non-college graduates in 2016 into a 13-point margin eight years later.
Democrats might also be in a deeper hole than previously thought. According to the exit polls, there has been significant growth in the size of the non-college graduate electorate. In 2016, there was roughly the same percentage of voters with and without a college degree, while in 2024, non-college graduates outnumbered college graduates 57% to 43%. Gaining ground with a growing electorate would be a boon for Republicans and alarming for Democrats.
But that shift in the electorate might not be as dramatic as the numbers indicate. After the 2016 exit polls overstated Clinton’s support, changes were made to the exit polling methodology. “The changes are designed to better account for the sharp cleavages in the electorate along educational lines, especially among white voters, and the continually increasing share of the vote that is cast prior to Election Day in states that allow early or no-excuse absentee voting,” as a Politico article explained prior to the 2018 elections.
“While this adjustment does not meaningfully change the results of the Exit Poll in terms of the voting behavior of various subgroups,” according to a statement by the National Election Pool at the time, “it does serve to adjust the poll’s estimates of the age and education makeup of the day’s voters in a way that is a best practice for polling in today’s environment.”
So rather than significant growth in the number of non-college graduates voting, it was more likely the exit polls were underrepresenting those voters for a long time.
Overall, Republicans are convinced that Trump has transformed the two parties, fashioning the GOP into a diverse, blue-collar coalition on the shoulders of his populist message and profile as a businessman and political outsider. Even if that declaration is overstated or premature, Democrats are hunting for answers. They are searching for an effective message and messenger as the minority party.
At the same time, there is no permanence in politics.
Republicans don’t have a clear successor to Trump who can deliver the message and voters the way he can. Aspiring politicians who want to carry the MAGA mantle often look meaner or sillier than the original version because they didn’t begin their political career with universal name identification defined by success and celebrity.
Even when Trump is in the picture, there’s no guarantee that Republicans ride into power on the wings of voters without a college degree. In 2020, those voters made up 59% of the electorate, but Biden held Trump to a 2-point margin among voters without a college degree while winning voters with a college degree by 12 points on his way to a nationwide victory.
It’s clear that voters without a college degree are not broadly attracted to the Democratic Party, but they could push away from the Republican Party if the economy doesn’t stabilize. Fifty-six percent of adults (including 52% of non-college graduates) disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy in a survey conducted March 6-9 for CNN. That’s Trump’s lowest rating on the economy since being president, including his first term.
Trump’s core GOP supporters will give the president the benefit of the doubt, will give him more time to fix problems and will be more apt to blame those problems on Biden or other Democrats. But independent voters, including those who voted for Trump, are more likely to flip their support if their daily lives aren’t improved with Republicans in control of Congress and the White House.
It’s possible that Republicans misread the 2024 election results as a mandate and suffer a midterm backlash from voters who want to send more Democrats to Washington as a check and balance. But relying on GOP overreach is a passive and risky strategy for Democrats, who continue to lose ground among a growing segment of the electorate. And Republicans need to consider how to keep voters without a college degree in the fold when Trump isn’t front and center.
Nathan L. Gonzales is a senior political analyst for the Public Affairs Council and editor of Inside Elections, a nonpartisan newsletter with a subscription package designed to boost PACs with a regular newsletter and exclusive conference call. You can also hear more on the Inside Elections Podcast. His email address is [email protected].
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Whether someone has a college degree is increasingly an indicator of how they are going to vote, and Trump’s margin among voters without a college degree has been critical to his electoral success.
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