In the last blog post I looked at cohort changes in the link between educational attainment and political party identification, in response to David Shor’s tweets.
In the 2020 election, there seems to have been some surprise about the inroads made by Trump among racial and ethnic minorities. I think it makes sense to examine whether the same kinds of intergenerational education polarization occurring among white individuals are occurring among nonwhite individuals. I’m going to focus on black individuals since other racial groups don’t quite have the large sample sizes across GSS waves to provide a good intercohort comparison.
What has happened to black respondents in the education-party polarization link across birth cohorts? Let’s begin with those with a college degree or more (this includes those with advanced degrees, due to small sample sizes to visualize across age. I’ll break apart advanced degree holders below).
Interesting. Black individuals with a college degree have traditionally had very high rates of Democratic party affiliation, at rates between 80-90%. But look at Millennials and Gen Z’ers. Big declines in Democratic affiliation, and big rises in Independent affiliation. Gen Z’ers have Democratic party affiliation 20 percentage points below Boomers and Gen X’ers. Again, the transition is to “Independent,” not Republican. Are highly educated Independents likely to jump to the Republican party? I doubt it. But it suggests that this group of voters is less attached to the Democratic party.
Do we see the same transition away from the Democrats among lower-educated black individuals as we saw among white individuals?
Yes! Lots more noise because there are fewer black GSS respondents, but a massive decline in Democratic party affiliation among those with just a high school degree, from about 90% in earlier generations to about HALF among Gen Z’ers. There’s a bit of growth among Republican party affiliation, but most of the Democratic decline seems to be channeling into “Independent.”
Let’s look at Some College
This looks a bit more like what I anticipated to find among white respondents. A modest but detectable decline in Democratic party affiliation among those with some college.
Let’s compare trends among white and black individuals across cohorts.
Blue line=Democratic, Black line=Independent, Red line=Republican
I draw two main points:
The decline of Democratic affiliation among lower educated folks is clearly occurring, and the decline is much more noticeable among black individuals than white individuals. Independent, not Republican, is the big winner of this transition. However, you can see a growth in Republican affiliation among low-educated black individuals: really the only place Republicanism has grown across birth cohorts.
The growth of college/Democrat is primarily found among white individuals. There was already a much tighter connection among black individuals. But we’re seeing younger black individuals with college degrees decline in affiliation with the Democratic party. Seems likely highly educated white and black individuals are meeting at a polarized point in between previous cohorts.
Taking a step back: education polarization seems to be occurring broadly. In fact, black and white individuals look a tad more similar in political identification among Gen Z than among the Greatest generation, while party affiliation across education groups has diverged. Let’s look at that by visualizing the relative difference of party affiliation across racial groups.
Red line=Republican: Blue line=Democrat: Black line=Independent.
The zero-line in the above graphs would indicate that black and white individuals in a particular birth cohort have the same rates of party identification. The further away the lines are from zero, the more different are black and white party affiliations in a particular birth cohort for a particular education level.
I think what we can obviously see is that there is less racial polarization across education levels among Millenials and Gen Z’ers than among the Greatest and the Silent generations. I’m really curious about Gen Z’ers. Is the big equalization an artifact of noisy data that will smooth out with more GSS waves, or is there a pretty radical realignment among today’s youth?
I am personally somewhat troubled with the alignment of higher educational attainment and political partisanship. I view the mission of public institutions of higher education as serving the people of the state. But that’s going to be very difficult if college emerges as a primary driver of political polarization. This trend in polarization is probably a strength for some private institutions like Harvard and Oberlin who can more narrowly target their mission and are decoupled from state-level funding decisions. But public institutions are the workhorses of higher educational attainment and probably will strain under the weight of a central location of political polarization. We’ll see!