We don’t have stellar data yet — clerks in some states are still out there counting votes — but it seems that at the very least, Trump solidified the educational divide that has defined his era. In fact, if exit polls are to be believed, he appears to have expanded his White base of support to include elements of the Hispanic and Asian working class. It’s the culmination of a long-running trend. In the Reagan era, more Americans with college degrees identified as Republican or Republican-leaning, according to the General Social Survey from NORC at the University of Chicago. By 2021 and 2022, Democrats led that group by about 20 percentage points. People with graduate degrees have grown even more lopsided: Democrats now outnumber Republicans in that category by about 3 to 1.
