How education and religion have redrawn America's political map
The affluent D.C. suburb of Fairfax County, Virginia, once leaned Republican. In 2000, George W. Bush won the county by 1.4 percent, or 5,860 votes. But by 2020, Democrat Joe Biden claimed it by a staggering 42-point margin.
Such a dramatic swing in one of the nation’s wealthiest counties points to a deeper reconfiguration of American political identity — one in which education, not income brackets, increasingly determines party loyalty. As the proportion of college-educated residents in Fairfax County surged — reaching more than 60 percent by 2020 — so did Democratic vote share.
The declining salience of class represents perhaps the most consequential political shift of the past century in the United States, altering the very nature of the partisan divide in the process. From the end of World War II until 2012, Whites among the top 5 percent of income earners were the most likely to vote Republican. Not only is this no longer the case, the pattern has reversed almost entirely. Now, the top 5 percent are the least likely to vote Republican. Meanwhile, Democrats are losing working-class White voters by a 2-1 margin.
In short, a growing number of Americans are voting against their traditional class interests. What exactly happened? The number of Americans with bachelor’s degrees increased exponentially from about 6 percent in 1950 to around 38 percent today. Higher education is strongly associated with liberal attitudes on cultural issues. For instance, 69 percent of college graduates oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, compared with only 47 percent of those without a degree.
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