A map I think everybody should look at

[ElectionsGuy]

Via WSJ

This election we're very likely to see an even greater polarization of college educated and non college educated voters. As is the case in many polls, Clinton is apparently leading with college educated whites, a 56-42 Romney group. So if we look at the counties with very high bachelor's degrees, we should see the areas that will swing most Democratic this election. Obviously there are some exceptions, I don't think New Jersey/New York will be much worse for Trump than a typical Republican, given many Republicans and Independents in that region are a better fit for Trump already. And non-college areas of Utah and Idaho may swing Democratic anyway due to Mormon backlash.

This may explain why we've seen Trump doing so poorly in Colorado in the polls.

[Xing]

Thanks for posting this, it's definitely interesting. I think it shows that Trump can't win simply by doing very well among white voters without a college degree. If you look at states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, there are plenty of counties where over 40% of residents only have a high school degree, but those were counties which Romney won in 2012. The Obama counties, particularly the Philly suburbs, have more educated voters, and it'll be hard for Trump to win without swaying at least some of those voters.

[Human]

Thanks for posting this, ElectionsGuy.

[Mehmentum]

Something's off about the Urban/rural county split.  They claim that all counties with greater than 50,000 population are 'urban', but they mark a county in my area that has less than 10,000 people as urban.

[Adam Griffin]

I wonder if this map is labelled properly? The "high school graduate only" category based on my county's stats seems to match the "did not graduate high school" category instead. You have counties where only 10-20% of the population has a Bachelor's degree; if 30% are HS graduates only, then it implies that 50-60% of people in a lot of counties don't have a HS degree.

My County:
29.4% HS grads only
14.0% Bachelor's and above

That's 43.4%. The no HS degree category in my county according to the Census is around 30%, not 57%. I'm confused. :/

EDIT: maybe WSJ's numbers include minors?

[ElectionsGuy]

I wonder if this map is labelled properly? The "high school graduate only" category based on my county's stats seems to match the "did not graduate high school" category instead. You have counties where only 10-20% of the population has a Bachelor's degree; if 30% are HS graduates only, then it implies that 50-60% of people in a lot of counties don't have a HS degree.

My County:
29.4% HS grads only
14.0% Bachelor's and above

That's 43.4%. The no HS degree category in my county according to the Census is around 30%, not 57%. I'm confused. :/

EDIT: maybe WSJ's numbers include minors?

The numbers are for 25 and older, but I think the issue is its not counting college dropouts and people with only 2 years (associates), which are a very sizable number of people in nearly every county. So a lot of that 57% in Whitfield County, GA I would think to be 2 year degrees, technical degrees, and dropouts.

[catographer]

I would take a close look at western Texas. Very Hispanic areas that are still solidly Republican. But watch Hillary's performance there; if Trump's getting trounced among Latinx voters like as expected, you could see his margins in west Texas drop from victories in the 60-70%s to 50%s to some loses. Bleeds into southeast New Mexico as well.

[MasterJedi]

Something's off about the Urban/rural county split.  They claim that all counties with greater than 50,000 population are 'urban', but they mark a county in my area that has less than 10,000 people as urban.

I hate that the divide has always been Urban/Rural, where suburban counties are considered urban when they are far from urban.