What are your thoughts about Uneducated voters for Obama or Romney?

[All Along The Watchtower]

The young first time voters are not the uneducated ones.  They have far more access to information than older Americans.

Information =/= education

[milhouse24]

So it's Obama's fault for being the first black president. I think you wrongly assume that minority voters are swayed by the color of someone's skin, while white voters carefully examine each candidate. I'm also pretty sure you have been making this argument for quite some time now even after people have taken you to task over it many times.

Maybe no other Black or white Democrat can ever replicate Obama's minority turnout.  But Obama's skin color was one of the main factors that allowed him to get such a high Black turnout and become a "movement figure" for young voters.  Boring white guys like John Kerry would never be able to match the turnout of Black Americans or Young americans.  Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson wouldn't have been able to excite young voters.

[Benj]

The Dems are a curious coalition of the dumbs and the smarts.  Pubs tend to be in-between.  Pubs tend to think as a crude generalization that they are the "normal" Americans. Pity for them that a majority of American voters are now "abnormal."  

The Pubs need a new business plan. They are heading towards politically insolvency in tandem with the nation's fiscal insolvency.

This is... simplistic. The Democratic coalition is not "dumbs" and "smarts". It's highly educated voters and voters with little education. Education and intelligence are not the same thing. Moreover, the odd multi-polar split where Democrats win low- and high-education voters while Republicans win those in the middle is entirely the result of race. Minorities have disproportionately less education and vote heavily Democratic. If you look only at white voters by education, the trend is clear: more education = more Democratic.

You just don't understand opebo-speak is all.  We speak a unique dialect of English on the Atlas forum. You will get used to it. Having said that, I would like to see the data that the most poorly educated whites are more Pub than those who have some college or a college degree. I challenge that. The Dem strength is concentrated at the high end among those with graduate degrees, including, inter alia, all those disgusting lawyers who feed off the frictions in our economy, often ones government generated.  So the Pub strength among whites should look more than a concave function generated curve I would think.

In 2008, Obama lost college-educated whites by 4 points and non-college whites by 19 points. I don't have the full-spectrum breakdown (for splitting post-grad v. college only and splitting no-high school v. high school only v. some college), but you can guess. The below article suggests that 2012 might have had an even bigger education gap (and the swings in Appalachia would also point that way), but a quick search does not give me an exit poll with the white vote by education (also, since the national exit polls this year only included 31 states, it's not directly comparable).

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/103969/obama%E2%80%99s-problem-white-non-college-educated-voters-getting-worse#

"In 2008, Obama lost white college graduates by four points and whites without a college degree by 19 points." (It's buried in the middle of the article.)


This... rather comprehensive breakdown of college v. non-college whites (which they call "working class") from September also has Romney leading by 2% among college whites but by 13% among non-college whites (since Obama declined among whites rather than improving, and those are both better than 2008, it's probably understating Romney): http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/WWC-Report-For-Web-Final.pdf

Do those articles make distinctions between white high school graduates who have never attended college  and those with some college or an Associate's degree?  Also, do "whites with college degrees" include those with graduate degrees?  That'll skew it more Democratic if so.

No; it doesn't make such distinctions. However, "no college" and "some college" (all races) were almost identical in the exit polls (51-48 Obama and 49-48 Obama, respectively), and the former contains a lot more minorities than the latter, so draw the proper assumptions. "No high school diploma" was only 3% of all voters, so we're not going to get statistically significant figures for whites, who are less than 50% of "no high school diploma" adults (and probably also of "no high school" voters).

On the other end, yes, post-grads are included in "college" whites. However, their inclusion would not be enough to make the difference. If we adjust the college whites to the overall population results and then separate out a 61% Obama group for post-grads (who are mostly white, so this is an okay way to measure it but will result in overestimating Romney to the extent there are non-white post-grads), you end up with college-no-grad-school whites being about Romney + 10, still significantly less than no-college-degree whites.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The Dems are a curious coalition of the dumbs and the smarts.  Pubs tend to be in-between.  Pubs tend to think as a crude generalization that they are the "normal" Americans. Pity for them that a majority of American voters are now "abnormal."  

The Pubs need a new business plan. They are heading towards politically insolvency in tandem with the nation's fiscal insolvency.

This is... simplistic. The Democratic coalition is not "dumbs" and "smarts". It's highly educated voters and voters with little education. Education and intelligence are not the same thing. Moreover, the odd multi-polar split where Democrats win low- and high-education voters while Republicans win those in the middle is entirely the result of race. Minorities have disproportionately less education and vote heavily Democratic. If you look only at white voters by education, the trend is clear: more education = more Democratic.

You just don't understand opebo-speak is all.  We speak a unique dialect of English on the Atlas forum. You will get used to it. Having said that, I would like to see the data that the most poorly educated whites are more Pub than those who have some college or a college degree. I challenge that. The Dem strength is concentrated at the high end among those with graduate degrees, including, inter alia, all those disgusting lawyers who feed off the frictions in our economy, often ones government generated.  So the Pub strength among whites should look more than a concave function generated curve I would think.

In 2008, Obama lost college-educated whites by 4 points and non-college whites by 19 points. I don't have the full-spectrum breakdown (for splitting post-grad v. college only and splitting no-high school v. high school only v. some college), but you can guess. The below article suggests that 2012 might have had an even bigger education gap (and the swings in Appalachia would also point that way), but a quick search does not give me an exit poll with the white vote by education (also, since the national exit polls this year only included 31 states, it's not directly comparable).

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/103969/obama%E2%80%99s-problem-white-non-college-educated-voters-getting-worse#

"In 2008, Obama lost white college graduates by four points and whites without a college degree by 19 points." (It's buried in the middle of the article.)


This... rather comprehensive breakdown of college v. non-college whites (which they call "working class") from September also has Romney leading by 2% among college whites but by 13% among non-college whites (since Obama declined among whites rather than improving, and those are both better than 2008, it's probably understating Romney): http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/WWC-Report-For-Web-Final.pdf

Do those articles make distinctions between white high school graduates who have never attended college  and those with some college or an Associate's degree?  Also, do "whites with college degrees" include those with graduate degrees?  That'll skew it more Democratic if so.

No; it doesn't make such distinctions. However, "no college" and "some college" (all races) were almost identical in the exit polls (51-48 Obama and 49-48 Obama, respectively), and the former contains a lot more minorities than the latter, so draw the proper assumptions. "No high school diploma" was only 3% of all voters, so we're not going to get statistically significant figures for whites, who are less than 50% of "no high school diploma" adults (and probably also of "no high school" voters).

On the other end, yes, post-grads are included in "college" whites. However, their inclusion would not be enough to make the difference. If we adjust the college whites to the overall population results and then separate out a 61% Obama group for post-grads (who are mostly white, so this is an okay way to measure it but will result in overestimating Romney to the extent there are non-white post-grads), you end up with college-no-grad-school whites being about Romney + 10, still significantly less than no-college-degree whites.

OK, so what's your point in all this? White college graduates have trended Republican since 2008 (2010 midterms and 2012 election). Obama won post-grads of all races by 18 points in 2008, compared to 13 points in 2012 (according to exit polls, may not be the exact numbers but the trend should be correct).

I think people are extrapolating too much based on a couple of elections. The McCain/Palin ticket was unusually ill-suited to the college-educated for a Republican ticket. Yet this year, many affluent white suburban counties that voted for Obama in 2008 swung hard against him. I think this is just the process of regression to the mean.

[Badger]

Since most of us have talked to extended family members during the turkey day celebrations, did anyone encounter any relatives who were previously disinterested in politics or current events, but suddenly became very interested in voting for Obama? 

I spoke with my cousin, and she was upset that I didn't vote for Obama so I asked her why didn't she want to vote for Romney, and she just replied "I just didn't like him (Romney)," without offering any specifics about why Romney was "bad" and Obama was "good for the country."  Now this girl has no interest in current events or politics and is in her late 20's.  I've tried to talk to her about current events or politics in the past, and she has no knowledge or interest in reading a daily newspaper.  She's a graduate art student, so that is her sphere of knowledge.

Obama won because he succeeded in "Turning out uneducated first-time voters who were young and/or minorities."  His campaign staff, made it important to "vote" even if that voter had a very limited education of political policies or issues.  While I support every American's right to vote, I would rather Americans have an educated voter turnout. 

I feel that Obama's reliance on "First time voters" does a disservice to the election process if those "first time voters" are uneducated about political issues, but are voting specifically for Obama based on "pop-media societal peer pressure for a cult of personality."  They vote for Obama because he is "handsome and has a warm personality for cultural acceptance."

I don't think any other Politician now or in the future can inspire such political participation from the uneducated masses.  Obama is a "massive media celebrity" that likely will never be duplicated.  No other politicians in the past: Reagan, Carter, Clinton, or Dubya have ever inspired "first time voters" to "go out and vote." 

Has anyone else encountered Ditzy Uneducated Obama or Romney voters that vote based on personality or superficial reasons?

Oh give me a break.  Do you know how many people didn't vote for Obama simply because he is black?

They never say that of course, but there are apparently many euphemisms for black.

I was watching a Romney rally in Ohio and someone when asked why he won't vote for Obama he said:  I see a lot of socialism.  I bet if they asked him what socialism he would have no clue.
Another woman said he's an atheist, muslim who used to go to Rev. Wright's church.  When the reporter asked her which one of the 3 is he, she said "All 3!"

And lets not even go into Bill O'Reilly's traditional values.  So I'm sorry but ignorance is a bad thing but if anything Obama didn't benefit from it, he suffered from it.

There are far more non-whites and young people that voted for Obama specifically because he was "Black" or "Biracial" and represented "a multi-cultural american hero" than those who voted against him specifically because he was "black"

If a white Democrat like John Kerry had the same platform and said the same things as Obama, he would lose. 

So you're really convinced that there is is this unending line of voters who supported Obama because his racial background made them feel all warm and fuzzy inside? You're wrong, but far be it from me to burst your bubble of denial.

Obama won because he got minority voters excited enough to turnout and win the election.  IF these minority voters never showed up, he would have lost to Romney.  He got 99% of Black voters to turn out for him.  He got far more Hispanic voters to turn out for him.  It wasn't just becuase of his "immigration policies," a lot of it had to do with his racial background and who he was as a person, versus the lilly-white Romney who didn't know any minorities. 

Yes, if Democratic voters didn't turn out, Democrats wouldn't have won.

If blacks voted for Obama at the same rate they voted for Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dukakis, etc. etc., Romney still loses. The problem is Romney did lousy among Latinos compared to W., and just cratered among Asians overall. Losing young white voters didn't help either.