Why can't Senator Clinton connect with educated voters?

I was at my son's high school and there was a don't dropout poster that listed the average salaries of people at various levels of education.

I make more that the average salary of a phd holder.

I'm not quite that :wink:

Money seems to be the qualifier in these kind of surveys. How weird is that?

Nods to George.

I do agree with george. I really agree with FreeDuck's first couple of posts here, too.

enginneer
"But in this election, there is a clear divide on how the population votes based on education level.
Those with high school or less favor Clinton, those with a college degree or more favor Obama. Rama, why do you think that is?
(I noticed you posted an on-topic posting on another thread, so I'm trying here. Please don't let me down by spouting nonsense. Please, please, please)

After Bush who wash the world with their pious sermans make no CHANGE.
Ihad opined that education i nothing to do with election.
Hiler's surge from Baverian beer bar to Berlin is an example.
I red a lot and my words are banal, critical, but not intellectual.
Sorry .
I learn and enrich my ignorance

I completely agree. And that's been making it all the more frustrating to me when I hear her using this "Oh, look, Obama talks down to the voters, he's elitist" line--she's the one who figures we're all too stupid to see through her constant lies and misrepresentations...It just galls me to hear her criticize someone else for acting like people are stupid, when it seems like that's practically a cornerstone of her campaign strategy..

No good deed goes unpunished.

As long as I remain foolish and ignorant
i can communicate with the intellectuals.

As long as people reach a hand out to you you will bite it.

Like a dog I will never bite the hand that feeds my loyalty.

OK, I havent read the discussion yet, these are just ramblings on the basis of the poll.

***

I voted, "They tend to vote non-economic issues rather than bread and butter".

Sure, Clinton's "bare knuckled politics" play a role in turning off voters who feel that she's just insulting their intelligence with her petty lies and transparent spin. That plays a role.

But I think that one of these two reasons is the more fundamental, underlying one, and the other is more symptomatic, something that reinforces pre-existing leanings and prejudices.

***

As for the other options:

- educated voters "tend to vote issues rather than feelings" (as opposed to non-educated ones I guess): I dont buy it. It's just they can express, rationalise and justify their choices more articulately. In the end I think they go on feelings, instincts and cultural affinities, as well as their own interest, as much or almost as much as non-educated voters.

- They are more liberal than the nation as a whole: Dont know, really. Depends on so many things, foremost on how you define "educated" and how you define "liberal". If you're only talking about postgrads, then yeah, that might be true. If you're talking about all college-educated voters, not so much. From the top of my head, my impression is that both with the very most and the least education skew to the left, while the groups in the (upper) middle skew to the right.

Moreover, liberal how? On cultural issues, I guess low-education voters are much more conservative than high-education ones. But on, say, income redistribution? Maybe not so much...

- They are in love with the Obama image

Feh. In that phrasing, I'd say nonsense.

I do think, however, that high-education voters would tend to be more open to the kind of optimism that's needed to believe in Obama's message of hope and change and empowerment. Unless you're tenacious enough, it's a lot easier to be an idealist if you look with optimism at your own future and that of your country, and believe in your own power to make a difference. I would guess that for someone who went on from high school to college, got his degree and then was able to get a white collar job, possibly an upwardly mobile one, it's a lot easier to say, "Yes we can!", than for someone who's got nothing but high school and works in a factory or service job, with little upward potential and the everpresent threat of losing your job.

It's also easier if you are in a kind of environment where the people around you (your friends, neighbours, colleagues) also largely lead lives with a fair bit of promise, and where the kind of dislocation and threat an inner city kid might face, for example, or the kind of numbing tedium you might experience in a warehouse job, is mostly out of sight, stuff you read about in the paper. Hilary's contrasting message of, I'll fight for you, I know how tough the world is, no illusions, and I'll get things done for you, would generally be a somewhat better fit. (Same with her parallel message of, no experiment, no adventure, you know me from before, you know we can get things done, Bill and I.)

***

All that said and done, though, in all the parsing we do on a day-to-day basis, of the polling numbers and the street interviews and the opinion of every niece, co-worker and barfly you might talk about it with, the temptation can be to OVERinterpret all these differences.

After all, sure - Clinton does somewhat better in one group, Obama more in the other; but among college educated voters, Clinton still habitually gets 30-50% of the vote. And Obama still gets 35-55% of the non-college vote. It's not like either candidate is poison to one of these categories; for every three college-educated Obama voters there's at least two Hillary ones. And even those who vote for one would still largely back the other against McCain.

Nimh
Am I wrong in thinking that you equate High school people as less intelligent than collage people. I didn't say anything about education. Also many of Obamas people are young and haven't lived long enough to have their shine rubbed of by the abrasives of life and a sandpaper government. Your a smart guy but i'm not sure that you realize how many lies "I" have heard from people who are going too "change" things in washington in the last 50 years. The word change not only makes me chringe but turns me off.

Yes, you are. I never made any such equation.

The exit polls in this (Democratic) primary show a huge difference in the voting patterns of those who graduated from college and those who didnt. It's one of the three decisive criteria that have determined the election outcome, along with gender and rice. So if you analyse the election outcomes, there's no way around observing and analysing that.

This, however, in no way implies a value judgement. Definitely not in my eyes. There's plenty of asses with a degree, and plenty of people who've got their heads stuck up so far up theirs that they wouldnt be able to rightly judge a situation if it hit them on the head. Plus, as those with a college degree (very) roughly tend to correlate with those with higher incomes, you really wouldnt want to leave the choice up to them, cause then you wouldnt need to expect much good flowing from that for poorer people. On the other hand, plenty of people without a degree who well know what's good for them, and who can tell a bullshitter like the best of 'em.

So no, no value judgements implied - in fact, I dont really see where you got that from, I dont think I said any such thing.

Nimh rarely misspells or typos, so I'll try to enshrine it by posting.

Rice, you know there are getting to be shortages...

Brown rice tends to Obama, white rice for Clinton? Mexican rice is up for grabs? Seems to work pretty well.

Your analysis matched up with my choices for the poll pretty well. Of course I tried to capture all the banter from the various threads as well.

Most of the educated intellectuals are not subscribing the presentday politics.
Some of the future intellectuals want to wipe out the bad history that USA respresent.
Conflict between two intellectual generations.
Commerce consume the blood of consumers.

Could you mention some examples of the new intellectuals? Like, if there's two generations with different profiles in conflict, who would you place in the new generation, and who in the old generation?

Some names of persons who you think are good examples of those "future intellectuals" would be great, could be interesting. I'd look 'em up if you'd mention who you mean.

(naw, that was funny.. :wink: )