Educational Attainment and Party Realignment in Western Democracies

• In Event: Demographic Divides in the Electorate

Abstract

Much has been written about the rise of right-wing populism across Western democracies. In this paper, we argue that the emergence of right-wing populism has led to a party realignment along educational lines. Much has been made about the radical right’s appeal to the working classes, however, people with advanced educational degrees have mobilized against right-wing populist candidates and parties at unprecedented rates. Using individual (e.g,, ANES, BES, CES, etc.) and constituency-level census and election return data from the United States, UK, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany, we show that higher levels of education are associated with more liberal attitudes on cultural and social issues and that these issues have become more important in shaping party attachments and vote choice. Additionally, we also show education is an important predictor of political behavior beyond what differences in social and cultural attitudes can explain and that degree holding may be an emerging social identity across a wide variety of contexts. We find that the effect of educational attainment on vote choice is strongest among people who hold an advanced educational degree who live in highly educated areas. As a result, a “diploma divide” is now present cross-nationally and is growing in importance in multiple party systems. The cross-national emergence of the diploma divide has also increased geographic polarization along urban-rural lines, with highly educated urban metros voting against less educated rural areas. Overall, we show that educational attainment is emerging as one of the most politically important social cleavage in contemporary democratic politics.

Authors

• Joshua N. Zingher, Old Dominion University

• Benjamin Farrer, University of Nevada Las Vegas