Education Was A Really Important Dividing Line In 2016. Will It Be Again In 2020?

One of the big surprises of 2016 was just how important education turned out to be — in polls (which subsequently caused pollsters to change their weighting methodologies) and as a predictor of which party people backed. Trump outperformed Romney particularly strongly in counties with a low share of college-educated residents. In fact, in counties that were less than 20 percent college-educated, Trump’s margin was 14 points higher than Romney’s in 2012 — while in counties that were more than 40 percent college-educated, Trump’s margin was 6 percentage points lower than Romney’s.

But this year, there are some signs that Trump has actually lost his edge among white voters without a college degree, and gained among college-educated white voters, so it’s TBD if education will be the same dividing line as it was in 2016.