Women and College Graduates Flock to the Democratic Party, Study Finds

Want to witness the tectonic shifts underway in American politics? Consider women and college graduates, who have flocked to the Democratic Party in recent years.

A larger share of college graduates identify as or lean Democratic than at any point in the past quarter-century, according to a new Pew Research Center report based on more than 10,000 interviews with registered voters last year. The data tell a similar story for women, too.

Republicans have gained some ground, too, among older registered voters and those with a high school education or less.

Here’s a brief look at the findings of the Pew analysis, which was released this week.

Americans are more divided along educational lines than at any point in about a quarter-century, according to Pew.

That’s thanks largely to a realignment among two groups: those with only a high school diploma and those who have completed college.

In 1992, 55 percent of registered voters with no more than a high school education identified or leaned toward the Democratic Party, while only 37 percent sided with Republicans. Today, the group shows a slight preference for the Republican Party.

The exact opposite is true for Americans with at least a college degree, whose slight preference for Republicans in 1992 has since flipped. Today, about 58 percent side with Democrats, and only 36 percent affiliate with the Republican Party.

That divergence was most pronounced among registered voters who had pursued a postgraduate education: Once split in their political preferences, they are now twice as likely to align with Democrats as with Republicans.

Women have long been more likely to side with the Democratic Party than with Republicans, but the gap in preference expanded in recent years, to 19 percentage points in 2017 from 12 points in 2015.

Most of that growth, however, comes not from women who now identify as Democrats, but those who find themselves leaning toward the party, according to Pew.

And the gap is widest among millennial women, who are three times as likely to identify or lean Democratic as Republican: In 2017, 70 percent of millennial women sided with Democrats, while just 23 percent preferred Republicans.

That gap is more than two times as large as it was in 2014.

But not all women have moved toward the Democrats. Support for Republicans has steadily risen among women in the Silent Generation, defined by Pew as those born from 1928 to 1945. Today, 48 percent of those women side with Republicans, while 46 percent align with Democrats.