How increasing education polarization could help Democrats in the 2022 midterms

Republicans' rising reliance on low-propensity voters who don't have college degrees could hurt them in lower-turnout elections

Hey, did you hear? There was a special election for New Mexico’s First Congressional district three days ago. This post misses that news a bit, but offers one potential explanation for the Democratic candidate’s victory and prognosticates about what it could mean for 2022.

But first, a brief recap: The Democratic candidate Melanie Stansbury beat the Republican 60.3% to 35.7%, a margin of 24 points. That turns out to be an 8 percentage point swing on margin since the 2016 election,\ when then-Representative Deb Haaland beat the Republican candidate by 16 points and lagged Biden’s 23-point margin versus Trump in the district. (The seat was up for a special election in the first place because Haaland resigned from her post to be appointed Secretary of the Interior).

Forgive the numbers dump. The point is that Stansbury did anywhere from 1 to 8 percentage points better than we should have expected based on last year’s results, depending on whether you pick the previous House margin or Biden…