What education polarization and political arithmetic can tell us about 2022 — and the next decade
Class polarization is a long-term trend in US politics and abroad. It is rocking our electoral institutions
Happy Saturday, subscribers!
Ezra Klein has written a great column for the New York Times Opinion section this week on the ongoing debate among Democratic strategists (and on Twitter) over how they should build on their 2020 victories while reversing some of the longer-term trends in the electorate that are hurting the party’s prospects: namely, polarization in vote choice by educational attainment. Klein features work by David Shor, a celebrity Democratic data analyst and leader of the so-called “popularist” theory of targeted messaging and political campaigns.
We’ll talk more about popularism itself in tomorrow’s all-recipient email. For now, I want to send along a two-parter. First we’ll do some simple descriptive work and talk about the history of class polarization (as measured by proxy in educational attainment). Then, I’ll show you why much of the backlash to Shor’s modeling a longer-term forecasting is misguided — and largely missing the point of the exercise entirely.
