The poorest households in Tuesday’s electorate and the richest voted the same way. Families earning under $30,000 went Democratic by 59 to 39, and families earning over $300,000 went Democratic by 61 to 39. Between those two brackets lies everything politics is supposed to be about, and the poll found two points of daylight. It found 30 points between voters with a four-year degree and voters without one, 63 to 35 against 48 to 50, the widest gap of the last six midterm elections, in a year the Democrats won outright, House and Senate. The paycheck has stopped sorting American voters, and the diploma has taken over the job.
A number like that means nothing until it is set beside the ones before it, so set it there. The same two groups were about even in 2006 and 2010. They were 5 points apart in 2014, 20 apart in 2018, and 22 apart in 2022, and in 2024 the distance was 24 in the House vote and 27 for president. Pew’s measure of party identification tells the same story over a longer stretch: in 2004 the degree holders were the more Republican of the two groups by 5 points, and by 2023 they were the more Democratic, by 19. Income ran the other way. Households under $50,000 and over $100,000 were 14 points apart in 2022, 5 in 2024, and 4 on Tuesday. The degree gap has now been through four midterm elections, under a Democrat in 2014, a Republican in 2018, a Democrat in 2022, and a Republican again on Tuesday, and at every one of them it grew.
