Clinton Won Because College-Educated Voters Prefer Her To Sanders. Here’s Why.

While Republicans get headlines for being the party of internal chaos, Democrats are fighting an equally divisive power struggle. The influence of labor unions and civil libertarians continues to shrink under the growing demographic of a new, often overlooked, Democrat: highly-educated urbanized professionals (like Silicon Valley workers).

A series of recent polling from Pew finds that college education is a powerful predictor of inter-party divisions among liberals. Educated Democrats, especially those who hold a graduate degree, swing for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders roughly 2–1, and are closer to her on free trade, the environment, immigration and charter schools. It’s tempting to blame Bernie Sanders’ now-failed candidacy on Clinton’s “establishment” advantage, but that would ignore the history how the Clintons rose into the establishment in the first place by fundamentally changing America’s liberal party.

This post takes a deep dive into how Clinton supporters differ from Sanders supporters, both philosophically and psychologically and how they came to overtake the Democratic leadership.

Clinton Democrats tend to be business-friendly creative class workers who migrated slowly away from the Republican party over the 80s and 90s, a critical two decade time period when the share of professionals jumped 20 percentage points in favor of Democrats, according to the American National Election Survey. Riding this wave, Mrs. Clinton’s husband, Bill, led a successful coup against the labor-union wing of the party in the early 90s, after the college educated finally became a majority of liberal voters, and branded his movement, literally, the “New Democrats”.

Though one of the most powerful caucuses in Congress still bear the New Democrat moniker, the label never permeated the national dialog and Democrats have been stereotyped as a monolithic big-government, anti-business ideology.

Yet, self-identified New Democrats are conspicuously distinct: they tend to focus on policies that prepares America for the modern economy and run government programs with efficiency of modern business. From supporting unlimited high-skilled immigration or funding union-less, experimental public charter schools, New Democrats mission is to accelerate innovation.

“The replacement of working-class whites with upscale professionals has turned the Democratic coalition into an alliance with a built-in class division,” wrote Columbia Journalism Professor and NYT Columnist, Thomas B. Edsall. “While constituting a minority, the relatively upscale wing clearly dominates party policy and provides the majority of the activists who run campaigns, serve as delegates to the convention and have become the core of the party’s donor base.”

Indeed, pundits have claimed that Sanders influenced the Democratic party’s presidential platform, such as her proposal for free college education. However, there is little new that wasn’t already apart of the New Democrats promise for decades.

For instance, Clinton gave Sanders’ proposal for free college education an distinctly New Democrat makeover by requiring students to get a job in exchange for aid, force colleges to experiment with online learning, and created a loan forgiveness program through national service.

Let’s take dive into the minds of Clinton Democrats by starting with why college education or being a tech workers are distinct from the blue collar liberals.

The facts on educated and creative class Democrats

On most major policy divisions within the Democratic party, college education is often the most predictive characteristic of whether a voter leans further further from labor unions and redistributive policies, and more towards investment and economic growth-oriented policies.

To better understand the Pew polling on educated voters, I conducted an addition national poll of 557 respondents through SuveyMonkey, asking their opinion on a range of philosophical, psychological, and policy preferences.

College educated Democrats are more supportive of free trade agreements (54% to 48%), are more opposed to restrictions on high-skilled immigrant visas (46% to 32%) and say that they prefer to run government projects more like competitive businesses, such as charter schools with performance-based pay for teachers (41% vs. 33%).

All of these these policies contrasts with labor unions, which support favoritism for American workers during the hiring process, protectionist trade policies and 100%-salary-based pay for teachers.

This all begs the question: why? What makes college education such an important variable in predicting political beliefs?

Since we cannot experimentally determine this distinction between Democrats (because it’d be pretty unethical to randomly deny college to high schoolers), researchers attempted to tease apart the differences through surveys.

There’s two leading theories that I find most compelling: 1). education leads voters closer to the views of experts and 2). those who go to college are more risk-seeking and psychologically more comfortable with the unpredictable nature of capitalism.

Education and experts

One possible explanation for the divergence in belief between college and non-college voters posits that highly educated voters tend to side with the opinion of professional economists, 85% of whom say that trade deals have improved social welfare (including the liberal stalwart, Paul Krugman).

“There is a segment of the population that finds the economic way of thinking relatively congenial.”, wrote Bryan Caplan in The Journal of Law and Economics, which looked at a few key traits that predict convergence between expert consensus and public opinion. “It is not the wealthy, however, nor is it conservative ideologues. Rather, the empirical core of this paper shows that people tend to agree with economists if (1) they are well educated.”

For instance, support for free trade agreements, like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) championed by the Clintons in the 90s, gets progressively stronger with higher levels of education, topping off at 63% for those holding a postgraduate degree (a much stronger predictor than income, even for those making above $100,000 a year).

My own poll corroborates this finding: the anti-trade trend was consistent with both less-educated voters and those who wanted Sanders to win in the Primary. As one of my respondents, who was ‘feeling the Bern’, wrote about free trade, “I think American workers have gotten the short end of the deal in Trade agreements”.

To be sure, this isn’t to say that people who oppose trade deals are objectively wrong — just that this belief conflicts with the overwhelming consensus of economic experts. It’s possible that educated voters tend to side with economists because they’ve had more exposure to their teachings in college.

Whatever the underlying reason for convergence, college education is an undeniable factor separating Democrats.

But, it’s possible that education also might be a misleading variable. Perhaps running off to college disguises deeper differences in the kinds of people that pursue a degree and an entrepreneurial lifestyle in the first place.

The Psychology and Philosophy of Pessimism

Democrats with a college education have a fundamentally different outlook on life than Bernie Sanders’ core crowd. Psychologically, college educated Democrats are far more optimistic about the nature of change, capitalism, and globalization.

One of the most informative psychology questions I asked in my poll is about so-called “openness to experience” — whether individuals seek out new experiences, like preferring to try out a new restaurant over sticking with an old favorite.

In political psychology, the “openness to experience” personality trait has been a tried and true indicator of the stereotypical afraid-of-change, traditional-values Republican. Researchers consistently find that Conservatives tend to be averse to new experiences and, as result, are more likely to have a knee-jerk opposition to changing social norms, like gay marriage.

But, more recent research finds that liberals also have a status quo bias, which manifests itself for support of economic regulation, such as labor unions and protectionist trade policies.

That is, while fear of change leads conservatives to fret of the breakdown of traditional values, the same fear leads liberals to distrust competition and the unpredictable nature of economic growth.

“Needs for security and certainty generally yield culturally conservative but economically left-wing preferences,”concluded a 2014 study in the Journal of Personal Political Psychology.

Indeed, this mirrored respondents in my own poll. Sanders supporters are more likely to say that they prefer familiar experiences to trying new things (52% to 40%), compared to Clinton supporters (46% to 50%)

The same was true of Sanders’ supporters in policy preferences, just as the research predicts. Sanders supporters were 19% less likely to believe Trade was good for the country and 12% less likely to believe that America should attract talented immigrants that could compete with American workers.

Delving even deeper into the psychology of individual respondents uncovered some underlying beliefs.

“I am all for protecting American workers, first and foremost”, wrote a Sanders supporter who disagreed with the policy that America should seek to attract high skilled immigrants.

This particular American-first respondent was also relatively pessimistic about the nature of change, believing that “change often makes things worse and more change won’t make it better”. This contrasts with Clinton supporters who are more likely to say that, over the long run, change inherently makes most things better (52% vs 47% of Sanders supporters).

The importance in being optimistic in change was best described to me by the ever optimistic CEO of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman (a Clinton supporter):

“I tend to believe that most Silicon Valley people are very much long-term optimists….Could we have a bad 20 years? Absolutely. But, If you’re working towards progress, your future will be better than your present”.

Ultimately, economic pessimists see the role of government differently. If new innovations, immigrants and unexpected markets don’t bring broadly shared wealth, it’s up to the government to steady the uncertain course of capitalism.

Clinton Democrats see the world from a more optimistic perspective and, as a result, perfer to government policies that accelerate economic growth.

How the New Democrats Took Over

The Clinton’s are arguably one of the savviest political dynasties in American history, but strategy only shuffles the existing population so much; it wasn’t just good campaigning, but demographic changes that vaulted the New Democrats to power.

During the 70s and 80s, Republicans had won one presidential election after another.

“In a sense, politics is arithmetic,” says Al From, a long time Clinton advisor and the godfather of the New Democratic movement. “With 88–90 percent white voters and virtually no Hispanic voters, there was no Obama coalition. What Reagan and Bush did was win a big chunk of the core of the old New Deal coalition, working and middle class whites. In a two party race, Democrats had to win at least 43–45 percent of white voters to win.”

Indeed, in 1984, the Democrat’s champion, Walter Mondale, suffered a crushing defeat, winning just his home state of Minnesota and less than 40% college or white voters.

Starting in the 80s, educated professionals slowly abandoned Reagan’s Republican Party. When Nixon reigned supreme, professionals constituted a little more than 30% of voting Democrats; but, when Clinton came into the spotlight, they had reached a majority.

Another way of looking at the same data: by the time Clinton and the New Democrats were ready for their coup, college-educated voters had nearly eclipsed blue-collar America as the dominant majority of the party.

A congressional staffer at the time, Al From saw changing demographics as a golden ticket to both reclaim the White House and a way to exploit embarrassing defeats to transform the party’s message to be more appealing to professionals.

“The party’s first imperative was to revive the American dream of expanding opportunity by fostering broad-based economic growth led by a robust private sector generating high-skill, high-wage jobs,” From writes in his biography, The New Democrats and the Return to Power.

Beginning in 1985, From created the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC), a motley crew of technocratic, business-friendly upstart Democrats, who would eventually become household names, including Al Gore and former party leader Dick Gephardt.

Democrats were still largely the representatives of labor unions, which were just starting their precipitous decline. Despite a growing fan base, the DLC’s controversial policies, including free trade and work requirements for welfare (what would eventually become “welfare reform”), didn’t gain much traction.

It wasn’t until they recruited a charming young governor from Arkansas with presidential potential did the DLC’s platform have much influence. Clinton’s meteoric rise in 1991, along with massive demographic shifts to high tech cities that supported economic-growth minded policies, and propelled the New Democrats to the most powerful institution in the country.

Visualizing this change on a map (below), the Clinton’s power grab looks like Moses parting the political seas: Congressional leadership abandoned labor-unionized middle America for both high-tech coasts (think Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco and Clinton in New York). Today, high tech coastal cities determine much of the party’s policies.

While the Clinton’s are deftly opportunistic, the power grab was still one consistent with the principles of democracy. The party’s constituency had transformed and so too had their representatives.

The New Democrat, Clinton Dynasty

When President Obama entered office in 2009, he literally claimed “I am a New Democrat”. And, for eight years, the party continued a moderate favoritism for growth-minded policies, on the occasion when they conflicted with labor unions, from free trade to fights with teacher unions over charter schools.

Clinton’s policies and her administration signal a continuation of this trend. Tim Kaine, her Vice-Presidential pick, is conspicuously technocratic, with a record that is almost entirely focused on improving high-skill vocation training for citizens and modernizing social welfare services.

But, because we tend to oversimplify Democrat and Republicans as ‘big vs. small’ government, it obscures the nuanced way in which New Democrats see the state as an investor in citizens, rather than as a regulator of capitalism.

As a result, too many writers have given Sanders credit for influencing the 2016 party platform. For instance, when Clinton and the Democratic party announced a new way to get free college through national service, it was hailed as a victory for Sanders, who campaigned on a promise of free college.

But, the Clintons had proposed a similar college-for-service program in the 90s, and (the New Democrats in 80s prior to the presidency). The plan is extraordinarily similar to what Bill Clinton proposed in a radio address in 1993:

“Americans, without regard to age, will be able to earn credit against college costs before, during, or after college by working as tutors for children, volunteers at hospitals, as public safety officers, or in countless other grassroots community efforts that are working all across America today but need more help.” said then President Bill Clinton “College graduates can repay a portion of their loans by working as teachers or police officers in underserved areas.”

There’s very little in the 2016 Democratic platform that is a “concession” from what the Clinton’s would not have outright opposed all the way back in the 90 after their coup (perhaps with the exception of a minimum wage instead of a negative tax credit).

“Make no mistake about it,” From once wrote, “what we hope to accomplish with the DLC is a bloodless revolution in our party.”

Indeed, with the ascension of what is now the Clinton dynasty, college educated Democrats succeeded.

*The Ferenstein Wire is a syndicated news column. For more stories, sign up for the newsletter.