John Horvick: The Role of Education in Oregon's politics and culture
Check your education. It's shaping your politics, values, and community.
John Horvick is the Political Director at DHM Research.
Last month I shared some basic, and surprising, facts about age in Oregon. This month, I continue profiling Oregon’s population by focusing on education. Let’s look at how educational attainment is distributed across the state, the consequences it has for voting, and how it shapes experiences and opinions.
Are officials biased by their education? Yes, and we all are.
In my professional role as a pollster, I am often in conversation with elected officials, agency heads, and other leaders about their communities. Two things stick out to me about these conversations. One is how much these leaders differ from the people who they serve. And two, how often they minimize these differences. Education is a particularly stark example of this.
Nearly everyone who achieves professional leadership positions has at least a college degree and many have graduate and professional degrees. Their constituents rarely share those credentials—likely to the surprise of those leaders. There is a natural tendency to assume one’s personal circumstances and social circle are typical of the larger community.
This dangerous assumption it is not intentional. The fact of the matter is that it is just easy to ignore what and who we don’t encounter. So, when I present results of a poll that are broken down by education these leaders are frequently surprised by the profile of their communities and the differences in attitudes between those with more and less schooling.
There are nearly as many Oregonians of voting age who have not completed high school (or GED) as have a graduate degree. 9% of Oregonians ages 18+ do not have a high school degree compared to 12% who have earned a graduate degree. Now, many of these young adults are in the process of completing their education, but even among Oregonians ages 25+, 9% still have not completed high school versus 14% who have a graduate degree.
I can’t tell you how many surprised looks I’ve received from community leaders when they first encounter these numbers. The educational profile of the state just doesn’t match what they encounter in their daily lives.
A state divided by degrees
My sense is that people are better attuned to the fact that educational attainment varies across the state with college graduates concentrated in urban areas. Still, the differences are strikingly large.
Thirty five percent of Oregonians ages 25+ have a college degree. Or said the other way around, 65% of Oregonians do not have a college degree. By county, the lowest rate of college attainment is Morrow County at just 9%. Seventeen counties have college attainment rates at less than 20 percent. At 54%, Benton County leads the state with the highest percentage of college graduates. Two other counties (Multnomah and Washington) have rates above 40 percent.
Not only are some counties far ahead in the number of college graduates, but the differences among counties are also growing. From 2010 to 2019, the percentage of college graduates appears to have declined in six counties, led by Wheeler County which went from 18% to 15% over the decade. (I say “appear” because there is a fairly large margin of error in these numbers for counties with small populations.) In contrast, counties with already high percentages of college graduates picked up more over the same time period.
Since 2010, six counties increased their number of college graduates by at least six percentage points. The biggest increase was in Multnomah County, which went from 38% in 2010 to 46% now. Deschutes County has had the second largest increase going from 29% to 35%. Politically, this is a significant reason for the “blue-ing” of Central Oregon.
Education disparities breed political differences
Education is an increasingly strong predictor of voting behavior—especially among white voters. According to the 2020 exit polls, Biden won college educated voters by 7 points, while Trump won voters without a college degree by a similar 7 point margin. This divide wasn’t always the case. An analysis by Pew showed that from 1980 through 2000 college and non-college educated voters had similar presidential candidate preferences.
Then a split came. Among white voters, a gap emerged during George W. Bush’s election, grew through Obama’s term, and by 2016 there was a 35-point difference in support between white voters with a college degree (who voted for Trump by 4 points) and those without a college degree (who voted for Trump by 39 points).
Closer to home, we can see this same pattern in the Oregon legislature. The Oregon House of Representatives has 60 members. Democrats hold 25 of the 30 districts with the highest percentage of college graduates (including all of the top 23). While Republicans hold 18 of the 30 districts with the lowest percentage of college graduates.
As noted above, Deschutes County had a rapid increase in the number of college graduates in the last decade. The county has also seen a rapid rise in the number of registered Democratic voters and in 2020 it voted for the Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1992.
Education differences impact lived values
In addition to voting behavior, educational attainment shapes Oregonians’ experiences and attitudes.
These data are from recent DHM Research surveys of Oregonians. As they show, Oregonians with high school degrees are about twice as likely as college graduates to feel that they are no longer valued in America, report that crime is increasing in their communities, and be worried about their financial situations. Not surprisingly, then, Oregonians with high school degrees are much less likely to think that the state is headed in the right direction.
There are countless examples of these sorts of relationships, and these are just four to consider. Each, though, says something important about who we are as Oregonians and should challenge us to think deeply about the reasons for, and implications of, these outcomes. My hope is that having a better understanding of the educational profile of the state helps to spark that conversation.
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