The great grad-non grad voting divide in both the US and UK
How US Republican voters who didn't go to college are driving the Trump surge. Table via @montie pic.twitter.com/E3gxnYaP4a
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) October 25, 2015
The above table highlights a big trend in the Republican primaries which has strong echoes in the UK. The quite different voting patterns of those who went to university and those who didn’t.
In the US at the moment this is highlighted by the make up of those supporting Donald Trump for the GOP nomination. In the UK it is seen in the way that graduates are much more likely to want to remain in the EU than non-graduates.
This was also a big feature at the general election in the distribution of the UKIP vote. The best indicator of whether a particular seat would have a large UKIP vote was if a higher than average proportion of people in the constituency were non-graduates.
Trump and Farage’s party UKIP both in their own ways appeal to very similar groups of voters. There’s a heavy opposition to political correctness in their rhetoric and, of course, there’s a similar focus on immigration.