{"id":39148,"date":"2025-04-18T14:40:51","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T14:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/18\/pundits-see-a-diploma-divide-in-politics-theyre-focused-on-the-wrong-thing-dustin-guastella\/"},"modified":"2025-04-18T14:40:51","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T14:40:51","slug":"pundits-see-a-diploma-divide-in-politics-theyre-focused-on-the-wrong-thing-dustin-guastella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/18\/pundits-see-a-diploma-divide-in-politics-theyre-focused-on-the-wrong-thing-dustin-guastella\/","title":{"rendered":"Pundits see a \u2018diploma divide\u2019 in politics. They\u2019re focused on the wrong thing | Dustin Guastella"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Education level is viewed as a key factor in how people vote. But it\u2019s dangerous to overlook the question of class<\/p>\n<p>Since about 2020, a number of researchers have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/09\/08\/us\/politics\/how-college-graduates-vote.html\">determined<\/a> that the most salient divide in politics today is the diploma divide \u2013 that is, the division between those who have a four-year college degree and those who do not. Those who have a degree are more liberal, those who don\u2019t are less. The former tend to vote for Democrats, the latter for Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>There is a certain elegance to how simple and clean the picture is. And, by virtue of this tidiness, some insist that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.slowboring.com\/p\/education-polarization\">educational polarization<\/a>\u201d is a better way to understand political shifts today than reliance on older, softer, messier ideas like <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/02\/us-voting-patterns-shifting-class-dealignment-education-income\">social class<\/a>. Conceptual cleanliness is certainly attractive. It\u2019s far easier to determine who is \u201ccollege educated\u201d and who is not than it is to establish similarly defined boundaries between the working and middle classes. Yet whether we understand shifting political alignments as a function of class, as a broad social and relational concept, or education, a narrow credential category, implies a great deal about political strategy.<\/p>\n<p>Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/apr\/18\/diploma-divide-politics\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Education level is viewed as a key factor in how people vote. But it\u2019s dangerous to overlook the question of class Since about 2020, a number of researchers have determined that the most salient divide in politics today is the diploma divide \u2013 that is, the division between those who have a four-year college degree &#8230; <a title=\"Pundits see a \u2018diploma divide\u2019 in politics. They\u2019re focused on the wrong thing | Dustin Guastella\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/18\/pundits-see-a-diploma-divide-in-politics-theyre-focused-on-the-wrong-thing-dustin-guastella\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Pundits see a \u2018diploma divide\u2019 in politics. They\u2019re focused on the wrong thing | Dustin Guastella\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}