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Office of Undergraduate Research Home » 2020 Undergraduate Research Symposium Schedules

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Oral Presentation 2

1:00 PM to 2:30 PM
How Does Obtaining a College Education Affect Political Voting Patterns?
Presenters
  • Joshua Matthew Chestnut, Recent Graduate, Economics
  • Hiro Fujiwara, Senior, Economics
Mentor
  • Alan Griffith, Economics
Session
    Session O-2C: Research in Political Science
  • 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM

  • Other students mentored by Alan Griffith (1)
How Does Obtaining a College Education Affect Political Voting Patterns?close

As the 2020 presidential election is fast approaching, per our democratic process, Americans will soon be held responsible to fulfill, arguably, their most important political right. Elections are thought of by many as both a mechanism of accountability and a measurement of performance. Although fair elections are a necessity to uphold democracy, it is essential to recognize that this belief is a misconception. The result of a political election is predominantly decided by the culmination of individual voters making decisions based upon their backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs. To examine this notion further, it is our goal to address the question: How does obtaining a college education affect political voting patterns? To accomplish this task, we have obtained data from the American National Election Survey (ANES). The data includes over 50,000 survey responses, ranging in years from 1948 to 2016, covering topics that include, but are not limited to, wealth, background, beliefs, ethnicity, age, gender, and socio-economic status. With this data, we have performed a regression analysis that is weighted and uses the Taylor Series adjustments to compute design-consistent standard errors. Through our research, it can be seen that the trends reveal a widening gap between educational attainment and party affiliation. Furthermore, those with higher education hold more leftward leaning beliefs, and in turn, are more likely vote Democrat when compared to those with less education. Lastly, the trends over-time reveal a dramatic shift; as, non-college-educated Americans used to primarily be Democrat, while college-educated Americans were mostly Republican. We feel that this no longer holds. This research has implications to demonstrate the importance, or lack of importance, of higher education in terms of the effect and influence it has on real life decisions, which in our case is voting patterns for presidential elections.


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