2026-10-25T10:00:16.055Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
共和党在无大学学位选民中的支持度往往优于有大学学位选民，这一情况曾让民主党在近年总统选举中屡屡受挫。但同样的格局可能给民主党带来决定性的助力，助力其在下个月举行的中期选举中获胜。
尽管唐纳德·特朗普总统的支持率在有大学学位的美国民众中急剧下滑，但历史数据表明，今年这些高学历选民在选举人总数中所占的比例，几乎肯定会略高于2024年。这在政治上相当于经济学家所说的工资“大学溢价”现象。
就其本身而言，中期选举中选民向高学历群体倾斜的幅度通常不足以改变众多竞争激烈的选举结果。但这一变化可能成为民主党获胜的关键砝码，尤其是在共和党占据优势的参议院席位和众议院选区，民主党有望突破多年来的挫败局面。
长期以来，在中期选举中，大学毕业生在选民中所占的比例一直高于总统选举。但今年的差距可能会比往年更大，因为有证据表明，对特朗普第二任期表现的不满情绪已蔓延至他的一些核心支持者群体，包括农村地区和持有大学学位的白人工人阶级选民。
特朗普目前正竭尽全力动员这些选民。如果他能成功动员足够多的选民，将帮助共和党抵御日益高涨的不满情绪，尤其是在密歇根州、俄亥俄州、爱荷华州、堪萨斯州和内布拉斯加州等美国腹地州，无大学学位的白人选民在这些州的投票人群中占比过高。但如果这类选民的投票率低于往年，选举人将进一步向高学历群体倾斜——而考虑到高学历选民对特朗普的疏离感，这可能为民主党实现重大成果创造条件。
“从现在到选举日，最令人揪心的问题是，没有大学学位的共和党选民，尤其是白人无大学学位选民，是否会放下顾虑，以保持共和党维持‘蓝潮’水平的投票率，还是会选择待在家里，这种差距将导致投票结果演变为‘蓝海啸’。”民主党民调专家兼数据分析师布莱恩·贝内特表示。
由于两党在教育背景上的政治极化格局已基本定型，即使大学选民与非大学选民的结构比例出现微小差异，也会影响2026年的选举结果。
20世纪大部分时间里，从富兰克林·罗斯福1930年代的新政到林登·约翰逊1960年代的伟大社会计划，民主党在无大学学位选民中的支持度始终高于高学历选民。在那些年里，民主党有时被描述为“下班后需要洗澡的人的政党”，而共和党则是“上班前会洗澡的人的政党”。
这种格局在1960年代被打破，当时民主党推动少数族裔民权的努力，使其失去了对北部和南部白人工人阶级选民的掌控。在随后的几十年里，共和党围绕犯罪、枪支管控、堕胎、移民以及后来的性少数权利等文化极化议题，扩大了蓝领选民的支持基础。根据政治学家艾伦·阿布拉莫维茨对美国全国选举研究数据的计算，自1964年约翰逊以压倒性优势胜选以来，没有任何一位民主党总统候选人能在无大学学位的白人选民中获得多数支持。
1990年代比尔·克林顿总统任职期间，民主党转而开始提升在高学历选民中的支持度，这些选民往往在社会议题上持自由主义立场，而这些议题正是吸引无大学学位选民加入共和党的原因。
这种长期形成的格局重组——我称之为“阶级倒置”——在特朗普极具极化效应的总统任期内达到了顶峰。出口民调显示，他在三次总统选举中赢得了约三分之二无大学学位白人选民的支持，这是1984年罗纳德·里根以来任何政党候选人获得的最高比例。据出口民调和皮尤验证选民研究，2024年，特朗普在无大学学位的非裔、拉丁裔和亚裔选民中也获得了显著增长，赢得了他们中三分之一至五分之二的支持。
与此同时，特朗普一直面临高学历选民更多的抵制。出口民调发现，2020年和2024年，约55%的大学学位选民投票反对他。2018年，在特朗普第一个任期中期选举中，共和党失去的众议院席位中，超过五分之四的选区，白人大毕业生选民在人口中的占比高于全国平均水平。2022年，郊区大学毕业生的支持帮助民主党缩小了中期选举的损失。
正如我之前所写，在特朗普第二任期，由于民众对通胀、关税和伊朗战争普遍不满，他在白人和非白种无大学学位选民中的支持率大幅下降。这种下滑是民主党得以将势力扩张到此前共和党占优、拥有大量白人工人阶级人口地区的核心因素，包括腹地的参议院选区以及宾夕法尼亚州、俄亥俄州、密歇根州、威斯康星州、爱荷华州等地的众议院选区。
不过，与无大学学位选民相比，高学历选民对特朗普的抵制仍然明显更大。上周发布的《纽约时报》/ Siena学院对可能选民的民调显示，特朗普在大学毕业生中的支持率净负近40个百分点（29%支持，68%反对），几乎是他在无大学学位选民中支持率赤字（42%支持，53%反对）的四倍。
对特朗普态度的分歧正在转化为中期选举偏好中明显的教育分化。《纽约时报》/ Siena学院的调查发现，支持民主党众议院候选人的大学毕业生比例为59%，比无大学学位选民的46%高出13个百分点。上周休斯顿大学对得克萨斯州参议院选区的民调显示，民主党候选人詹姆斯·塔拉迪科在有学位选民中的支持率为56%，比无学位选民的42%高出14个百分点，情况类似。最新的CNN民调显示，俄亥俄州民主党参议院候选人谢罗德·布朗在拥有大学及以上学历选民中的支持率比无学位选民高出15个百分点；爱荷华州的CNN民调显示，民主党参议院候选人乔什·图雷克的支持率优势为22个百分点。
并非所有今年全国和各州的民调都显示民主党支持率存在如此大的教育差异，但一些民调测量到的较大差异与近年其他选举的结果一致。出口民调发现，2022年和2018年中期选举中，民主党众议院候选人在所有种族的大学选民中获得的支持率，都比无大学学位选民高出14至15个百分点。
这种持续的差距表明，即使选举人结构中教育背景出现微小变化，也会对势均力敌的选举产生重大影响。
两党的战略家一致认为，目前无大学学位选民在投票人中所占比例越高，共和党就越受益，就像他们在总统选举中一贯的情况一样。
但总体而言，在公众关注度和投票率较低的选举中，大学学位选民的比例会上升。“在低投票率的选举中，教育差异会更加明显。”佛罗里达大学研究选举参与的政治学家迈克尔·麦克唐纳说。
正如麦克唐纳所指出的，这种格局在一定程度上解释了为什么在特朗普的两个任期内，民主党在相对低投票率的特别选举中始终表现出色。这也影响了中期选举的投票池构成。
总统选举和两年后的中期选举之间，所有群体的投票率都会下降，但受教育程度较低的选民的投票率下降幅度往往更大。“总统选举是件大事，到处的人都知道这一点。中期选举，可能就没那么重要了。”布鲁金斯都会中心智库的人口统计学家威廉·弗雷说。
弗雷为CNN开展的对人口普查数据的分析，量化了这种参与差距如何持续重塑总统选举与随后中期选举之间的投票池。
无论在总统选举还是中期选举中，无大学学位选民仍然占所有选票的多数。但根据弗雷的分析，2014年大选与2012年相比、2018年与2016年相比、2022年与2020年相比，至少拥有四年大学学位的选民在总选票中的比例分别高出约4至5个百分点。
中期选举中这种差异的另一个影响因素是，每个总统选举中大学选民所占比例都在稳步上升。人口普查数据显示，2024年大学选民占所有选票的45%，而2012年不到37%。这意味着每次中期选举中大学毕业生的比例增长都建立在更高的基础上（大学毕业生在选举中的增长，是因为他们在社会中的占比在增长：1992年至2024年，拥有四年大学学位的美国人比例几乎翻了一番，其中女性的增长远大于男性）。
其他主要的美国投票数据来源对选举中大学毕业生所占比例的绝对水平存在分歧。皮尤验证选民研究、民主党定向公司Catalist的预测以及大规模合作选举研究均发现，2024年大学毕业生占选票的40%至41%，略低于人口普查数据。
但关键的是，几乎无一例外，这些数据来源与人口普查数据的相对趋势一致：在每次总统选举中，大学选民的比例都在稳步上升，随后的中期选举中这一比例会再增加几个百分点。例如，与人口普查数据类似，Catalist发现，2012年至2024年，总统选举中大学毕业生所占比例上升了7个百分点。同样，它发现从2020年到随后的2022年中期选举，大学毕业生所占比例飙升了6个百分点。
民主党民调专家贝内特认为，今年的教育变化将再次十分明显。他说，在大多数民调中，“就像中期选举投票热情存在有利于民主党的两党差异一样，大学选民和非大学选民之间也存在（更大的）差异。”根据Catalist和皮尤的基线，贝内特预计下个月大学毕业生将占约45%的选票。以人口普查数据为基线，弗雷的估计更高，接近48%。
正如弗雷的数据（见表格）所示，所有这些变化都影响了今年每一个竞争激烈的参议院席位所在的州。即使在密歇根州、俄亥俄州和缅因州等无大学学位选民在整体投票池中占比过高的州，他们的比例也一直在下降，尤其是在中期选举中。弗雷估计，在这三个州，今年大学毕业生将占选票的45%，高于2014年中期选举时的35%多一点。
这些变化之所以重要，主要是因为尽管特朗普第二任期在无大学学位选民中的支持度下滑，但更多大学选民仍然不信任特朗普。但也有证据表明，即使对特朗普感到失望，无大学学位选民，尤其是白人无大学学位选民，仍然更不愿投票给民主党。
例如，在最新的《纽约时报》/ Siena学院民调中，84%反对特朗普表现的白人大毕业生表示打算投票给众议院民主党候选人；而根据民调人员提供的详细结果，反对特朗普表现的无学位白人中只有77%打算支持民主党。
同样，在最新的CNN民调中，对特朗普不满的白人大选民中，80%表示会支持俄亥俄州和爱荷华州的民主党参议院候选人。但在爱荷华州，只有62%反对特朗普的无学位白人支持图雷克，在俄亥俄州，只有72%支持布朗。皮尤研究中心提供的最新全国调查数据显示，反对特朗普的无学位少数族裔表示支持民主党的比例，也低于高学历少数族裔。
特朗普最后的竞选行程似乎旨在动员核心共和党选民，主要是无大学学位选民，强调他们与民主党之间存在分歧的文化和种族议题，即使他们对特朗普的经济政策感到不满。与贝内特一样，双方的许多战略家都认为，最后几周的关键变量是，那些处于压力下的蓝领共和党选民中有多少人会出来投票并坚守自己的政党，尤其是在决定参议院控制权的共和党占优势的州。
“民主党方面已经做好了充分准备。”德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的共和党民调专家兼政治学家达伦·肖说，“我认为所有的关注都在共和党这边。问题是共和党人会不会出来投票，而那些出来投票的人会不会真的变节？”
如果特朗普动员了足够多的蓝领共和党选民，将限制选民向高学历群体倾斜，可能会让共和党控制住损失。但如果太多这类工人阶级保守派待在家里，中期选举的“大学溢价”可能会让共和党为最终选举结果感到惋惜——即使是在那些多年来该党没有受到重大考验的州。
The educational divide could spell trouble for Republicans
2026-10-25T10:00:16.055Z / CNN
Republicans tend to run better among voters without a college degree than those with one, which has battered Democrats in recent presidential elections. But that same pattern could give Democrats a potentially decisive boost in next month’s midterms.
Even as President Donald Trump’s approval rating craters among Americans with a college degree, history suggests those well-educated voters are virtually certain to constitute a slightly larger share of the electorate this year than in 2024. It’s the political equivalent of what economists call the “college premium” in wages.
By itself, the typical midterm tilt toward a more educated electorate may not be large enough to swing many competitive races. But the change could provide a crucial thumb on the scale for Democrats, particularly in red-leaning Senate races and House districts where the party sees opportunities to overcome long years of futility.
College graduates have long made up a larger share of the vote in midterm than presidential elections. But the gap could be wider than usual this year, given the evidence that disapproval of Trump’s second-term performance has spread into some of his core groups — including rural and working-class White voters who lack a college degree.
Trump is now desperately trying to rally those voters. If he can mobilize enough of them, it will help Republicans survive the mounting tide of discontent — particularly in heartland states such as Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, where White people without a college degree represent a disproportionate share of the vote. But if fewer of those turn out than usual, the electorate will tilt even further toward the well-educated — and, given their alienation from Trump, that could create the conditions for big Democratic gains.
“The agonizing question from now until the election will be whether non-college-educated Republicans — particularly White non-college — hold their nose and turn out at rates for Republicans that keep the environment more at a ‘blue wave’ level, or whether they stay home and the differential causes a crossover into a ‘blue tsunami’ level,” says Bryan Bennett, a Democratic pollster and data analyst.
Even small differences in the breakdown between college and non-college voters will affect the 2026 outcome because of the now-consistent educational polarization in support for the parties.
Through the heart of the 20th century, from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s through Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s, Democrats consistently ran better among Americans without a four-year degree than those with advanced education. In those years, Democrats were sometimes described as the party of people who showered after work, and Republicans as the party of those who showered before.
That alignment cracked in the 1960s, as Democratic efforts to promote civil rights for racial minorities shattered their hold on White working-class voters in both the North and the South. Over the succeeding decades, Republicans expanded their blue-collar beachheads around culturally polarizing issues such as crime, gun control, abortion, immigration and later, LGBTQ rights. No Democratic presidential nominee has carried a majority of White voters without a four-year college degree since Johnson in his 1964 landslide, according to calculations from the American National Election Study by political scientist Alan Abramowitz.
Under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, Democrats, conversely, began improving their performance among college-educated voters, who often took liberal positions on the same social issues that drew non-college voters toward the GOP.
This long-developing reconfiguration — what I’ve called the class inversion — has reached a towering peak in Trump’s polarizing presidency. Exit polls found that he won about two-thirds of White voters without a college degree in all three of his presidential campaigns, the highest share for any candidate in either party since Ronald Reagan in 1984. In 2024, Trump also made significant gains among Black, Latino and Asian Americans without a four-year-degree, carrying between one-third and two-fifths of them, according to the exit polls and the Pew Validated Voters study.
Meanwhile, Trump has consistently faced more resistance from well-educated voters. About 55% of all those with college degrees voted against him in 2020 and 2024, exit polls have found. In 2018, White college graduates constituted more than their national share of the population in over four-fifths of the House seats Republicans lost during Trump’s first midterm election. Support from suburban college grads helped blunt the Democrats’ midterm losses in 2022.
In Trump’s second term, as I’ve written, his support among both White and nonwhite voters without a four-year degree has significantly eroded amid widespread discontent with inflation, his tariffs and the Iran war. That decline has been the central factor enabling Democrats to expand the map into previously Republican-leaning areas with large populations of working-class White people, including the heartland Senate races and House districts in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and elsewhere.
But resistance to Trump remains considerably greater among voters with a degree than those without one. In a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters released last week, Trump’s approval rating among college graduates was nearly 40 points net negative (29% positive to 68% negative). That was almost four times larger than his approval deficit among voters without a college degree (42% to 53%).
This divergence in attitudes toward Trump is translating into a stark educational split in preferences for the midterm elections. The NYT/Siena survey found that the share of college graduates backing Democrats for the House (59%) was 13 points higher than the share of those without degrees (46%). Last week’s University of Houston poll on the Texas Senate race found Democrat James Talarico likewise running 14 points better among voters with a degree (56%) than those without (42%). The latest CNN poll found Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown running 15 points better among college-plus voters than those without degrees; in Iowa, CNN found Democratic Senate candidate Josh Turek ran 22 points better.
Not all national and state surveys this year are finding such large educational disparities in Democratic support, but the bigger difference measured in some polls would be consistent with the results of other recent elections. Exit polls found that Democratic House candidates ran 14 to 15 points better among college than non-college voters of all races in both the 2022 and 2018 midterms.
This persistent gap suggests that even small shifts in the educational composition of the electorate can have big impacts in close races.
Strategists on both sides agree that Republicans now benefit when voters without a college degree make up a larger share of the vote, as they always do in presidential campaigns.
But generally, the college share of voters rises in elections that attract less attention and turnout from the public. “The educational differences are going to be even greater when you get into those low-turnout elections,” says Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who studies electoral participation.
As McDonald notes, that dynamic partly explains why Democrats have consistently performed so well in relatively lower-turnout special elections during both of Trump’s terms. It also shapes the composition of the voting pool during midterms.
Turnout for all groups falls between each presidential race and the midterm two years later. But it tends to fall even further for voters with less education than those with more. “The presidential election is a big deal; everybody knows that, everywhere,” says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Metro think tank. “The midterms, maybe not so much.”
An analysis of census data that Frey conducted for CNN quantifies how that engagement gap consistently reshapes the voting pool between presidential campaigns and the subsequent midterm.
Voters without a college degree still cast a majority of all ballots in presidential and midterm elections alike. But voters who held at least a four-year college degree represented about 4 to 5 percentage points more of the vote in 2014 than in 2012, 2018 than 2016 and 2022 than 2020, according to Frey’s analysis.
Compounding the effect of this midterm differential has been a steady increase in the share of college-educated voters in each presidential election. The census found that college-educated voters cast 45% of all votes in 2024, up from less than 37% in 2012. That means each midterm increase in college grads is occurring off a higher base. (College grads are growing in the electorate because they are growing in the society: The share of all Americans with a four-year degree nearly doubled between 1992 and 2024, with women making much larger gains than men.)
The other major sources of data on how Americans vote disagree on the absolute level of college graduates in the electorate. The Pew Validated Voters study, the projections by the Democratic targeting firm Catalist, and the massive Cooperative Election Study poll all found that college grads cast 40 to 41% of the 2024 vote, slightly less than the Census number.
But critically, almost without exception, those data sources agree on the same relative trajectory as the census: The share of college-educated voters is steadily rising across each presidential election, and the share bumps up a few points more in each subsequent midterm. Similar to the census, for instance, Catalist found that the share of the presidential vote cast by college graduates increased by 7 points from 2012 to 2024. Likewise, it found that the share of the vote cast by college graduates soared by 6 points from 2020 to the succeeding 2022 midterm.
Bennett, the Democratic pollster, believes the education shift again will be substantial this year. In most polls, he says, “just as there is a partisan differential in … enthusiasm about voting in the midterms favoring Democrats, there is also (an) elevated differential between college and non-college.” Using the baseline from Catalist and Pew, Bennett expects college graduates will cast about 45% of the vote next month. Using the census as his baseline, Frey puts his estimate even higher, at nearly 48%.
As Frey’s figures (see table) show, all these changes have been felt in virtually every state with a competitive Senate race this year. Even in states such as Michigan, Ohio and Maine, where voters without a degree constitute an outsize proportion of the overall electorate, their share has been declining, particularly in midterms. In all three of those states, Frey estimates that college graduates will cast as much as 45% of votes this year, up from the mid-30s in the 2014 midterms.
These changes matter largely because more college voters remain dubious of Trump than those without degrees — despite Trump’s second-term slippage among the latter. But there’s also evidence that voters without degrees — especially White non-college voters —remain more resistant to voting for Democrats, even when they are disappointed in Trump.
In the new NYT/Siena College poll, for instance, 84% of college-educated Whites who disapproved of Trump’s performance said they intend to vote Democratic for the House; only 77% of Whites without a degree who disapproved of Trump intended to back Democrats, according to detailed results provided by the pollster.
Likewise, in the most recent CNN polling, 80% of college-educated Whites down on Trump said they would support the Democratic Senate candidates in Ohio and Iowa. But Turek was attracting just 62% of non-college Whites who disapproved in Iowa, and Brown only 72% of them in Ohio. Data provided by the Pew Research Center from its latest national survey show that minorities without a degree who disapprove of Trump are also less likely to say they’re supporting Democrats than minorities with advanced education.
Trump’s final campaign swing seems designed to energize core Republican voters, primarily those without college degrees, by stressing the cultural and racial issues that divide them from Democrats, even if they are unhappy about his economic record. Like Bennett, many strategists on both sides agree the critical variable in these last weeks will be how many of those cross-pressured blue-collar Republicans turn out and stick with their party, especially in the red-leaning states that will decide Senate control.
“The Democratic side is locked and loaded,” says Daron Shaw, a Republican pollster and political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “I think all the action is on the Republican side. The question is: Are Republicans going to show, and are those who show actually going to defect?”
If Trump mobilizes enough blue-collar Republicans, that will limit the electorate’s tilt toward voters with degrees and likely allow Republicans to contain their losses. But if too many of those working-class conservatives stay home, the midterm college premium could leave Republicans lamenting their final grade — even in states where the party has not been seriously tested in years.
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