A New York Times columnist recently told a crowd at Dartmouth College that people with college degrees vote less independently.
David Brooks, aforementioned columnist, said rising education levels have helped shape modern politics and voting in the United States.
“The effect of this increasing education level for voters should be to make voters independent minded, open to argument, rational and sophisticated,” Brooks said. ” It’s just the opposite.”
He said the number of people voting independently decreases as the voting population becomes more educated.
Robert Hogan, a political science assistant professor, said Brooks’ argument makes sense to him, because college-educated people tend to vote along party lines.
People with college degrees know more about politics, Hogan said.
He said strong Democrats and Republicans happen to be well-educated people who understand more about what they believe and what each political party represents.
Hogan said people who identify themselves as independent do not hold the staunch political positions of Democrats and Republicans.
There is a lot of evidence that shows people who identify themselves as independent voters are more persuaded by political ads, Hogan said. It is hard to determine whether they are less educated than partisan voters.
In a Jan. 14 article in The Dartmouth, Dartmouth College’s campus newspaper, Brooks said education leads away from independent thinking.
“The more educated you are, the more partisan you are, the less independently you think,” Brooks said to the Dartmouth.
Hogan said he thinks Brooks is not implying that staunch party supporters are closed-minded or that independent voters are more open-minded.
He said partisan voters just have decided what they believe politically.
Krystal Williams, political science senior, is one of the many students who identifies her beliefs with a certain political party.
Williams is president of College Democrats at LSU.
She said she believes the political ideas people have are set in them.
Williams said her Democratic ideas were always a part of her because she came from a Democratic family.
But Williams said she did not realize she wanted to work in Democratic politics until she came to the University. The political beliefs of her family were re-enforced when she began to do in-depth reading about political issues, ask questions and talk to professors.
She said different campus organizations do have the power to shape the way people think, and she has talked to many students about their political beliefs when she is actively recruiting for the College Democrats at LSU.
Williams said she believes college students identify themselves as either Democratic or Republican because universities have a concentrated environment that forces people to choose which political ideology is closest to their ideology.
According to an October 2003 poll conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics, 39 percent of undergraduate students said they would vote for President George W. Bush in the 2004 election.
Only 34 percent would vote for a Democratic candidate, while 27 percent said they were independent voters or they do not know who or which way they will vote.
Williams said even people who register as independent tend to be more liberal or conservative.
She said a lot of people saying they are independent do so because they do not know which group they fit into.
Shawanesh Scott, College Republican Alliance president and economics senior, said attending a university can influence student voting.
“College is a maturing stage of a young person’s life in which he or she starts looking toward the future and making voting decisions,” she said. “Therefore, we will take into consideration topics such as income, job creation and taxes to affect our decisions.”