Something remarkable has happened in American politics.
The education divide has turned many of our old assumptions about Republicans and Democrats upside down. The Democratic Party, historically associated with blue-collar workers and organized labor, increasingly attracts highly educated voters, while Republicans have made major gains among Americans without college degrees.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently offered a provocative explanation for this transformation.
During a September 1, 2026 Fox Business interview with Larry Kudlow at the G20 summit in Asheville, North Carolina, the conversation turned to socialism and the apparent movement toward free-market policies in countries such as Argentina.
Bessent described American supporters of socialism as:
“over-educated and under-earning.”
He went further, calling them “underachievers” jealous of people who “work every day.”
Those are fighting words.
But beneath Bessent’s deliberately provocative language lies a fascinating political reality.
America is experiencing one of the largest political realignments of our lifetime.
The question is: Why?
The Education Divide Is Real
We don’t have to speculate about whether the education divide exists.
The numbers are striking.
According to Pew Research Center’s analysis of the 2024 presidential election, voters with postgraduate degrees supported Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by approximately 65% to 33%.
Meanwhile, voters without four-year college degrees went in the opposite direction. Trump won them 56% to 42%.
In other words:
- Postgraduate degree: Harris 65% — Trump 33%
- College degree overall: Harris 57% — Trump 41%
- No college degree: Trump 56% — Harris 42%
And the divide remains visible beyond a single election.
Pew’s 2026 data show that 61% of Americans with postgraduate degrees identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with only 34% who identify with or lean Republican.
The more interesting story, however, isn’t where Americans are today.
It is where they came from.
The Great Political Reversal
Go back several decades and the political stereotypes looked very different.
Republicans were commonly associated with business executives, affluent suburbs and highly educated professionals.
Democrats were the party of factory workers, union households and blue-collar America.
That coalition helped Franklin Roosevelt build the New Deal Democratic majority during the Great Depression.
For decades afterward, organized labor remained one of the pillars of the Democratic Party.
But gradually, something changed.
Pew Research Center found that as recently as 2007, voters without college degrees favored Democrats over Republicans by 56% to 42%.
Today, the Republican Party has the advantage among voters without bachelor’s degrees.
College graduates moved in the opposite direction.
The Democratic coalition itself has changed dramatically. In 1996, only 22% of Democratic voters had college degrees. Today, approximately 45% do.
America hasn’t merely developed an education divide.
The political relationship between education and party affiliation has partially reversed.
From Factory Floor to Faculty Lounge
Imagine two Americans.
One has a master’s degree in sociology.
The other is an electrician, plumber, mechanic or construction worker who never completed university.
The person with the master’s degree has spent perhaps six years inside universities. His professors, classmates and professional network are likely to include people who discuss public policy, inequality, discrimination, climate change and social justice.
The construction worker inhabits a different world.
His daily concerns may include the cost of gasoline, mortgage payments, taxes, building permits, materials, overtime, job security and whether enough contracts will arrive next month.
These are caricatures, of course. Plenty of plumbers vote Democratic and plenty of professors vote Republican.
Nor do the national datasets cited here tell us specifically that sociology master’s graduates vote Democratic at a particular rate compared with construction workers.
But they illustrate something important.
People’s institutions and economic experiences can influence how they understand politics.
The education divide isn’t simply about intelligence.
It may be partly about living in increasingly different cultural and professional worlds.
Why Are Highly Educated Americans Moving Left?
Bessent offered one explanation: highly educated people who earn less than expected become resentful of people who succeed economically.
There may be cases where that psychology exists.
Imagine spending six years earning university degrees, accumulating student debt and expecting to enter society as a respected member of the professional class.
Then you discover that your friend who became an electrician at 20 owns a house, drives a new truck and earns more money than you do.
That discrepancy between expected status and actual status could produce frustration.
But it would be a mistake to assume this explains every highly educated progressive.
There are several other plausible explanations.
1. Universities Create Different Intellectual Environments
Universities don’t simply provide job training.
They expose students to ideas about economics, race, gender, environmentalism, inequality, history and political institutions.
People who spend many years in these environments may develop different political priorities from people who enter the workforce immediately after high school.
2. Graduate-Degree Holders Often Work in Institutions
Many highly educated Americans work in universities, government, healthcare, nonprofits, media and large corporations.
These institutions operate very differently from small businesses and trades.
Someone running a plumbing company might experience government primarily through taxes, regulations and permits.
Someone working at a public university might experience government spending as the institution that helps pay his salary.
Neither perspective is necessarily dishonest.
They simply produce different experiences of the state.
3. Cultural Issues Matter
Perhaps the most important qualification to the entire argument is that the education divide isn’t purely economic.
Research published in Political Research Quarterly found that differences involving racial and culture-war attitudes have played an important role in America’s growing diploma divide.
Another 2026 study examining advanced democracies found that immigration has become increasingly connected to the education-based left-right divide.
Highly educated voters tend to have different attitudes toward immigration, abortion, climate change, religion, gender and other cultural questions.
Therefore, voting Democratic doesn’t necessarily mean supporting socialism.
And voting Republican doesn’t necessarily mean supporting laissez-faire capitalism.
The modern education divide is cultural as well as economic.
The Marxist Attraction to Intellectuals
This brings me to something I explored in my article, “Marxism-Leninism: Why Does It Still Attract People?”
One of the fascinating characteristics of revolutionary movements is the prominent role frequently played by intellectuals.
Marx himself wasn’t a factory worker.
Lenin wasn’t a factory worker.
Revolutionary socialist movements often claimed to represent workers while their ideological leadership came from intellectuals.
There is an interesting reason why.
Marxist ideology gives intellectuals an extraordinarily important role.
If capitalism is a complicated system of exploitation that ordinary people don’t fully understand, someone must explain that system to them.
The intellectual becomes the interpreter.
And if society needs to be reorganized rationally, someone must design the new institutions.
Once again, the intellectual has a role.
This doesn’t prove that today’s graduate-degree Democrats are Marxists. The overwhelming majority obviously are not.
But it may help explain why ideologies promising to reorganize society through expert knowledge can have particular appeal within intellectual environments.
Workers Don’t Necessarily See Themselves as Victims
Here is another paradox.
Traditional socialist theory assumes that workers should be the natural constituency for socialism.
After all, workers supposedly have the most to gain from redistributing wealth.
Yet many working-class Americans don’t necessarily view society through the categories of oppressor and oppressed.
They may instead think:
I work. I earn money. I take care of my family. I would like government to leave me alone.
That worldview can be deeply resistant to political movements centered around redistribution or class conflict.
And recent data reveal something fascinating about political identity.
In August 2026, Pew asked Americans whether the term “working class” described them.
Among people without bachelor’s degrees:
- 72% of Republicans described themselves as working class.
- 61% of Democrats did.
Even among college graduates, Republicans were more likely to call themselves working class than Democrats.
The Republican Party isn’t merely winning more working-class votes.
Its voters increasingly identify themselves as working class.
Donald Trump Accelerated the Transformation
No politician has embodied the education divide more dramatically than Donald Trump.
The irony is obvious.
Trump is a billionaire who inherited considerable wealth, attended an Ivy League university and lived in a Manhattan penthouse.
Yet millions of working-class Americans see him as their political champion.
Why?
Because class identity isn’t only about income.
It is increasingly about culture.
Trump speaks differently from academics, bureaucrats and traditional politicians.
He attacks institutions many working-class voters distrust.
He talks constantly about manufacturing, energy, immigration, trade, crime and national identity.
Whether one likes Trump or despises him, his political instinct was extraordinary: he recognized that millions of Americans without college degrees felt increasingly culturally distant from America’s professional class.
He built a political movement around that alienation.
But Are Educated Democrats Really “Elites”?
Here we encounter another strange feature of modern American politics.
Education and wealth aren’t the same thing.
A 28-year-old graduate student earning $35,000 may possess enormous educational status but very little economic capital.
A 45-year-old electrician who owns his company might earn $150,000 while possessing no university degree.
Which one is the elite?
The answer depends on what kind of status we’re measuring.
The graduate student may have greater cultural capital.
The electrician may have greater economic capital.
This distinction helps make Bessent’s “overeducated and under-earning” comment interesting.
He is pointing toward a group whose educational credentials may place them among America’s cultural elite even though their income doesn’t place them among America’s economic elite.
That tension deserves serious study rather than dismissal.
Where Bessent Goes Too Far
I agree with the broader concern Bessent is expressing about socialism.
But calling millions of people “underachievers” risks turning an interesting observation into an insult.
Someone can support higher taxes, universal healthcare or stronger government regulation without being lazy or jealous.
And educated Americans can sincerely believe that government intervention produces a fairer or more prosperous society.
I may disagree with them.
But disagreement isn’t evidence of jealousy.
The stronger argument is not:
“People support socialism because they’re losers.”
The stronger question is:
Why has an ideology historically created in the name of workers become increasingly attractive to highly educated people while many workers themselves have moved politically to the right?
That question is much harder to dismiss.
The Education Divide May Define American Politics
Race, religion, income and geography still matter enormously in American elections.
But education has become one of America’s most important political dividing lines.
A 2026 political-science study described the 2024 presidential contest as having the largest educational divide in vote choice on record.
Graduate-degree holders have become one of the most Democratic educational groups.
Non-college voters increasingly favor Republicans.
And the Democratic coalition itself is dramatically more educated than it was 30 years ago.
Something fundamental has changed.
The party historically identified with America’s workers increasingly represents many of its most highly educated citizens.
The party historically associated with corporate America increasingly receives votes from people who install electrical wiring, drive trucks, repair machinery and build houses.
Politics has undergone a remarkable reversal.
Scott Bessent expressed one possible explanation in deliberately inflammatory language.
I think the phenomenon deserves a deeper explanation.
Because perhaps the biggest political question isn’t why America’s workers haven’t embraced the intellectual left.
It is why so much of the intellectual left assumed they eventually would.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the education divide in American politics?
The education divide refers to the growing difference in political preferences between Americans with college degrees and those without them. College and especially postgraduate-degree voters increasingly lean Democratic, while voters without four-year degrees increasingly lean Republican.
Do most highly educated Americans vote Democratic?
They increasingly do. Pew’s analysis of the 2024 election found that voters with postgraduate degrees supported Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by approximately 65% to 33%. Pew’s 2026 party-identification data also show postgraduate-degree holders leaning strongly Democratic.
Are working-class Americans becoming more Republican?
Many non-college and working-class voters have moved toward Republicans, although race, geography, religion, occupation and other factors complicate the picture. Pew found that Trump won voters without four-year degrees 56% to 42% in 2024.
Why are college-educated voters moving left?
There is no single proven explanation. Cultural attitudes, immigration, professional environments, geography, economic interests and exposure to different institutions all appear relevant. Education correlates with political preferences, but that doesn’t mean obtaining a degree automatically causes someone to become politically liberal.
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