{"id":1749,"date":"2003-10-14T12:03:50","date_gmt":"2003-10-14T19:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2003\/10\/bay-area-exceptionalism\/"},"modified":"2003-10-14T12:03:50","modified_gmt":"2003-10-14T19:03:50","slug":"bay-area-exceptionalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2003\/10\/14\/bay-area-exceptionalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Bay Area Exceptionalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tThe “we’re too smart to vote for a movie star” meme has entered a new phase, wherein Frisco Area residents proclaim their superior education as the reason for their voting to retain the Davis status quo. (See: Mark Simon<\/a> via Dr. Frank<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Once again, let’s look at how education interacts with voting preferences. From the VNS Exit Polls in the 2000 Presidential Election, we have a handy chart:<\/p>\n

\"education.jpeg\"<\/p>\n

As you see, Democratic Party voters tend to be concentrated in two educational groups, high-school dropouts and holders of advanced degrees. Most advanced degrees are Masters’, held by union-member school teachers, and most Ph. D.’s work for universities or government-supported institutions. So we have a simple matter of people voting their interests: the welfare class and union members vote for the party of big government, and non-union working people with high-school and college degrees vote Republican.<\/p>\n

(The same pattern held in California<\/a> on the Recall: people at all educational levels from high school grad to college degree voted for Arnie, but people with advanced degrees went for Bustamante. High school dropouts were not reported. Is anyone surprised that the teachers’ union supported Davis and Bustamante?)<\/p>\n

The Bay Area has a lot of people with advanced degrees, a lot of immigrants, and a lot of people who haven’t thought about politics since college. All of these groups are conservative, in the sense of endorsing the status quo, which happens to be the Democratic Party around there:<\/p>\n

“A lot of people have been brought up in a political culture that is very left,” said Shanto Iyengar, a professor of political communication and mass media at Stanford University. “They really live in a cocoon.” <\/p>\n

It has become a form of conservatism to be a liberal, Starr said. <\/p>\n

“Today, outside the box is the box,” he said. “Who would be outside the box in San Francisco? A thoughtful conservative.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So Bay Areans vote liberal because they’re conformist and conservative in their life styles and values, and because they’re sucking the government teat.<\/p>\n

Not too complicated.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The “we’re too smart to vote for a movie star” meme has entered a new phase, wherein Frisco Area residents proclaim their superior education as the reason for their voting to retain the Davis status quo. (See: Mark Simon via Dr. Frank). Once again, let’s look at how education interacts with voting preferences. From the … Continue reading “Bay Area Exceptionalism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-sd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}