In a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters, President Donald Trump’s approval rating among college graduates stood at 29 percent positive and 68 percent negative. Among voters without a degree it was 42 to 53. CNN reported on the poll as part of an analysis of how education could shape this year’s midterms.
The split carries into vote choice. The same survey found 59 percent of college graduates backing Democrats for the House, 13 points higher than the 46 percent among those without degrees. A University of Houston poll of the Texas Senate race had Democrat James Talarico running 14 points better among degree holders, 56 percent to 42. CNN’s latest polling showed Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown ahead by 15 points among college-plus voters than among others, and Iowa’s Josh Turek by 22.
Not every survey this year shows gaps that large. Exit polls found Democratic House candidates ran 14 to 15 points better among college than non-college voters in both the 2018 and 2022 midterms.
Who turns out
Voters without a college degree still cast a majority of ballots in presidential and midterm years alike. But turnout falls from a presidential year to the midterm that follows, and it falls further among people with less education. William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Metro think tank, put it this way: “The presidential election is a big deal; everybody knows that, everywhere. The midterms, maybe not so much.”
His analysis of census data for CNN found that voters with at least a four-year degree made up about 4 to 5 percentage points more of the vote in 2014 than in 2012, in 2018 than in 2016 and in 2022 than in 2020. Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist, expects the difference to be larger in low-turnout elections.
The base keeps rising. Census data show college graduates cast 45 percent of all votes in 2024, up from less than 37 percent in 2012. The Pew Validated Voters study, the Democratic firm Catalist and the Cooperative Election Study put the 2024 figure at 40 to 41 percent, but agree on the direction. Catalist found the graduate share of the presidential vote rose 7 points from 2012 to 2024 and 6 points from 2020 to the 2022 midterm.
Democratic pollster Bryan Bennett expects graduates to cast about 45 percent of the vote this year. Frey’s estimate is nearly 48 percent. In Michigan, Ohio and Maine, Frey estimates graduates could cast as much as 45 percent of votes, up from the mid-30s in the 2014 midterms.
What Republicans are counting on
Trump is trying to rally voters without degrees, and the stakes are large in states such as Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, where white non-college voters make up an outsized share of the electorate. His support among that group, white and nonwhite, has eroded during his second term amid discontent over inflation, tariffs and the Iran war, according to the CNN analysis.
“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,” Bennett said.
Disaffected non-college white voters are also harder for Democrats to win. In the New York Times/Siena poll, 84 percent of college-educated white voters who disapproved of Trump planned to vote Democratic for the House, against 77 percent of white voters without a degree. In CNN’s polling, Turek drew 62 percent of Iowa’s non-college white Trump disapprovers and Brown 72 percent of Ohio’s.
