NASHVILLE, July 9 — The political scientist who helped dissect the 2016 election’s racial and partisan undercurrents has returned with a fresh look at the American voter. Dr. John Sides, a professor at Vanderbilt University, this week released new research tracking how educational divides have reshaped the country’s political landscape over five presidential elections. The study draws on data from the American National Election Studies and the General Social Survey, covering the 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024 contests.
Sides led the analysis. The findings point to a steady reordering of the electorate: ideological differences between voters with and without college degrees have grown substantially, while the racial divides that dominated earlier cycles have narrowed.
Sides is no stranger to the mechanics of political identity. He co-authored the 2018 book “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America,” which put racial and partisan identity at the center of that election’s story. His academic work, published in journals including the American Political Science Review and Political Behavior, has long tracked the forces that pull voters apart.
Now, the new numbers tell a story of education as the new fault line. The shift has been building for years, but the 2024 data appears to have crystallized it.
Sides’ analysis suggests that the old coalitions — defined heavily by race — are giving way to a realignment where a voter’s level of schooling increasingly predicts their ideology and party preference.
From Race to Classroom
The narrowing of racial differences in voting patterns does not mean race has vanished as a factor. Rather, Sides’ work shows that education has become a more powerful separator. Voters with college degrees have moved in one direction; those without have moved in another.
The gap, the study finds, has widened with each election cycle since 2008. Sides received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002.
His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation. He has become a frequent commentator on NPR and CNN, offering on-the-ground analysis of how public opinion shifts under pressure. The current study does not offer a simple explanation for the change.
Sides and his team point to a combination of factors: the way campaigns message to different education groups, the sorting of voters into parties based on cultural and economic concerns, and the long-term erosion of cross-cutting identities that once blurred party lines.
What the Data Shows
By nightfall, political operatives in both parties were sifting through the findings. The implications for strategy are direct. If education is now the primary driver of ideological division, then the old playbooks — built around racial appeals or broad economic messages — may no longer work the same way.
Sides’ work has always treated voters as complicated actors, not simple blocs. The new data reinforces that view.
The American electorate, the study suggests, is not static. It is still sorting itself, and the sorting is happening along lines that were less prominent just a generation ago. The National Science Foundation backed the research.
The full dataset from the ANES and GSS, covering nearly two decades of voting behavior, is available for other scholars to test and challenge. Sides has said he expects the debate over what drives the education gap to continue.
For now, the picture is clear: the college divide is real, it is growing, and it is reshaping American politics in ways that will likely define the next election cycle.
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