The modern conservative movement’s antipathy toward academia was present at the moment of its birth. William F. Buckley became a national figure thanks to his 1951 book, God and Man at Yale, which attacked his alma mater for abandoning its Christian heritage and embracing left-wing economics. In the late 1980s, Allan Bloom became an important public intellectual because of The Closing of the American Mind, which argued that universities had abandoned the quest for truth. That book’s commercial success led to an explosion of conservative polemics making the (contradictory) arguments that professors are anything-goes moral relativists and Puritanical schoolmarms, enforcing a stifling code of political correctness. 

Fortunately for conservatives, the war on Marxist academics had few apparent downsides. Professors are a negligible part of the electorate, and unlikely to vote for conservative candidates in any event. Despite claims that universities were propaganda machines churning out radical leftists at an industrial scale, the Republican Party continued to perform well among college graduates throughout the second half of the twentieth century. This has changed. Despite losing the election, exit polls indicate that former Vice President Harris won an astonishing 56 percent of the vote among college graduates. Trump secured his victory by winning a similar share among voters without a college degree. This is a remarkable shift.

To better understand how this change came about, and what it means for the future of American politics, I highly recommend Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, by Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins. The book is an impressive work of social science, providing essential insights into some of the nation’s most important cultural and political developments.

Polarized by Degrees explores a long-term trend the authors call the “Educultural Realignment.” Democrats have shed many of their working-class constituencies and talking points in favor of “technocratic, expert-led governance and progressive social sensibilities.” As a result, they have become the natural home for educated professionals. Moving in the opposite direction, the Republican Party now defines itself as “the nation’s most important and dedicated opponent of globalization, cultural liberalization, and the rule of experts, scientists, and intellectuals.” 

The book argues that the late Ronald Inglehart’s work on “postmaterialism” can help us understand current trends. Inglehart contended that, starting in the early 1970s, the focus of politics changes as societies become increasingly prosperous. As the twentieth century progressed, and the threat of desperate poverty and militarized violence diminished, collective priorities shifted away from basic material needs to issues that, as Grossmann and Hopkins put it, “engaged citizens’ identities, lifestyles, and desires for personal expression.”

This transition led to new social cleavages that do not fit easily into the traditional two-party structure. Leaders on the cultural left were typically drawn from the rising elite, not the bottom rungs of society, and their concerns were often scarcely connected to economic interests. These socially liberal and highly educated young professionals became an increasingly powerful force in the Democratic Party, helping to secure George McGovern’s nomination for president in 1972. Blue-collar workers, who tended to be socially conservative, religious, and patriotic, had little interest in antiwar protests, feminism, gay rights, or new civil rights initiatives. The Democrats became divided between “hippies and hardhats.” In part because of their greater skills, education, and affluence, the cultural liberals have since come to dominate the party.

Despite recent progressive complaints about the nation’s ostensible lurch to the right, the book notes “the liberalization of American society since the relatively conservative 1980s.” This transformation was a top-down phenomenon, driven by the most educated elements of society. The Democrats’ cultural progressivism has made the party more attractive to the nation’s elite. This shift, however, has alienated less affluent but more culturally traditionalist voting blocs that were once the party’s base. Republicans have taken advantage of this divide among Democrats, embracing a populist approach that attracts working-class voters. 

This realignment has been a mixed blessing for both sides. The book was completed before the 2024 presidential election, but that contest demonstrated the electoral benefits the Republican Party has enjoyed thanks to its growing popularity among less educated voters. However, the authors nonetheless suggest that Democrats may wind up with the better part of this new political configuration. In the long run, the educated elite have a greater impact on the nation’s politics and culture than the disorganized hoi polloi. On Election Day, the Republicans of course benefit from an infusion of working-class voters, but the “absorption of a new class of insurgent activists at the expense of the GOP’s traditional cadre of pragmatic, business-friendly organizational leaders also reduce the long-term strength of the party’s electoral, financial, and mobilizational infrastructure.”

Perhaps even worse for conservatives, elections are not everything. The authors quote the late Andrew Breitbart’s maxim, “politics is downstream from culture,” and point out that the people with the greatest influence over the culture increasingly lean left. Grossmann and Hopkins carefully document how institutions that drive cultural change, including “educational systems, mass communication industries, professional and charitable associations, and corporate management structures,” typically embrace progressive values, especially on issues relating to social identity. 

Conservatives lament that they have little influence over important media and educational institutions. Unfortunately, creating conservative versions of The New York Times or Ivy League universities is a herculean task. Even if they secured sufficient funding for these kinds of ventures, there are too few skilled, educated, and interested conservatives to staff such projects and make them viable. Even worse, there may be little audience for them. Right-wing media is increasingly lowbrow because that is apparently what right-wing consumers want to see. In the marketplace of ideas, thoughtful, policy-oriented conservatism has few apparent buyers. Instead of seeking to build a new cohort of conservative experts, the American right increasingly rejects the very concept of expertise. 

Grossmann and Hopkins persuasively argue that the trends they document in the United States are occurring across the globe. The growing education gap has unique features in this country, however, because of our rigid two-party system. In countries with multiparty systems, the rise of right-wing populism results in new political parties that are separate from more established center-right parties. Multiple parties in these countries may need to work together in a coalition, but they nonetheless remain distinct in terms of their policy platforms and ideological orientations. In the US, anyone serious about influencing the nation’s political future must choose between Republicans and Democrats. These limited options can create strange political bedfellows.

The two-party division can frustrate ideologues at all points of the ideological spectrum. There is no doubt that the Democrats have benefited from the influx of voters with high human capital. However, this element of the party’s coalition limits how far they can realistically move toward the economic left, which frustrates the party’s more progressive activists. The party of elites will be inherently skeptical of any plan to seriously overhaul the nation’s economic structure. After all, by virtue of being part of the elite, such voters have a powerful stake in maintaining the status quo. Although they may be generally liberal on many social issues, they have little interest in radical efforts to redistribute wealth or nationalize industries.

On the Republican side, the transition into a more downscale party creates its own tensions. The massive shift of less educated voters into the party’s ranks brought electoral benefits. Yet, as the party becomes the political home for voters facing economic precarity, its traditional stance in favor of limited government and a small welfare state may be at odds with its own voters’ preferences. 

These internal inconsistencies create potential wedges that could be exploited by savvy political entrepreneurs on both sides of the divide. However, as Trump has come to define the GOP, and the conservative movement has embraced the MAGA sensibility, a different key division within the American center-right has largely disappeared.

At its inception, the post-war American conservative movement, defined by figures such as Buckley and his colleagues at National Review, understood that they were political outsiders, at least among American elites. The question was how they would respond to this challenge. As the late conservative scholar Jeffrey Hart noted, the conservative responses to their predicament were inconsistent: “Did Buckley want to reform the Eastern establishment, or did he want to destroy and replace it?” Many of the more intellectual conservatives, Buckley included, desperately wanted credibility and respect from existing elites, and they developed a style of argumentation they hoped would achieve that goal. On the other hand, conservatives also possessed a populist impulse to attack the existing liberal elites as implacable enemies, beyond reform and with whom it made no sense to compromise.

Since Trump’s conquest of the Republican Party and conservatism more broadly, this debate has largely been resolved: the right wishes to destroy our current elites in academia, government, and the media. This has been the dominant conservative mindset for at least the last decade, and President Trump began his second term in office with a scorched-earth campaign against universities, NGOs, and the federal bureaucracy. The days when conservatives sought to persuade their liberal opponents with intellectual appeals seem a distant memory. This results in a more coherent and unified strategy on the right, but it will also accelerate the trends Grossmann and Hopkins documented. 

The authors describe the Republican predicament as “power without credibility.” Having given up on competing with elites on their own terms, “Republicans have instead sought to discredit major knowledge-producing institutions by launching attacks from their positions in elective offices and conservative organizations.” 

On the other side, the authors suggest that the Democrats’ electoral future still looks bright, provided that they maintain their strong support from racial and ethnic minorities. In their discussion of the working-class realignment, they understandably focus on white voters, where the shift has been most dramatic. They warn Democrats, however, that “similar trends among Hispanic or African-American voters would present a more formidable barrier to national victory.” The 2024 election demonstrated that their advantage among minorities, especially Hispanics, is indeed quickly eroding. If Republicans can consolidate and expand their support among working-class minorities, the Democrats will struggle to win national majorities in the future, even if they maintain overwhelming support from academia, Hollywood, non-profit employees, scientists, and bureaucrats. 

Polarized by Degrees is an excellent, dispassionate analysis of ongoing trends. It drives home that we are living through a fascinating era of political history. We have witnessed a major partisan realignment that does not obviously benefit one party more than the other, and control of the federal government is consistently up for grabs. The authors do not offer suggestions to either party as they seek to break the deadlock and usher in a new era of one-party dominance. This is unfortunate, as I would be interested to know their thoughts on the subject. The book is nonetheless the best work of quantitative social science I have read in many years. The first side of the partisan divide to successfully address the challenges and internal contradictions that Grossmann and Hopkins documented will be in a very strong position. For this reason, readers from both parties should read this book with a sense of urgency.