A Canadian colleague of mine recently enlightened me at lunch that studies show the less educated a person is the more they tend to vote conservative. Upon first making this statement though, he of course assumed this was a global voting trend, and one that certainly found itself demonstrated on both sides of the North American border.

However, I found this correlation strangely fascinating. Just when I was beginning to think the two countries were more alike than different, he threw a monkey wrench at me! Not to worry, friends. It was a blow I quickly dodged with a thoughtful response, because everything I've experienced about the voting culture in America--I might know a little as I was actually raised there--indicated the polar opposite.

-Myself "Wow, (for the purposes of discretion we'll lovingly call him 'Bill') Bill, that's very interesting, because in the States it's the liberals in at least the last 20 years who've pandered the low-income and less-educated for their party platforms--the biggest draw being increased welfare."

-"Bill" "Oh. Well. Maybe that's just a Canadian phenomenon."

A phenomenon indeed. Just the very definition of the word implies something out of the ordinary or usual...But alas, these days I never take anyone at their word. That's the ignorant skeptic in me I guess.

However, I greatly respect and admire my colleague's sense of intelligence. I didn't want him walking around feeling like a silly goose for simply regurgitating the hogwash (a synonym for propaganda) that had been fed to him. I searched to confirm my friends statements by actually typing into the Google search engine the phrase, "less educated vote conservative." The results were quite frustrating as they gave me links and data that repeatedly displayed the inverse.

From The Bay Area Center for Voting Research:

"A survey of income and economic status indicates that poorer and less educated than average regions also tend to vote for liberal candidates at a higher rate than their conservative counterparts, indicating that liberal candidates may be ahead in capturing those with concerns about the state of government run social programs and poverty."


http://votingresearch.org/USAstudy.pdf

From The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:

"Internet news sources, National Public Radio, news magazines, and Rush
Limbaugh's radio show have the best educated audiences, with each of these having at least 36% of their regular readers and listeners having graduated from college....Conservatives and Republicans are especially attracted to Limbaugh, while more Democrats are found among the audiences for the NewsHour, the comedy news shows, news magazines, and the websites of major newspapers."

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=319

Granted, I understand many people tend to not hold a lot of stock in research and studies. However, I figured liberals tend to hold even less stock in the opinions of this writer, so in this case mere praticality won out. Also, in keeping my thoughts to a minimum, I wanted to be sure and not lose my less-educated audience's attention or ability to comprehend an excess of words on screen. I'm liberal that way...