If you have been paying any attention to the media, you’ve heard how Obama got the African-American vote, and Hillary got the Hispanic vote. We’ve heard all about race, and gender, and a little about class. But what I heard about class on NPR, was that Obama apparently got the rich, white vote. That’s not really accurate. Let’s look at the California numbers.

Hillary got 58% of voters who earned less than $50k per year; Obama garnered only 33% of that crowd. On the converse, Obama got 49% of the vote of people who earned greater than $100,000 per year; Hillary got 47%. So those numbers aren’t all that different. So since the media didn’t tell you where the candidate’s support bases really differed, I will: Education.

Education and income are very closely linked in most social science research you see out there. But with the income numbers above, there are some interesting discrepanices here. Anyway, here is what shocked me about the election:

Among high school drop outs Hillary Clinton earned 82% of the vote! 82% - that is staggering! Obama got only 15% of that crowd. Among the less formally educated in the electorate there were HUGE margins betwen the candidates. 61% of high school graduates chose Hillary; 30%, Obama. Of those with “some college,” 52% chose Hillary, 40% Obama.

It starts to level out with the college graduates - Hillary 47%, Obama 43%, and for postgrads 48% voted for Obama, and 46% for Clinton.

So whatever it means, and I won’t even posit a guess, one thng is clear: among Democrats in California, those with less formal education prefer Hillary Clinton, and this was the biggest difference between the two on Super Tuesday.

That is a long way of saying that it appears that among California Democrats, the Pronetos base of post grads, were just about split between Obama and Hillary. Why bring this up at all? Well I marvelled at the revelation that education was a huge factor in the election, no one is talking about it but I wanted to, and I really needed to somehow get a mention of Pronetos in here since all I’ve been ranting about is politics for the last week!

(I have just started looking at the Exit polls from other states, and in Utah Post grads went 65% for Obama, and 35% for Hillary - HUGE difference!)