Update and Disclaimer:  This is NOT science.  There is no reason to believe that there is any CAUSAL relationship between level of education and liberal thinking, whatsoever.  In fact, there may not even be a true correlation between the two in general, in the real world...   There is only a correlation in the data that I analyzed. 

Earlier, I posted that I suggest that this data be considered by the Democratic party.  I publicly retract this statement, as this is probably anecdotal evidence at best, and should not be considered to be fact in any way.

Many many Democrats have been left scratching their heads after what happened Tuesday in the US Presidential elections.  A Republican friend of mine has asked me how I'm feeling.   I can't speak for Democrats in general, but I'm feeling like something is very wrong with the Democratic party.

In many ways what has happened was really the best possible outcome given the country's population.  The results show that the majority of Americans feel that the current Administration is doing the right thing, or at least is doing a better job than Kerry and Edwards.  So, I think it's a good thing that George W. Bush was re-elected.  I think it is a far better thing to have a government by the people than one imposed on the people.

I wanted to share an interesting graphic, it's a breakdown of higher education rates by state, taken from the 2000 census data.  If you color the map, so that it resembles the maps that show the election results, it looks like this:

Look familiar? Does higher education make us more likely to vote Democratic?  Now, this trend looks clear to me, but if there is any validity whatsoever to this trend, the obvious solution for the Democratic party would be to do something about education.  The democrats now have a minority rule in the House, Senate, and in the White House.  They're going to loose the supreme court.  They're not going to be able to stop the nation building throughout the world.  My recommendation to all Democratic leaders would be to focus their energy on our country's educational system.  I truly believe it's their (our) only hope.

-B

Update: I got some flak from Darrell about whether or not this was a true trend.  I wasn't sure myself, so I did a little statistical analysis on the data.  It turns out that the Pearson's r for the data set is .6 with 49 degrees of freedom.  My statistics is rusty, but I'm pretty sure that all this means that there's only a 1% chance that this is not a trend.  You can see for yourself by downloading my excel spreadsheet here. 

Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm not saying all Republicans are un-educated; this is obviously not the case.  I am only tossing out one variable that is highly controllable (especially as compared with other possible measures such as religion, economic status) and highly correlated with voting trends...