Come Talk Ed Politics. Plus Here's An Election Prediction: Expect Intra-Coalition Friction After 2024.
This blog has a 50-50 chance of being right
TL/DR — Dale Chu, Derrell Bradford, and I talk ed politics next Tuesday and you can ask questions, too. Join us!
As you may have heard, there’s an election coming. It’s a pretty important one, and it will have significant education implications, given that the sector is largely a politically controlled public sector undertaking.
So far, the biggest way education is showing up is in voting behavior. No, dear reader, you did not miss the flurry of policy proposals from both campaigns. Education levels continue to be predictive of voting patterns, with Democrats solidifying their hold on Americans with college and especially advanced degrees. That’s a mixed blessing. While it provides a reliable counterweight to the GOP base—though not in equal numbers—it also brings a bunch of cultural baggage that your average voter wants no part of. This is part of the reason Vice President Harris is underperforming among Black and Hispanic voters.
I’m not going to hazard any predictions—the presidential race seems like a toss-up as far as I can tell. If you’re a Democrat and want to panic, consider that given the overall environment and the fact that the other candidate is Donald Trump, Harris should be leading by at least a few points across key states. If you’re a Republican and want to fret, keep in mind that she still has time to close the deal, is showing a willingness to do that, and, although elections tend to break against the incumbent party, this one is unique since both candidates are incumbents in different ways.
(My hunch is that most people making confident predictions know they have a 50% chance of being right and looking prescient, and a 75% chance everyone will forget if they’re wrong. But I was pretty good in 2016, 2020, 2021, but sucked in 2022 so take this all with a grain of salt I might be on a losing streak.)
I will make one long-term prediction: whichever way the election goes, expect more intra-coalition acrimony. In a 50-50 country, political traction tends to happen within coalitions rather than between them. So, in education, expect more friction on the right around school choice and on the left around DEI, for instance. I’d view articles like this less as a one-off or hit piece than the opening shots of a different conversation in education.
And there will obviously be fallout and acrimony in whatever party fails to win The White House.
Derrell Bradford, Dale Chu, and I are going to talk about the election and its education implications, including state issues, next Tuesday at 2:30 pm ET. You can join us on LinkedIn, and I hope you will. Maybe those guys will make predictions?
