The College-Educated Voter Problem: Is There a Solution?

"You have to have gone to college to say something that stupid."

Dennis Prager would often respond to callers on his national radio show with that line when they said something so bereft of common sense that the only explanation for it had to be four or more years of brainwashing from radical professors. During his years as a graduate student in international affairs at Columbia University, where his professors believed such inane things as the belief that there is no difference between men and women and that the Soviet Union and the United States were morally equivalent during the Cold War, Prager realized that the modern university was the mainstream institution possessing the least wisdom.

Unfortunately, Prager has been sidelined from his radio show since a devastating fall in 2024 left him paralyzed. Yet as we survey the political scene today, we can see the kinds of stances he might say only a college-“educated” person could believe:

That performing gender reassignment surgery on minors is not harmful.
That Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and Lebanon and is the morally culpable party in its war against enemies that seek to destroy the world's only Jewish state.
That socialism — heck, communism — is more effective than capitalism at lifting people out of poverty and providing a higher standard of living.
That borders are inherently cruel.
That abolishing ICE and the police will lead to a more just society.

That's pretty much the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and it's no surprise that its recent ominous string of victories — including those of Zohran Mamdani-endorsed Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez, and Brad Lander in New York City, as well as Melat Kiros in Colorado — was propelled by people who learned such nonsense at college.

In a piece for Townhall, Dimitri Bolt provided data showing who drove the DSA's victories in New York:

Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won NY-13 according to polling data, secured 60 percent of the youth vote, 58 percent of college-educated voters, and 51 percent of higher-income voters. By contrast, black, Hispanic, and low-income voters overwhelmingly backed her opponent and incumbent Democrat, Adriano Espaillat. In NY-10, Brad Lander, the Mamdani-backed candidate, won 61 percent of the younger vote, nearly 70 percent of the college-educated vote, and 70 percent of high-income voters. By contrast, 57 percent of low-income voters supported his opponent. In NY-07, the pattern held. Claire Valdez secured 64 percent of younger voters and college-educated voters, along with 62 percent of high-income voters. Once again, low-income voters broke the other way, with 62 percent backing her opponent. In other words, the socialist upset reflects the rise of “champagne socialism” among younger voters, many of whom were raised and educated without a strong appreciation for the historical failures of collectivist systems, and who now believe they can succeed where others did not.

These younger voters are also being educated without a strong appreciation of America.

I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA shortly after 9/11 and remember being shocked that several professors were already blaming the U.S. for the attacks. Melat Kiros was only a young child then, but PJ Media’s Rick Moran notes in a piece the day after the 29-year-old’s victory in Colorado's 1st Congressional District primary that the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs-educated Kiros has also blamed the U.S. for 9/11.

Graham Platner, who won the Maine Democrat Senate primary in June, also isn't one to praise the U.S. When asked about a Nazi tattoo he had on his chest for almost 20 years, his former girlfriend told the New York Post: "As a person who is a leftist, I immediately looked at him and asked him, 'Is that a Totenkopf?' and he told me a whole, 'he will hold this weight forever' bravado sob story about how it was, but he decided to keep it as a reminder that the United States was the evil, bad guy overseas."

And can you guess who the polls show is supporting Platner in his race against Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)? Hint: it's not the non-college-educated voters. According to a New York Times/Siena poll, they support Collins 58% to 37%, even though Platner says he represents his state's working class. Tom Bevan explained on the RealClearPolitics podcast:

This is something we've talked about on this show repeatedly. How a lot of this energy on the far left is being driven by, guess what? Upper-class, liberal, well-educated white people. The actual people who are working class, and as we saw in New York City, the Ritchie Torres race, the actual working class and voters of color were much less enamored with some of these far-far-left candidates.

The question is how to instill wisdom, moral clarity, and patriotic pride in minds that have often been fed the opposite from kindergarten through college and graduate school. Sometimes it comes naturally with time and maturity — the idea that a liberal is just a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet. And of course, marriage and having children have led many formerly liberal women to change their voting patterns when it comes to having enough take-home pay to put food on the table and police on the streets to keep their kids safe.

Personal experience, however, has shown me that the older someone who is entrenched in leftist views is, the harder it usually is to get them to even hear the other side. They won't even watch Fox News or read PJ Media. But it's usually the outlets these people are most hostile toward that are the most effective at reaching young people. Take PragerU, for example.

Co-founded by Dennis Prager’s producer, Allen Estrin, as a way for Prager's views to influence young people, PragerU is now an approved educational resource in many states. The left's hysterical response to PragerU's success and spread comes from fear. MS NOW wailed that “PragerU’s ‘insidious’ alternative to PBS hits U.S. classrooms,” and Ali Velshi, like so many on the left, called it right-wing indoctrination.

The truth is that real indoctrination takes years and years — as we see with what the left does to kids trapped in public schools all of their childhood — not a 5-minute video, which is the typical length of a PragerU video. Truth and common sense can make an impact in such a short format, which is why minds can be changed when a conservative is allowed to speak at colleges and why administrators and student mobs try to prevent them from speaking. Charlie Kirk’s assassination was the ultimate act of silencing an effective conservative voice on campus.

If you’re feeling discouraged by the DSA's apparent capture of the Democratic Party after victories driven by college-educated voters, you should watch Xaviaer DuRousseau’s testimonial below. The University of Illinois graduate and former BLM activist explains how he accidentally red-pilled himself by watching PragerU content. His story is a reminder that changing minds may be more possible than it seems — and that this possibility itself is what those on the left fear.

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