SW points out a rather salient fact regarding those who pursue post-graduate degrees:
Just started your book. Fun read. Thought I should pass this on. That statistic about persons with masters degrees more likely to vote Democrat has nothing to do with intelligence. Far and away the most commonly awarded graduate degree in the US is the masters in – think about it – teaching. This skews the number. Teachers vote Democrat because the party gives them money and power. If that weren’t enough, teaching majors, as a group, average much lower SAT scores and GPA than college students at large.
Strip away that factor, and there is a strong and consistent correlation with increasing education, and probably intelligence, and voting conservative.
An excellent observation and one I’m kicking myself for failing to highlight, especially since while I was writing the book I happened to post about a 2005 column entitled Idiots at the Chalkboard, in which I calculated the average teacher’s IQ to be around 91. A calculation, I note, which probably errs on the high side.
Therefore the usual correlation between post-graduate degrees and intelligence doesn’t apply as in this particular case due to the confirmable intellectual deficiencies of those who go into teaching; the fact that master’s degrees offered by the teachers’ colleges are considerably dumbed-down in comparison with other master’s degrees is further support for this observation. A good catch by SW.