Why Are College-Educated Republicans Returning To Support Trump?

Everyone should go to college. We’ve all heard that since we were kids. It’s the best path to a well-paying career. And everyone assumes that earning that four-year degree means you’re smarter than the person who didn’t attend college.

Assumptions like that probably explain the shocked reaction to a New York Times article finding that college-educated Republican voters are flocking back to Donald Trump for president in 2024.

In the months after the 2022 midterm elections, polling found that among GOP voters who said they supported Trump’s policies, 76% of college-educated Republicans wanted a different nominee for president. This month, the same pollster, Suffolk University, showed Trump with support from 62% of Republican voters, including 60% of those with a college degree.

How could college-educated people come to such a decision? Those asking that question can point to a laundry list of Trump transgressions, including his behavior, his morals (or lack thereof), the thousands of documented lies, the historians who consider Trump to be one of the nation’s worst presidents and the 91 criminal counts he is facing in four jurisdictions.

Yet, the college-educated Republicans who spoke with the Times, all of whom previously had second thoughts about seeing Trump reelected, are back supporting him. As one voter said, “Look at Biden and what he has done to this country. Trump can beat him, and he can fix this country.”

Such a statement makes one wonder how so much of what has happened during Joe Biden’s presidency is so unknown to so many when they are so obvious:

• The recession everyone predicted a year ago seems a distant idea as those same economists are praising the Federal Reserve for a now-likely soft landing for the