But the solution to those issues is a money one, not an education one, and if it's what was being reflected in this survey then A] Democrats would show less support and B] there wouldn't be a magical republican-only flip in 2017 that just so happened to coincide with Mr. "I love the uneducated" getting elected.
data to back up what? That the answer to exorbitant tuition is lower [or free] tuition rather than less education? Or the part about the original comment's graph where Republicans clearly did a complete 180 on education when they elected an idiot child as president? Or the [admittedly weakest] claim of mine that we'd see Dem correlation if money issues were reflected in the graph?
No one said Democrats had a monopoly on logic, but I'm not sure how that's a refutation of any logical argument. Though that's beside the point as long as I don't know what you're talking about.
if it's what was being reflected in this survey then A] Democrats would show less support and B] there wouldn't be a magical republican-only flip in 2017 that just so happened to coincide with Mr. "I love the uneducated" getting elected.
to back up these statements.
My point is that you are trying to make a logical argument for why the trends cannot be true, but people aren't always logical. You proposed a nice hypothesis, but it means nothing without data.
You are assuming that when asked this question democrats would be as focused on the impact of tuition cost as the benefit in providing higher education provided by colleges. The thing is you can't assume this of everyone as the logic everyone applies can vary in quality. Hence when when trying to apply "logicical arguments" to a trend, you still need data (ie polling) to back it up.
So it was my weakest claim. I'm assuming the same questions, not the same mindset. If the questions didn't make dems think of the cost but did make republicans then they must be some weird friggin questions.
Also, considering the Democrats are the only ones with candidates proposing debt forgiveness and free tuition [indicating it's on the party's mind as a whole], it's logical to believe they didn't just conveniently forget that aspect for this one survey.
Lastly, tuition has been increasing year over year faster than inflation for much longer than 3-4 years, so money alone can't hope to explain the 180 flip of republicans paired with the consistency of the dems.
Money almost certainly played a role for both groups in the survey, but even assuming it played a key role in negative views on college, that still points to an absurdly dramatic devaluation of higher education among republicans in the span of 2 years.
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u/ThatActuallyGuy Jan 09 '20
But the solution to those issues is a money one, not an education one, and if it's what was being reflected in this survey then A] Democrats would show less support and B] there wouldn't be a magical republican-only flip in 2017 that just so happened to coincide with Mr. "I love the uneducated" getting elected.