Presidential vote change among whites based on education levels was biggest since 1980

White college graduates backed Hillary Clinton by a 9-point margin, 52 percent to 43 percent, while white non-college graduates backed Donald Trump 52 to 44, "by far the widest gap in support among college graduates and non-college graduates in exit polls dating back to 1980," Alec Tyson and Shiva Maniam report for the Pew Research Center. In 2012 Obama beat Romney among college-educated whites 50 to 48 and non-college educated whites 51 to 47. Trump won the overall white vote. (Pew graphic: White votes compared to all votes, based on education levels)

"Racial and ethnocentric attitudes were deeply implicated in Donald Trump’s remarkable rise to the White House," Michael Tesler reports for The Washington Post. "Racial resentment, anti-Muslim attitudes, and white identity, were all much stronger predictors of support for Trump in the 2016 primaries than they were for prior Republican nominees."

"Donald Trump made racial attitudes more important in the general election, too," Tesler writes. "Racial resentment, unfavorable opinions of African-Americans and ethnocentrism were significantly stronger predictors of whites’ preferences for Trump or Clinton than they were in hypothetical match-ups between Clinton and Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. Many of these same racial attitudes are also heavily influenced by education. College-educated whites and whites who live in highly educated areas of the country have long been much more racially tolerant than other white Americans."