Interesting that this came from Fox Business News. I would look to verify these, although from what I've seen historically, Democrats always pick up more of the educated vote.
...which somehow certain folk spin as a bad thing. I'll come back to that in a moment.
NORTH DAKOTA 3.0
NEBRASKA 3.9
SOUTH DAKOTA 4.4
OKLAHOMA 5.2
UTAH 5.4
WYOMING 5.4
KANSAS 5.9
MONTANA 6.1
TEXAS 6.8
MISSOURI 6.9
You know the beauty of being an agricultural state? No matter what sort of recession the country goes into, people need to eat. I was once sent a time-lapse GIF of a county map of the US showing unemployment change from when the recession officially began (2007, no?) to, I think, 2010 or the beginning of 2011. White was very low unemployment, black was very high - as the time moves on, the coasts get dark really fast and move in on to the center like some flesh-eating disease. One - and only one - county stayed white throughout. And that was a county in Nebraska that - you guessed it - produces corn, corn, and more corn.
My point being, this particular comparison is isn't useful. The average farmer does not need to be smart. But his product is always in demand.
Anyway, the anti-intellectualism I mentioned earlier: it's a strange phenomenon when education is seen as 'elitist' and those who have it have no more weight in their opinions than those who do not. This anti-intellectualism is mostly championed by the right - just look at the Republican convention ("President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob."
). Don't get me wrong, there are really dumb people in every party. The United States is a country of over 300 million people, and a
lot of them are shockingly dumb. How could they not be, when many states won't even teach the scientific basics of evolution (my trip through Salt Lake City was astounding)?