David Perdue’s mistake may be worse than a 47% issue

I’ve taken a quick look into voter demographics to see what kind of insight we can glean from them and how much impact might come from David Perdue’s statement,

“I mean, there’s a high school graduate in this race, OK? I’m sorry, but these issues are so much broader, so complex.”

So I wondered how much of Georgia’s electorate has either only a high school diploma or some college, but less than a college degree. Turns out the first data source I found was 2008 exit polls from the Presidential election. I haven’t yet found the statistics for Republican Primary voters, but here’s a look at what we might expect if Perdue become the GOP nominee. These numbers are among 2008 Georgia General Election voters (n=1937 respondents)

                                             Obama           McCain       % of voters

Not high school grad            63%                  37%                7%

High school grad                   45%                  55%               21%

Some college                           51%                   49%              28%

College graduate                   43%                   56%              32%

Postgraduate                         49%                   50%              11%

 

So the magnitude of the offense given by David Perdue to “less than college degree” voters may be considerable – the group of high school graduates and “some college” made up 49% of the electorate in November 2008 and they appear to be a prime battleground in the General Election.