I keep thinking about a question that seems much more complicated than the usual political arguments make it sound: Why can two people look at the same country, see many of the same problems, and come away believing that completely different political movements are the answer?
I started thinking about this after reading an argument that young, college-educated voters are increasingly drawn to socialist candidates because colleges have failed to teach them enough economics. There is a legitimate question underneath that argument, but I don't think the answer is that simple.
The more interesting explanation may have less to do with whether someone went to college and more to do with what kind of insecurity they experience, what they believe caused it, and which political movement gives that frustration a convincing explanation.
And the data show that something significant really has changed.
The American political coalition is increasingly divided by education. Pew Research Center found that in 2024, voters with a bachelor's degree or higher favored Kamala Harris by 16 percentage points, while voters without a four-year degree favored Donald Trump by 14 points.
This isn't simply a story about Democrats becoming the "college party" and Republicans becoming the "working-class party." The reality is more complicated. In 2024, about 67% of Trump's voters did not have a college degree, but that was actually a smaller share than in his previous presidential campaigns. Meanwhile, Harris's coalition was almost evenly divided between college graduates and people without degrees.
Still, the educational divide is real. Pew found that 63% of White voters without a bachelor's degree identified with or leaned Republican, compared with 51% of White college graduates who leaned Democratic. That relationship has reversed dramatically from previous decades, when college graduates were more likely to align with Republicans.
So what happened?
One possibility is that different groups have developed different versions of the same frustration: "The system isn't working for people like me."
Consider a young college graduate who did everything she was told would lead to a stable middle-class life. She went to college, earned a degree, found a professional job and works hard. But she is still renting, can't afford to buy a home in the city where she works, worries about healthcare and childcare costs, and wonders whether the career she trained for will still exist in its current form ten years from now.
Her frustration might lead her to conclude that the economic system itself is the problem.
That doesn't necessarily mean she understands "socialism" as an economic system in the traditional sense. In fact, one reason political conversations become so confusing is that Americans use the word socialism to describe a wide range of policies, from universal healthcare and stronger unions to government ownership of major industries.
But there is evidence that young Americans really are becoming more skeptical of capitalism. Harvard's 2025 Youth Poll found that only 19% of young Americans identified as capitalist, down from 29% in 2020. Democratic socialism had its strongest support among college graduates in that survey: 43%, compared with 24% among young people without degrees.
That doesn't prove that college graduates are being indoctrinated or that they don't understand economics.
It may simply mean that some young people have looked at the bargain they were offered—get educated, work hard, and you'll be okay—and don't believe the bargain is holding up.
Now consider someone else.
He doesn't have a four-year degree. He works with his hands, owns a modest home or rents in a community where housing used to be affordable, and has watched good-paying jobs disappear or change. He sees the cost of groceries, insurance and housing going up. He feels that politicians talk about working people but rarely seem to understand what life actually feels like for them.
He may reach a very different conclusion.
Instead of thinking, "Capitalism is the problem," he might think, "The people running the country have forgotten people like me."
And that is where populism becomes powerful.
Populism doesn't necessarily need to convince someone that a particular economic theory is superior. It can offer something more emotionally immediate: an explanation for why life feels unfair.
You are working hard.
You are not imagining that things have changed.
The people in charge haven't listened.
The elites benefited while your community paid the price.
That message can be incredibly powerful, particularly when people feel that established institutions no longer represent them.
And here's where I think we have to be careful.
It is very easy for someone on the left to look at a working-class Trump voter and say, "You voted against your own economic interests."
But that assumes economic self-interest is the only thing being considered.
People don't vote with a spreadsheet.
They vote based on their understanding of the economy, but also their families, communities, religion, identity, experiences, fears, values, cultural beliefs and trust—or distrust—of institutions.
For some voters, immigration may feel more urgent than wages. For others, crime may matter more than taxes. For others, abortion or religious freedom may outweigh economic policy. Some voters may be motivated primarily by national identity or the belief that their culture is being dismissed.
And some may simply feel that one political party has stopped speaking to them.
That doesn't mean every political concern is equally supported by evidence. It means that people don't experience politics as a policy exam. They experience it as part of their lives.
This is also where I think discussions about MAGA, immigration and Muslims become particularly difficult.
It is entirely possible to criticize rhetoric or policies that target immigrants, Muslims or other groups without concluding that every person who votes Republican is hateful.
Those are different claims.
If someone says something dehumanizing about Muslims or immigrants, we can evaluate that statement on its own terms. We don't need to pretend it is acceptable simply because the person has legitimate economic frustrations.
At the same time, we shouldn't assume that every person who votes for Trump, identifies as MAGA, supports stricter immigration policies or has conservative views about Islam personally hates Muslims or immigrants.
Political coalitions are enormous. They contain people with different motivations.
The same principle should apply to the left.
A young person who supports democratic socialism isn't automatically economically illiterate, naive or indoctrinated. Someone can understand supply and demand and still believe that healthcare, housing or education should involve substantially more government intervention.
In fact, data suggest that working-class and college-educated Americans sometimes want surprisingly similar economic outcomes. A Center for American Progress analysis of 2024 election data found substantial support across both groups for higher minimum wages, stronger unions, higher taxes on wealthy Americans, infrastructure investment and an expanded social safety net.
That is fascinating.
Because it means the disagreement isn't always:
"One group wants workers to succeed and the other doesn't."
Sometimes people want many of the same things but disagree about who is responsible for the problem, which policies will solve it, and what trade-offs they are willing to accept.
And that distinction matters.
If someone says, "I want politicians to put American workers first," we should ask a very simple question:
What policy actually does that?
Not what does the campaign slogan say?
Not what does the candidate call himself?
Not what does the political advertisement say?
What did the policy do?
Did wages increase?
Did employment increase?
Did union membership increase?
Did healthcare become more affordable?
Did housing become more affordable?
Did grocery costs fall?
Did communities gain or lose jobs?
Who benefited?
Who paid?
What were the unintended consequences?
And perhaps most importantly: Did the people the policy was supposed to help actually become better off?
That standard should apply to everybody.
If a socialist politician promises that a government program will solve a problem, we should ask whether the program actually works.
If a Republican politician promises that tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs home, we should ask whether they actually do.
If a Democrat promises that a new social program will lower costs, we should measure whether it actually lowers costs.
If a populist promises to "fight for the working class," we should examine the legislation, not just the rhetoric.
And if a politician claims that immigrants are responsible for a particular economic problem, we should look at the evidence rather than accepting the claim simply because it fits a political narrative.
That, to me, is what gets lost when politics becomes tribal.
We start evaluating people instead of claims.
We decide that someone must be stupid because they believe something we consider obviously wrong. Or evil because they belong to a political movement we distrust. Or brainwashed because their explanation for the world doesn't make sense to us.
But human beings are rarely that simple.
Someone can have legitimate economic anxiety and reach a conclusion I think is unsupported by evidence.
Someone can have legitimate concerns about immigration and express them in a way that becomes cruel or dehumanizing.
Someone can care deeply about racial or religious equality and simultaneously support an economic policy that doesn't work as intended.
Someone can support socialism while misunderstanding basic economics.
Someone can oppose socialism while misunderstanding basic economics.
Being on the "right" side of one argument doesn't make someone right about everything else.
And perhaps that is the bigger lesson hiding underneath the original debate about college graduates and socialism.
The question shouldn't be whether college made someone liberal or whether a lack of college made someone conservative.
The better question is:
What happens when people lose faith in the system—and why do different people blame different parts of the system for their problems?
The data show that America's political coalitions really are changing. College graduates have moved increasingly toward the Democratic coalition, while voters without four-year degrees—particularly White voters—have moved increasingly toward the Republican coalition.
At the same time, younger Americans are becoming more skeptical of capitalism itself. Harvard's youth polling shows that this skepticism exists across party lines, even though support for democratic socialism is much stronger among young Democrats than Republicans.
So maybe the most important political story isn't that one group is smarter, more educated, more compassionate or more economically literate than another.
Maybe it is that a growing number of Americans don't believe the existing system is delivering the life they were promised.
The left and the populist right are offering competing explanations for why.
One says the economic system is fundamentally stacked against ordinary people.
Another says elites, globalization, government institutions and cultural changes have taken the country away from ordinary people.
Neither explanation should get a free pass.
We should be willing to test both against reality.
Because ultimately, I don't care whether a policy comes wrapped in a red, blue or socialist label.
Tell me what problem it is supposed to solve.
Show me the evidence.
Show me who benefits.
Show me who pays.
Show me what happened after we tried it.
And then let's have the courage to admit when our own side gets it wrong.
That may be a much healthier form of civic education than simply teaching people which political ideology they're supposed to believe.
