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Whereas I do believe that it’s not just “education” but moreso intelligence that is the predictor of liberalism today, the “where the people are” as well as the age bracket make a big difference. Most small colleges are in small towns, but these colleges have a commanding presence in the population of the area. They can be gerrymandered into oblivion tho.
Not as much as you might think.
To use a caricature example: a literally genius 10-year old who is still relying on argument-by-authority may think one way, before after a few years of thinking by themselves switch sides, so there really is something to the combined heft of a few thousand years of collected human knowledge, even if absorbed only by osmosis by people who never finished high school yet exist side-by-side with professors in those small college towns.
Also, wrt to Congress at least the two sides did not used to be as extreme as they are now - case in point: when the economy got really bad, Obama's solution was to bail out the banks (yeah in return for concessions but still, how "liberal" are Democrats, really?). So anyway, I could see a selfish farmer strategically voting for their own short-term best interests, in a manner consistent with being intelligent - i.e., it's not entirely IQ that may have been the driving force, so much as EQ.
In the past at least, though you did say "today" so... yeah, I have to agree, I just wanted to add that caveat that being exposed to other cultures and other ways of living by way of education may have been the more important factor not too long ago.
Edge (caricature) examples will always exist. In college, I used to walk past the area where the “SchoolName Republican Meeting” took place. It always had 20 or so guys and 3-4 girls dressed like they were headed to a job interview. That’s not a hypothetical 10 year old but real people.
The Republican Party used to have ideas and thoughts, albeit backward and horrifying in many circumstances, but as of Trump, they’re largely nihilistic. You’re also correct in the thought that today’s democrats are in many ways to the right of 70’s and 80’s Republicans.
I’m not disagreeing that education plays a role, but that there’s a lot more nuance to how that is reflected in voting.
Nuance, absolutely. I try to keep separate in my mind that "Democrats" != "liberals" (rather, the former are some kind of predatory species called "politician" that exists by getting the latter to vote for them, so uses their talking points but then after getting elected does whatever da fuq it wanted to in the first place - e.g. "we care about school shootings" prior to voting, but then after being voted in could give two shits about that topic anymore) and likewise "Republicans" != "conservatives", and then there are so many subdivisions after that as well e.g. "Tea Party Republican" != "Alt-Right Republican", and so on. Even if a voter were to somehow remain fully stationarily consistent throughout a long, several-decade lifespan, their relationships to these political entities would shift, as a result of that relative motion happening around them.
Also, I think Republican ideas appeal to a certain type of voter, who likes short, pithy statements that legit might have somehow worked, even if 30 years in the past and with HEAVY caveats (e.g., if the top marginal tax rate were still 96%, and also neither automation nor globalism existed in any way, then sure, lowering it to lets say 90% might actually trickle down to workers under those specific set of conditions). And similarly Democratic ideas appeal to people who live in fantasy dreamlands / ivory towers - like how much of Republican obstructionism could have been avoided if the Dems had not opened the door to it by including abortion provisions into the Affordable Care Act, which really was shoved down lawmakers throats so quickly that they barely had time to read it, much less deliberate over the pros and cons, and consider the political much less practical realities that would ensue? Yeah, "it's complicated", for sure - b/c while something is nearly always better than nothing... is it though, given finite resources and a plethora of items on the agenda that picking to make progress towards one goal necessarily means choosing to forego other goals, some of which (like Black Lives Matter) are DESPERATELY NEEDED, though also ofc much harder to achieve. And ofc I get downvoted to hell whenever I even whisper such thoughts as "Trump is super old, but also Biden is super old too", showing me that it is most definitely not true that intelligence = liberals. Each side there is vulnerable to different types of errors (conservatives more of a top-down authoritarian view, while liberals more of a groupthink consensus one)... and yeah, Trump just blows all of that out of the water, by offering to actually DO all those things that Repubs have been talking about for decades, like overthrow democracy itself and maybe even start rounding up and shooting professors, which is an ENORMOUS shift rightwards that makes the past Left vs. Right divide look positively wholesome and identical by comparison (both in the past were "pro-democracy" and wanted a functional government, well, before Newt Gingrich I mean).
TLDR: I absolutely agree - it's complex AF:-).