Visualizing how the less educated voters voted for Trump in 2024
States that voted for Trump in 2024 tended to be less educated. The scatter plots below show this fact dramatically.
The most educated states — Massachusetts, Maryland, and Vermont — had the lowest percent of people voting for Trump in 2024. The least educate state, West Virginia, had the highest percent.
The sources for the data were: The American Presidency Project and Most & Least Educated States in America (2025).
The correlation coefficent -0.73 says that there is a substantial negative correlation between high education attainment of a state and the percent of voters who vote for Trump.
https://github.com/tonmcg/US_County_Level_Election_Results_08-24 has county-level election results, as well as county-level data about educational achievement. Using that data I made the following scatter char, which shows a p = 0.55 correlation between the percent of voters with a bachelors degree and the percent of voters who voted for Trump in 2024.
Note: a correlation of zero would mean no correlation. A correlation of +1 would mean perfect correlation. A correlation of -1 would mean perfect negative correlation. So p = 0.55 is significant.
As for what all this means — for example, were less educated voters more easily duped? — I’ll leave that open for discussion.
