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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2026
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No, it actually doesn't. Within a Mormon community, I would wager we would still see that the most educated Mormons are also, ON AVERAGE, the most liberal/leftist Mormons.
Sure, if this is the only thing you knew, there could be a Simpson's paradox situation, but we already know what the data looks like when we count everyone as one big group. Your "exceptions" can be true, and at the same time, are not evidence against the original claim. Even IF you found that, within EVERY group, education correlates with conservatism... it would just be Simpson's paradox, because we already know that, on the whole, education is correlated to liberal/leftist attitudes.
You're welcome to check. But we can see very definitively that a higher-than-average rate of education does nothing to increase the partisan character of the voting block.
We know that we have an overall liberal voting demographic that is unevenly distributed across the country.
But we also know that age, industry, ethnicity/culture, and region play bigger factors in your voting habits than degree of education. We can even see shifts in voting trends over time within the same voter cohort. The trend you're looking for is temporary at best, and highly contingent on the state, the school, and the field of study.
When you take broad averages like this, you very often lose useful information. In this case, just being "educated" in the abstract carries a weak correlation to political beliefs.
Mormons have more bachelor degrees than average: Yes.
Mormons are more conservative than average: Yes.
We can see very definitively that a higher-than-average rate of education does nothing to increase the partisan character of the voting block: No.
That's not what this shows. The two facts, together, are not enough to show a correlation between education and conservatism or to show a lack of correlation between education and liberal/leftist attitudes. To make a claim about correlation, as you are trying to do, you have two options:
I have a perfect analogy:
I claim that smoking will decrease your life expectancy.
You claim that the smoking rate in the United States is 9.6%. The smoking rate in Japan is 16.4%. Life Expectancy in the United States is 79.8. Life Expectancy in Japan is 85.2. Therefore "we can see very definitively that a higher rate of smoking does nothing to decrease the life expectancy of the country".
No. That doesn't show that. Because if you look at data within Japan, you will still see a lower life expectancy among the people who smoke, and if you look at data globally, using countries as data points, you will also see lower life expectancy among the countries that smoke the most.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/life-expectancy-by-country
That's true, but unfortunately, once you started trying to create a more complex model, you started making mistakes. And you aren't even an idiot. Imagine your dumbest neighbors trying to make sense of this conversation.
No. I start off by giving you one variable correlated with one other variable. Once someone understands that, THEN we can start talking about nuance.
What does Japan have that America lacks, which might give them better long term health outcomes and a higher life expectancy?
Not relative to a public universal health care system, no.
If your diagnosis is "we need to cut cigarette use to save lives", but we're ignoring the very successful early medical interventions against cancer that save lives, then we've traded actual useful policy for This One Neat Trick that clearly doesn't deliver the intended results.
I'm saying not at all. With public universal health care, without public universal health care... it does not matter. There is a negative correlation between smoking and life expectancy.
Yes, that is a conclusion one could draw from this.
For the purposes of discussing this correlation, it does not matter. If we have universal health care, then cutting cigarette use will save lives. If we do not have universal health care, then cutting cigarette use will save lives. Conclusion: cutting cigarette use will save lives. That is true. No amount of discussion about unrelated third variables will make that not true.
If a third variable makes the model better, go ahead and add a third variable. But if someone doesn't even understand the two-variable model, we should make sure they understand THAT model before we add even more stuff that they don't understand.
It matters enormously. Literally the difference between surviving and not surviving.
You know, the thing you're measuring for.
Not for the purpose of establishing whether there is a negative correlation between smoking and life expectancy.
Also that comic is saying that adding a third variable does not always make the model better. Also p-hacking is a thing. It's the opposite of what you're trying to establish, which is the existence of a third variable which improves the model. And once again, I will say that if you find two correlated variables confusing, adding a third variable is NOT going to help you.
If you have tools to mitigate the risk, then you eliminate the correlation. That's the magic of modernization.
The thing about education is that it's not apolitical. You can receive an education that encourages social proclivities and biases. Conservative states produce conservative leaning academic institutions, which yield a higher rate of conservative voters even as they reward these people with degrees.
Going to BYU or Stanford or Princeton or Liberty will not turn you into a Liberal, pretty much by design. The Federalist Society is not turning out Democrats.
No, only if you eliminate the risk. Smoking is still negatively correlated with life expectancy in Japan. The correlation exists if you only look at the USA. It exists if you only look at Japan. It exists if you look at the global population.