Americans with more education vote at higher rates. In the 2020 presidential election, 77 percent of eligible voters who had attended or graduated from college and 90 percent with post-graduate studies cast a ballot compared to 54 percent of voters with only a high-school diploma and 36 percent of dropouts. These trends in turnout rates have persisted for more than three decades, suggesting a link between years of schooling and voting. But does achieving higher levels of education cause citizens to show up and vote on election day? Or do education and voting simply go hand-in-hand, because some other variable contributes to them both?
