Judy Woodruff:

In fact, leaving aside the pandemic and the global economic recession, manufacturing jobs under former President Trump and President Biden followed a similar pattern, growing in the first two years in office, followed by losses in the third year.

But there’s another reason these two neighboring counties vote so differently, education. In Oakland County, where Democrats have won decisively in the last two presidential elections, 51 percent of adults have a college degree, while next door in Macomb County, it’s 27 percent. And Macomb went decisively for Donald Trump in those same two elections.

It’s a phenomenon playing out across the country, a contrast to the class and income divisions that defined political parties for much of the 20th century.

Matt Grossmann, author, Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics: Well, it’s been the biggest shift in American politics in decades as college-educated voters shift to Democrats and those without a college education lean toward Republicans.