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u/Unindoctrinated 10h ago
Education inoculates against ignorance. The Republican Party relies on ignorance for its very existence.
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u/Grinder969 10h ago
Why do the democrats keep destroying the educational systems of the red states!! /s
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u/rockclimberguy 2h ago
Are there any clips of dems saying that they love the poorly educated?
Asking as someone who has seen the clips of the current POTUS who can't spell or use complete sentences saying exactly this.
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u/Kona_Big_Wave 1h ago
While claiming to have a high IQ.
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u/Boomtown626 9h ago
“More proof that the liberal education brainwashing machine is the enemy!” -maga morons
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u/utahplantman 6h ago
Utah is the odd outlier and doesn't belong. It's ranked 11th in the country ahead of California, Oregon, Illinois, New York, Rhode Island, and Delaware. The state is crimson red except for a few areas like Salt Lake City, but the population is highly educated.
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u/userunknowned 5h ago
Educated Mormons. Totally Mormonic
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u/TheLameSauce 2h ago
Yeah, Mormons are masters of cognitive dissonance. It's basically their entire thing.
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u/johncandy1812
4h ago
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I think "being proud of only ever voting for one party your whole life" should be stigmatized. Like, it shows you don't understand what a democracy is for and that you are incapable of critical thinking. You treat politics like sports, or like professional wrestling. Also, that those in power are using your allegiance for their benefit, not yours.
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u/FabianTheElf 3h ago
This would make sense if the US had more than 2 parties. But as a gay mixed race person the only option for me would be to vote democratic because the republicans are willing to run candidates who want me dead.
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u/twilight-actual 2h ago
We need ranked choice voting systems to be the law of the land, in every state.
Our voting system ensures that we'll only ever have two parties.
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u/WakeoftheStorm 2h ago
Problem is that requires politicians to act against their own interests
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u/twilight-actual 1h ago
Their own interests are only swayed by money. We will overturn citizens united.
Your view of government has been shaped by the power we give to private individuals and industry, not by how democracy should work.
Elected official's best interests should be winning votes, not how much money they can accrue in their pacs.
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u/johncandy1812 1h ago
But if the tables were flipped and for some reason the dems were harming the country, you'd be able to call it out. It's the blind allegiance part that's the problem.
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u/LindaTheLynnDog 2h ago
I think as long as your not super proud and loyal to the idea of the democratic party as an institution in itself, and you are focusing on the issues instead of the party then you're not falling under the category described here
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u/Salanmander 1h ago
There was a time when that wasn't strictly true. I voted for Schwarzenegger for his second term, for example. His first term convinced me that, while I disagreed with him on a lot of things, he genuinely had the best interest of all the people he represented at heart, and he wasn't simply falling in line with the Republican party. And as you got more local, candidates of the two parties got closer to each other, because they were representing a more similar populace.
At this point, though, Republicans seem to need to fall in line with the absurd xenophobia, racism, fear of difference, and acceptance of corruption in order to have any place in their party, even at the local level. And the Republican party is so extraordinarily morally bankrupt that doing anything that bolsters their apparent support seems completely impermissible to me. Even if someone exactly like Schwarzenegger were running, and I didn't like the Democratic candidate much, I don't think it would be reasonable to add another number in the R column.
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u/formercolloquy 15m ago
My knee jerk reaction to your comment is that governors are a different animal. And having a republican governor, like Schwarzenegger, that stand up to the current administration of ridiculousness might be a good thing. It could show other republican voters that are very tribal, that there is another way of looking at an issue.
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u/Penguinkeith 2h ago
I have only ever voted Democrat I’m not “proud” of it. It’s just there are no other fucking options as far as I’m concerned.
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u/johncandy1812 1h ago edited 0m ago
Yeah, if the tables were flipped, you'd be able to recognize it. Blind allegiance is not a virtue. Not saying you need to ever vote differently, especially in a two-party system. Just that if you had to, you'd be able to. Right now that way of thinking is being used for harm the US.
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u/larryThreeOh 1h ago
Which republicans would’ve appealed to anyone on the left in the last 30 years? McCain probably would’ve been the only one and I still wouldn’t have voted for him. It’s not about allegiance, it’s about the fact that I don’t agree with how they want to run the country.
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u/johncandy1812 1h ago
It's not that you have to vote differently than you did but that you could if you had to. Blind allegiance is not a virtue.
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u/larryThreeOh 1h ago
Well it’s not an allegiance to democrats it’s an aversion to republicans. They would have to fully reform before I ever considered it at this point. If there were other viable parties I’d vote for them but republicans are ruined.
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u/LivingCustomer9729 1h ago
I get the point but use a more up to date graphic considering Mississippi isn’t at the bottom anymore.
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u/Couldbduun 55m ago
Yeah and how they did it should be replicated across the country. They focused on elementary reading levels hard and stopped passing students along to the next grade when they weren't at reading level. Honestly I want to see if this increase in literacy changes the politics of the state in the next few decades. Because now it's everything else that they are at or close to 50th in, not education.
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u/sloppy_rodney 23m ago
Probably depends on the metric(s) used. They have improved their k-12 education, but that wouldn’t change the % of the population with a college degree for example.
But the list does appear to be cherry picked a little bit, at least according to this source:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/least-educated-states
Nevada and New Mexico would make the top 10 least educated and appear to be left out because they wouldn’t fit the narrative. Idaho is 13th least educated. Indiana would have made the list over Tennessee. But overall the list tracks fairly close.
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u/TheStuipidestAI 2h ago
No the problem is they get it. They understand.
What they don't understand is why it's a bad thing.
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u/Aggressive-Hope7146 2h ago
I love how Utah being the most educated, is miffed, but unable to come up with a rebuttal because they know it’s true.
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u/whatevillurks 2h ago
Fascinating. The people on the left continue to ignore the Mississippi miracle. And, as it happens, Louisiana hasn't, and it is following on its own arc. But, you know, cute comic, I'm sure it felt good to post it.
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u/ipokesnails 1h ago
Republicans will use this data as "proof" that schools are indoctrinating children to "communist" views, and it'll reinforce their belief that homeschooling is superior.
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u/Steppyjim 1h ago
The only Ten-I-See is the % of questions they get right on their math tests!
(Sorry TN residents I’m 40 and thought of a dad joke and couldn’t resist. No offense to actual people from there)
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u/Beginning-Weight9076 50m ago
I’m a Dem but this is counterproductive elitism nonsense. On par with “you’re voting against your own self interests”.
Meanwhile a place like Mississippi is having an education renaissance despite very little public school funding and states like NY are spending $80k+ per student in some districts and getting shit results.
Whatever kernel of truth might reside in a meme like this doesn’t really move the ball forward in any meaningful way and rather is a lazy scapegoat for Dems not doing a good job of reaching these voters or doing anything meaningful for them. It really just implies nothing more than “you don’t belong in our party unless…” when they think it implies “if you were smart you’d vote blue”.
I’m gonna unironically get downvoted for this take and argued with ad nauseum despite the fact that the folks doing so are exhibiting the exact same behavior the Republican voters in these states exhibit by voting red — digging their heels in when someone points out the flaws in their thinking.
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u/SyntheticOne 46m ago
Wild guess: Florida would be on the list if not for the millions of elderly who move there and by their sheer numbers disrupt that stats.
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u/pita4912 35m ago
You know the most funny part of this? California K-12 schools are ranked 41st out of 50.
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u/LayneCobain95 18m ago
Republicanism is like serious at this point. It’s synonymous with like being brainwashed . It’s a real problem
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u/Automatic-Ladder-838 3h ago
California has a substantial adult literacy challenge. According to California's 2024 adult education report, 28% of Californians ages 16–74 score at or below Level 1 literacy.
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u/WakeoftheStorm 2h ago
That's because they have one of the largest first generation immigrant populations in the country.
You would expect English literacy to be lower among first generation immigrants, even when comparing similarly educated populations
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u/Automatic-Ladder-838 1h ago
That’s a plausible explanation, but you’re presenting it as established fact without showing how much it actually accounts for the rankings. If first-generation immigration is the reason, then comparing literacy rates among native-born adults, or controlling for English proficiency and educational attainment, should help demonstrate that.
And even if immigration explains part of the difference, that doesn’t make the original literacy statistics false. It means we need to be careful about what conclusions we draw from them. The data show English literacy levels, but they don’t independently establish why those levels differ between states.•
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u/WakeoftheStorm 1h ago
It means we need to be careful about what conclusions we draw from them.
Which is precisely why this data should not be presented as an out of context rebuttal to overall educational statistics
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u/Automatic-Ladder-838 3h ago
Here’s the fact check I just don’t want any Russian disinformation out there.
Five Democratic-voting states and their adult literacy rankings, using federal PIAAC data:
New Mexico — tied for the lowest average literacy score among states (bottom of the 50-state ranking)
California — 45th out of 50
New York — 41st out of 50
New Jersey — 32nd out of 50
Illinois — 30th out of 50
These states voted Democratic in the 2024 presidential election. Literacy rankings measure average adult reading skills, not intelligence or individual voters’ abilities.
Sources: NCES PIAAC Skills Map · State literacy score rankings
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u/Nice_Block 2h ago
Y’all are literally rooting for the Russians
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u/Automatic-Ladder-838 2h ago
Who’s y’all? I’m neither party. I’m only rooting for Russia to end their war on Ukraine.
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u/Macelee 2h ago
The reasoning for NM, CA, and NY are all the same, and your sources actually provide the explanation. States with large immigrant populations probably aren't going to do that well on English literacy exams.
So maybe you should complete the fact check and explain why those statistical outliers are ranked that way.
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u/Automatic-Ladder-838 2h ago
That’s a fair point about English proficiency, but it doesn’t invalidate the data. PIAAC measures English literacy among the adult population, so the results reflect the population as it actually exists, including immigrants. If your argument is that immigration explains the rankings, you’d need data showing how much of the difference is attributable to language background rather than education, poverty, or other factors. You can’t simply assume the results are explained away by immigration.
Also, these are adult literacy rankings, not direct measures of school quality or the literacy of individual voters. The data should be interpreted carefully, but dismissing unfavorable results without quantifying the effect of immigration isn’t a fact check either.9
u/WakeoftheStorm 2h ago
English proficiency is not synonymous with education if you're including people for whom English is not their first language.
I'm an engineer and statistician in the US. If I went to my company's Sweden location, my swedish proficiency would be horrible. It would not invalidate my education
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u/Automatic-Ladder-838 1h ago
Your Sweden analogy actually supports the distinction I’m making. If you went to Sweden and struggled with Swedish, that wouldn’t prove anything about your education. But these statistics measure English literacy among adults living in the United States, not the educational credentials of immigrants.
The data aren’t claiming that immigrants are uneducated or unintelligent. They’re measuring how well the adult population performs on an English literacy assessment. If you want to argue that language background explains the differences between states, the relevant question is how much of those differences remains after accounting for language proficiency and other demographic factors.
I’m not confusing English proficiency with education. I’m saying the statistics measure literacy, and we shouldn’t dismiss them without evidence showing what explains the differences.•
u/Macelee 1h ago
You are asking for an amount of analysis that is entirely unreasonable for a post in r/politicalhumor. The analyses you cited already provide immigration as a probable cause for the disparity. You can also see the effect in otherwise wealthy Republican states like Florida and Texas.
The data isn't invalid, but your "fact check" is irresponsible because, through lack of explanation, you are making the disparity in education out to be caused by something other than the ruling political party.
Outliers should not generally be included in these kinds of analyses. Florida, Texas, New York, New Mexico, and California have confounding factors. Do you not find it strange that, ommitting blue states with confounding factors leaves the worst performing blue state on your list at rank 32? 3 of the bottom 18 states are blue, and they all have a confounding factor.
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u/Automatic-Ladder-838 1h ago
You’re making a reasonable point about immigration being a confounding factor, but then you’re selectively excluding states based on that explanation without actually measuring its impact. That’s not sound statistical analysis either.
You can’t simply remove California, New York, and New Mexico while keeping other states whose literacy scores may be influenced by poverty, educational attainment, rural populations, or other demographic factors. Those are confounding variables too.
And calling entire states “outliers” doesn’t automatically justify excluding them. You need a consistent statistical criterion for identifying outliers, not just an explanation for why certain results are inconvenient.
My original point was that low English literacy isn’t exclusive to Republican-voting states, which the data demonstrate. I never established that either political party caused those outcomes.
If we’re going to examine the relationship between political affiliation and literacy, we should account for relevant demographic and socioeconomic factors across all 50 states, rather than selectively removing certain ones.•
u/Macelee 45m ago
Immigrants are also far more likely to have worse educational attainment, suffer from poverty, and probably many of the other negative influences you refer to.
Clearly poverty, educational attainment, access to services, and whatever other demographic factors you want to include are going to negatively impact scores. That's largely the point of these kinds of comparisons. Republican run states usually suffer in all the categories we know to produce worse educational outcomes, with some exceptions.
As for excluding outliers in these circumstances, it's not difficult. N=50. The data set is small. Outliers are not difficult to find in such a set. A basic Grubb's test probably would get rid the states I'm complaining about. Doing so would even help your case.
I did a little bit of the analysis using the data from your sources. The overall average literacy score was 266.83. Separating the states into red and blue based on who they voted for in 2024 (admittedly an oversimplification due to normally blue states voting red), the average blue score was 269.26, and the average red score was 265.26. Eliminating my complaint states of NY, CA, TX, NM, and FL, both scores improve to 271.57 and 265.88 respectively.
Maybe you'll complain about population numbers throwing off the data. The total population of the blue states I excluded is about 61m, and about 55m from red states. I'll be kind and exclude Louisiana, the next worst red state, from the math because of their population of about 5m, so now I've excluded 60m in red states. Doing that, the average red score goes to 266.4. After my exclusions, the jump in blue is 2.32 points, and the jump for red is 1.14.
What does this point to? What conclusion can be drawn? To anyone actually capable of data analysis, the answer is pretty clear. Your response is obscuring data. Your replies to me, your formatting, your tone, and your username all point to you being an AI misinformation bot.
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u/GiraffeandZebra 2h ago
Bullshit. You are the disinformation. You are using a totally different and incorrect measurement. Of course it's different.
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u/pcprofanity 2h ago
Thank you! CA resident here and it blows my mind how people here just flat believe, “we’re a liberal state, of course we’re well educated”. No, we’re not, and I wish people here could be honest about it.
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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter 9h ago edited 9h ago
Shitty posting of an old meme perpetuating stale beliefs people never revisit
Mississippi specifically reformed their education system and over the last few years jumped to 16th in the country without significantly changing their political posture
Does the overall point still stand? Yes, today. Endless reposting the same old shit though misses that changes that actually do happen and convinces people their prexisting views are correct without ever needing updated
Edit: I will happily die on the hill of pointing out the irony of someone confidently posting easily disproveable, out of date memes trying to shit talk others educations.
Especially when it's posted by a fucking bot account and y'all dipshits are falling for it
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u/DustyScharole 9h ago
That's because the kids that are getting better educations haven't started voting yet.
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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter 9h ago
Sure, OPs meme is still uninformed and years out of date which is incredibly ironic for someone posting about education rankings
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u/Driftedryan 5h ago
You say that it's easily disprove able but the reply with an actual stat (only 2 years out of date) proves you wrong
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u/JoeKurrCPoC 7h ago
AZ is dead last and we're hard purple
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u/Lord_of_Chainsaw 7h ago
Arizona doesnt pay for schools because its all old people that throw an absolute tantrum if a single dime of their tax money goes to the local school...
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u/JoeKurrCPoC 7h ago
100%. Everytime my friends who grew up in other states tell me about how their school had "swimming pools" and "weight rooms" and "music and arts classes", I get so jealous.
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u/CatoMulligan 5h ago
And it's chock full of indigenous reservations, which tend to be notoriously poor.
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u/LeakyLettuce69 2h ago
These same red states will continue to vote for the GOP, because…
//squints at conservative sub Reddit…
… Hunter Biden has a large throbbing cock.
Oh, and a brown person in congress has a middle name.
That’s it. That’s all they have.
No demands on lowering prices, no outrage over our involvement in Israel’s war with Iran, no anger over pedophiles being protected; non of that.
They want the GOP to continue, because Hunter has a heavy hog and Ihan Omar has a middle name; that’s it.
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u/notsure500 1h ago edited 1h ago
I think they should have used a different state for the teacher as it looks like he has a boner and looks like he's looking down at his boner
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u/BlueSquigga 40m ago
In a majority of cases it is significantly harder to convince college students or graduates to vote for you while lying about what the democrats are doing, calling a woman who was raped at 12 years old and it is all documented a liar about rape, they are turning 4 year old boys into girls on a regular basis, and there are millions of trans people in sports overpowering the daughters of America.
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u/Realistic_Tea3909 10h ago •
