All Intensive Purposes

I've observed before that there seems to be a positive correlation between education and liberalism. I think conservatives are making a deliberate effort to appeal to the less-educated, particularly by creating a sense of "classroom warfare" (heh) between the less-educated and the more-educated.

Which is pretty smart, since one would expect that there would in general be a larger populace of less-educated people than of more-educated people. And since we have a winner-take-all electoral system, appealing to the larger group (assuming they vote) is likely to be a winning strategy.
 

Dissent. Looking at my circle of friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and the like, I see lots of very well educated hard-science types, MBA's, docs - all private business types - lots of income - and virtually all Republican. So, anecdotal seems less than reliable.

Now, if I worked in an academic environment, I might be convinced that "smart" means "Dem" - but only because they'ed be surrounding me - and I would likely also conveniently fail to notice that the groundskeepers, garbagemen and food servers - i.e., the less-educated - were also "Dem".

The leadership of productive America - the truly smart ones - tend Republican. The leadership of unhappy America - the truly whiny ones - tend Dem. There are smarts on both sides - but I think the true divide is defined by the sense of entitlement. Smart Republicans go out and work effectively. Smart Dems are appalled that abstract smart won't buy them those same BMWs.