It’s often hard to explain America’s deep political divisions, but in NY Mag Eric Levitz gives it the old college try. “In political-science parlance, the collapse of the New Deal–era alignment — in which voters’ income levels strongly predicted their partisan preference — is often referred to as ‘class dealignment.’ The increasing tendency for politics to divide voters along educational lines, meanwhile, is known as ‘education polarization.'” How the Diploma Divide Is Remaking American Politics. Universities better start offering a major in coalition building.

+ “Democrats are 14 percentage points more likely than Republicans to have paid for news. And college-educated Americans are about twice as likely to have paid for news as Americans who didn’t complete four years of college.” Neiman Lab: A large portion of the Americans who will pay for news are rich. This is a big deal that should get more attention and debate. As I wrote in Please Scream Inside Your Heart: “The paywalls make financial sense for the publications, and I’m all in favor of news orgs coming up with a viable business model for the internet age; far too many failed to cross that chasm. But it does bring up a bit of a conundrum in our Misinformation Age. Real news can be costly. Fake news is free.”