When Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, conventional wisdom saw a long-term disaster for the GOP brand. What actually happened, almost no one had foreseen.

The advent of Trump has triggered a massive acceleration in the trend of “educational polarization,” the tendency over the past several decades for center-left parties to gain highly educated voters while hemorrhaging support from their traditional base. Once a gradual slide in the United States, the process has been unfolding at a blistering pace since Trump’s election five years ago.

Educational polarization is a global phenomenon, but its consequences are likely to prove especially devastating for Democrats, whose down-ballot election results in 2020 and 2021 have already sent ominous signals about the party’s future in the long run. That’s where David Shor comes in.