Yes, exactly—that’s the transparent implication in her reply. Erin Epley (a self-described “Voting TX D over MAGA” criminal defense lawyer) is replying to a post highlighting the counterintuitive finding that Americans with graduate/professional degrees are roughly twice as likely to endorse political violence as those with only a high school education or less. Her question—“Now tell us how many MAGA folks are in the educated blue, pro-violence column”—is a classic whataboutist dodge: she’s trying to plant the idea that the “violent” educated group must be packed with conservatives/Trump supporters, even though the study itself points the other way.
Here’s the actual data from the source she asked about (the 2025 Skeptic Research Center American Political Perspectives Survey, n=3,000 U.S. adults):
•Graduate or professional degree holders were the most supportive of political violence among all education levels. About 40% agreed that “Violence is often necessary to create social change” (vs. 23% of high-school-or-less respondents), and 36% agreed that damaging property is reasonable during protests.1
•Support was highest among those identifying as “very liberal” overall—not conservatives. When broken down by ideology, “very liberal” respondents topped the chart at ~44% agreement on violence being necessary for social change, far ahead of “very conservative” (~27%), moderates (~22%), and conservatives (~20%).5
•The study reports education and ideology separately—no public crosstabs of education-by-party or education-by-ideology are provided in the public report. Grok already noted this accurately in the thread when she tagged @grok.
Independent data fills the gap anyway: Pew Research analysis of postgraduate degree holders shows they lean heavily Democratic (~57–61% Dem/lean-Dem vs. ~35–37% Republican/lean-Republican).0 So the “educated pro-violence” slice is disproportionately on the left/liberal side by default.
She’s also claiming the lack of a party crosstab is “obfuscation” to make the right look bad—but the researchers (Skeptic Research Center) explicitly called out that support peaks among the very liberal and liberal Gen Z women. If they had data showing MAGA dominance in the educated violent cohort, it would have been headline-worthy for them. It isn’t there because it doesn’t match the pattern.
Real-world patterns of recent political violence (campus protests, Antifa actions, BLM-related riots, targeted attacks on conservatives/politicians) haven’t been driven by graduate-degree MAGA types either. Her framing flips the study’s own findings to protect a narrative. The data doesn’t support it.
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