A few years ago, I had a post on questions on "how much trust and confidence do you have in the wisdom of the American people" from 1964 to 2016. It's been asked a few times since then (as recently as last month), so I'll give the updated figures:
There's clearly been a decline since the 1960s, or even the early 21st century. My original post just considered the means, but this one will look at educational differences in the 1964 survey and the two latest surveys for which individual-level data are available, August 2015 and March 2016 (all of them asked about "the wisdom of the American people when it comes to making political decisions." I excluded blacks because I thought that their opinions might follow a different pattern, although it didn't turn out to make much difference. The means, on a scale of 1-4 with higher numbers indicating more trust and confidence:
Not college grad College Grad
9/1964 2.93 2.74
8/2015 2.29 2.33
3/2016 2.29 2.23
In 1964, people with a college degree had less trust and confidence in the wisdom of the people. In 2015 and 2016, the differences by education were small and not statistically significant. The t-value for the drop among college graduates between 2015 and 2016 was about 2.5, so there's some sign that their confidence declined during that time--the obvious reason would be the success of Donald Trump in the Republican primaries (by March 2016 he was the clear favorite to get the nomination). Still, the major point is that there was a clear educational difference in 1964, but not in 2015-6.
As it happened, there were some important parallels between 1964 and 2016--the Republicans had nominated (or were about to nominate) someone who was opposed by the party establishment and was thought to have some extreme ideas. Journalistic accounts of Goldwater and Trump supporters were similar--they suggested that they were fanatical, new to politics, and of relatively low social standing. So maybe the 1964 difference reflected an elite* reaction against Goldwater? Apparently not: support for Goldwater was higher among college graduates (45% vs. 27% among non-graduates). There were also questions about how much you agreed with what the candidates stood for, and college graduates were more likely to say that they agreed with Goldwater. Finally, there was a question about why you intended to vote for a candidate--you were enthusiastic, you were not enthusiastic but OK with him, or you didn't like the other candidate. College graduates who supported Goldwater were more enthusiastic than non-graduates who did (and more enthusiastic than college graduates who supported Johnson). So while Goldwater was unpopular, he wasn't especially unpopular with college graduates. That is, if there was any loss of confidence because of the nomination of Goldwater it should have applied at least as strongly to people without a college degree.
Why did the gap between college graduates and other people diminish or disappear? I'll go back to a point I've made before: despite what is often said, people of higher social standing have become more sensitive about seeming elitist, and less willing to say that they know better than other people. Of course, the question I've talked about here isn't definitive, but all the evidence I've seen points that way.
*And in 1964, only about 10% of American adults had graduated from college, so it was a more elite status than it is today.
[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]
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