education by middle-class families. Members of the upper middle class tend to place a high value on high culture and foreign travel. This is in line with the emphasis placed on education, as foreign travel increases one's understanding of other cultures and helps create a global perspective. Most mass affluent households and college-educated professionals tend to be center-right or conservative on fiscal issues, but moderate to liberal on social issues. Prior to 1992, these professionals heavily favored the Republican Party, but began slowly drifting toward the Democratic Party due to the increasing rightward shift of Republican leadership on social and cultural issues such as abortion, gay rights, race, and immigration. By 2003, a slight majority of college-educated professionals, who compose 15% of the population and 20% of the electorate, favored Democrats. Among those with six figure household incomes, a slight majority favored the Republican Party in 1998. Per exit polls conducted by the television network CNN following the 2004 and 2006 U.S. elections, academia and those with postgraduate degrees (e.g., to include PhD and J.D.) especially favor the Democratic Party. In 2005, 72% of full-time faculty members at four-year institutions, the majority of whom are upper middle class, identified as liberal. The upper middle class is often the dominant group to shape society and bring social movements to the forefront. Movements such as the Peace Movement, the anti-nuclear Movement, the civil rights movement, feminism, LGBT rights, environmentalism, the anti-smoking movement, and even in the past with the 1960s counterculture, Blue laws and the Temperance movement have been in large part, although not solely, products of the upper middle class. Some claim this is because this is the largest class (and the lowest class) with any true political power for positive change, while others claim some of the more restrictive social movements (such as with smoking and drinking) are based upon "saving people from themselves." American upper middle class See American Professional/Managerial middle class for a complete overview of the American middle classes. In the United States the term middle class and its subdivisions are an extremely vague concept as neither economists nor sociologists have precisely defined the term. There are several perceptions of the upper middle class and what the term means. In academic models the term applies to highly educated salaried professionals whose work is largely self-directed. Many have graduate degrees with educational attainment serving as the main distinguishing