On Sun, 5 Mar 2006, Michael Hoover wrote:
> what ought to be troubling for dems is that voters with less than $30K/yr
> - majority of whom vote dem - comprised 34% of actual electorate in 1996,
> but only 23% in both 2000 & 2004, while percentage of voters with more
> than $75K/yr - majority of whom vote rep - comprised 18% in 1996, 28% in
> 2000, and 32% in 2004... mh
Those are interesting percentages, Michael. Can you tell from the numbers what this change in proportion resulted from?
Since the turnout was steadily larger in those three elections -- and thus by definition non-voters must have become voters -- this would seem to suggest that, crudely put, substantial nubmers of upper income non-voters became voters in the last two cycles while lower income non-voters did not.
So maybe there's a future in economic populism after all (contra Doug's earlier cry of pain which none of us, including him, want to believe in: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20060227/032779.html)
Because at least on the face of it, these numbers make it look like mobilizing non-voters not only isn't impossible, but might well have been the decisive difference in the last two elections. And that the group that responds strongly to economic populism (according to Bartels first paper) -- the lower third of the income distribution -- should be group going forward whose non-voter pool offers the most low-hanging fruit, precisely because it hasn't been tapped.
Michael