On Jun 28, 2008, at 10:21 AM, Marvin Gandall wrote:
> It's the white working
> class and lower middle class constituency which sees the Democrats
> as the
> party of frightening blacks, ball-busting feminists, mincing gays,
> selfish
> trade unionists, tree huggers, rich Jewish eggheads and other
> "elitists",
> illegal immigrants, athiests, gun control freaks, and flag-burners
> who hate
> their country and make excuses for terrorists. You might have the
> stats to
> confirm my impression of where these lower-income Republicans are
> concentrated.
According to Larry Bartels' work, that's not true. There was no move to the Republicans among whites in the lower third of the income distribution outside the south.
E.g.:
<http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/kansasqjps06.pdf>
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2006, 1: 201–226
Review What’s the Matter with What’ s the Matter with Kansas? ∗ Larry M. Bartels
Department of Politics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
ABSTRACT
Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? asserts that the Republican Party has forged a new "dominant political coalition" by attracting working-class white voters on the basis of "class animus" and "cultural wedge issues like guns and abortion." My analysis confirms that white voters without college degrees have become significantly less Democratic; however, the contours of that shift bear little resemblance to Frank's account. First, the trend is almost entirely confined to the South, where Democratic support was artificially inflated by the one-party system of the Jim Crow era of legalized racial segregation. (Outside the South, support for Democratic presidential candidates among whites without college degrees has fallen by a total of one percentage point over the past half-century.) Second, there is no evidence that "culture outweighs economics as a matter of public concern" among Frank's working-class white voters. The apparent political significance of social issues has increased substantially over the past 20 years, but more among better-educated white voters than among those without college degrees. In both groups, economic issues continue to be most important. Finally, contrary to Frank's account, most of his white working-class voters see themselves as closer to the Democratic Party on social issues like abortion and gender roles but closer to the Republican Party on economic issues.