Doug writes:
> 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.
======================================
I do agree with Bartels that the Republicans acquired the core of their
working class base when the civil rights legislation passed by Democrats
alienated racist white voters in the South. But I wasn't referring to the
relative rate of growth of Republican working class support in its
strongholds, of which I know little, only surmising that it's working class
strongholds were outside of the major metropolitan areas - in the suburbs,
smaller towns, and rural areas, predominantly in the South, Midwest, and
sunbelt states.
The 2004 election statistics seem to bear this out.
Bush won the popular vote by 51% - 48%, but Kerry carried New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Boston, Miami, San Francisco and the other "megopolises" by a whopping 61% - 38% margin. The larger rust belt cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland also went for Kerry, as did other major metropolitan areas like Philadelphia, St. Louis, Seattle, and Denver. The only "major league" cities carried by Bush were Houston and Dallas, as you would expect, Atlanta, Tampa, and Pheonix in the boorming sunbelt states, and the two smallest cities, Cincinnati and - yes, Kansas City - in the Midwest.
See: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/images/blogs/barone_election.htm
That was during better economic times, when war fever was still high following 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, and the Democrats ran a dud for President, all calculated to propel workers towards the Republicans.
I expect this time round, if there are no October surprises, the gap between the big city Democratic working class voters and the small town Republican ones will have widened even further. I think this will be felt especially strongly within the "new working class" class of college-educated higher-income earners whom Bartels sees as motivated more by progressive social values rather than economic interests. Their perception of their economic interests has almost certainly been changing in the wake of the current credit and housing crises and looming fears of a recession which will not leave them unaffected.