On 2012-03-13, at 3:41 AM, Michael Pollak wrote:
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> On Mon, 12 Mar 2012, Doug Henwood wrote:
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>> Nonvoters are not all that different from voters, according to a 2010 survey from Pew
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> I've seen this kind of survey result many times before; it's very consistent. But one thing bugs me. If this true, it seems that one of the long accepted common wisdoms of psephology must be wrong:
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> 1) Non-voters have considerably lower median income than voters; and
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> 2) Voters with in the lower half of the income distribution vote more Democratic.
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> Which of them is it?
In relation to Michael's second question, Gelman, Kenworthy, and Yu-Sung (2010) observed that "there are sharp differences in partisan voting by income. In national elections, richer individuals are more likely to vote Republican. This difference has persisted with few exceptions since the New Deal era."
"This will come as a surprise to some, who observe the recent pattern of Republican presidential candidates faring best in poor states and infer that perhaps poor persons are now as or more likely than the rich to vote Republican. Gelman et al. (2007, 2009) resolve this apparent paradox. Using multilevel modeling to explore the patterns of income and voting within and between states, they find that different states show different patterns of partisan voting by income. In poor states such as Mississippi, richer people are much more likely than poor people to vote Republican, whereas in rich states such as Connecticut, there is very little difference in vote choice between the rich and the poor. This trend has gradually developed since the early 1990s and has reached full flower in the elections of 2000 and beyond. As a result, richer states now tend to favor the Democratic candidate, yet in the nation as a whole richer people remain more likely than poorer people to vote Republican.
"How much more likely? In presidential elections, the share voting Republican has tended to be 5 to 20 percentage points higher among voters in the upper third of the income distribution than among voters in the lower third.
"Figure 1 shows this rich-poor voting difference as estimated using national survey data for each presidential election from 1940 to 2004. It displays the share voting Republican among the top income third minus the share among the lower income third. In the 1940s the difference hovered around 20 percentage points. In the elections from 1952 through 1972 it shrank to around 5 percentage points. Since 1976 the difference has returned to nearly 20 percentage points.
"These trends over time have been similar throughout the country, although the absolute difference has been larger in the south than elsewhere (Figure 2). This difference between rich and poor holds among voters of all races (Figure 3). The same is true of most religious groups, though Jews and “no religion” are exceptions (Figure 4). Much has been made of Barack Obama’s recent success among highly-educated voters, but as E. J. Dionne (2005) has observed, the Democrats' strength among well-educated voters is strongest among those with household incomes below $75,000—“the incomes of teachers, social workers, nurses, and skilled technicians, not of Hollywood stars, bestselling authors, or television producers, let alone corporate executives.” The rich-poor voting difference also holds in congressional elections, both in the south as well as in the rest of the country (Figure 5).
[…]
"The rise in income inequality in recent decades has heightened this gap in economic interests. In addition, the Democratic and Republican parties have moved farther apart on economic issues during this period (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal, 2006). One other piece of information to throw into the mix is that economics is paramount to voters. For example, in August 2008—a month before the financial meltdown—49% said that economic issues such as job creation, gas prices, and the mortgage crisis should be the highest priority of government. An additional 14% cited health care, which also manifests economic concerns. Only 37% cited non-economic issues, such as Iraq, terrorism, and immigration (NBC/Wall Street Journal, 2008).
"Rich and poor are more separated economically than they used to be, the two parties are more separated on economic policy than ever before, and economics remains voters’ #1 issue.
The qualified their results, however, by noting that class-based voting was skewed by cultural factors, especially among upper income Americans in the richer states like Connecticut who also tended to vote Democratic:
"Income predicts vote choice about as well now as it did thirty years ago, but with a new geographic pattern. In poor states, income is associated with Republican voting much more than before, while in many rich states, the relation between income and vote choice is nearly zero. One key difference between red and blue America is in the relation between income and social attitudes: In Republican states, rich and poor have similar views on social issues. But in Democratic states, the rich are quite a bit more socially liberal than the poor. Factors such as religion and education result in a less clear pattern of class-based voting than we might expect based on income inequality alone."
See: "Income inequality and partisan voting in the United States", Andrew Gelman, Columbia University; Lane Kenworthy, University of Arizona; Yu-Sung Su, Columbia University and New York University, 9 February 2010
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