Why Voting is Linked to Income
Andrew is certainly a bit too modest when he says that Red State, Blue State does not offer many explanations for the voting patterns it documents. The book has a lot to say both about why the patterns exist and why the media and other political observers often misinterpret the evidence.
But having done some work on the link between income and partisanship, let me offer some of my own favorite hypotheses about why income has increasingly played an important role in shaping political behavior. In Polarized America, Keith Poole, Howard Rosenthal, and I document that in the late 1950s and early 1960s voters in the highest income quintile were no more likely to identify with or vote for the Republican party than those in the bottom quintile. But by the 1990s, the top quintile was twice as Republican as the bottom. We suggest that such a pattern of growing income-based voting is consistent with four different possibilities.
• Partisan polarization: Voters should divide more along income lines based on the extent to which the party's positions on economic issues diverge. Using roll call voting data, we document that indeed the period of the increase in income-based voting was indeed one in which the two parties diverged on issues of economic policy and redistribution (with the Republicans moving sharply to the right and the democrats standing more or less pat). Casting one's vote on the basis of income is a more-or-less rational response to such a change in party platforms.
• Income inequality: Increased income inequality such as that observed in the U.S. over the past 30 years may also increase the propensity of the high-income voters to vote differently from low income ones. This effect occurs because the interests of the top and bottom quintiles diverge as their incomes do.
• Incomes changes of party constituencies: Demographic factors related to partisanship such as race, gender, region, education, and age have become more related to income. Therefore income-based voting may be a by-product of the differential economic success of the demographic groups that compose each party.
• Group Realignment: In some cases, poorer demographic and social groups have moved toward the Democrats while wealthier groups have identified more with the Republicans.
My co-authors and I sought to decompose the changes in the relationship between income and partisanship into these four factors. Basically, we found the demographic factors 3 and 4 played very little role in the increased connection between income and voting (with the important exception of the realignment of white southerners.) Income inequality had a modest effect. Most of the changes, we argued, could be attributed to increased party polarization on economic policy.
While party polarization is a very important component of the upward trend in income-based voting, its connection to the regional and religious variations identified by Andrew's work is somewhat more complicated. I hope provide my take on those patterns later in the week.
I do not believe that ones voting patterns or political beliefs have as much to do with income as it does with the environment one has been raised in. Mostly the family. I read a very good article by a sociologist/psychologist on this very subject a few years ago.
I wish I had save it or the link. It was a very in depth study.
C
April 20, 2009 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Participation of low-income voters had been on the wane since 1960 all the way through 2004. I don't know what the 2008 numbers are, but the reason for the declining participation of low-income voters is that they had/have nothing to vote for. As the Republicans went further and further to the right on a platform of hating and demonsizing the poor, the cowardly Democrats backed off and away from many, if not most, of the programs that worked for the poor. The cowardly Democrats, in order to try and avoid further Republican bellicosity and attacks distanced themselves more and more from the poor which only helped the other side and totally demoralized lower income and working people who accurately saw less and less difference between the parties. With the obscene giveaways to Wall Street since October, it's hard to argue that they are wrong in their perceptions.
April 21, 2009 1:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
[With, D]emocrats standing more or less pat, ... [c]asting one's vote on the basis of income is a more-or-less rational response to such a change in party platforms.
It is worse than that: Democratic platforms have been anchored in mush and pulled rightwards since 1974. That is especially so where economic issues like "de-regulation" or "progressive taxation" have been concerned.
Worse, the "deal culture" of Congress results in a slew of small, right-wing, "red" states awash in federal subsidies and agro-military pork which the larger, more "prosperous", "blue" states cross-subsidize. The middle-class, right-wing concession-tenders in the red-states have every reason to be right-wing extremists because the plutocrats in the blue states fund both parties: That would include donations both to red-neck Senators from Alabama or Texas but also to the Democratic committee-barons and race-caucuses that advance right-wing and plutocratic agendas on "practical" rather than "ideological" grounds.
In fact, I think that the "ideology" and even the "extremism" of the right are not nearly so durable or decisive as the corruption, cowardice, and indiscipline of the "Vichy Democrats". Those may seem mildly left, right, or center. But, they are mostly just part of the DSCC/DCCC patronage-chain.
They cannot take the anti-Federalist traditions, the plain words of the Bill of Rights, or the demonstrable successes of nineteenth-century or early twentieth-century populist Democrats and progressive Republicans seriously. No, they are unprincipled, self-perpetuating, mercenary, life-long office-seekers and office-holders who, for instance, have crushed grass-roots and urban Democratic "machines", replacing them with their personal entourages and "ethical" monopoly rent-sharing schemes like "earmarks", the "black-budget", and, now, the "Fed", agro-welfare entitlements, the "Treaty of Miami", and on and on ...
Those of us in the Democratic Party (I am an urban party "boss" -- "almost important!") can make fun of the GOP clown-act this year. But, it may work for them in next year's low-turnout mid-term election. Meanwhile, please take note of the economic recovery, indeed, the boom on K-Street.
Be advised of wasteful or even criminal diversion of "stimulus" or "recovery" money and especially of the "national security" or "homeland security" pork that th GOP won't vote for in Congress but disproportionately hand out to "bi-partisan" cronies in blue-states and right-wing ones in their home states.
Yes, there are split votes on social-issue marginalia. But, almost all important legislation is some sort of "deal" that passes with 60 votes in the Senate or, worse, unanimously in the Senate or House on voice-votes.
Nothing to punish or restrain the plutocracy even gets out of committee, much less passes by a roll-call majority in the House or Senate: "Hold Harmless!" seems to be the constitutional principle Democrats in Congress recognize, even if it is not in the actual constitution.
So much for "responsible, two-party government".
I have not seen more than a whiff of responsible partisanship in my whole life: The 1964 Voting Rights and first Clinton budget. Moreover, the DLC obviously regretted those and swore "never again!" So, mostly I here unctious rhetoric and see abiding corruption.
If Geithner and Bernanke succeed in restoring the plutocracy, while Obama dodges assassins and the Congress lards its patrons and clients, look for the plutocrats to be funding corruption of blue-state Democrats like Chris Dodd or Joe Lieberman and sponsor the rise of yet another generation of right-wing Republicans in the red-states.
What we need is a real Democratic Party that can hold corrupt and ineffectual leaders to account.
April 21, 2009 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
How does the thesis of this post explain the 'teabagging' movement then? I highly doubt any of the people out protesting on April 15th were in the top 10% of income.
Also, anecdotally, my own mother, a teacher, was swept up by the Reaganites, and has since identified strongly with the narrative she was fed by the Rs--despite, as my stepfather would often say, she had such a good job and benefits because of the teachers union!
And, JR, bonus points for using the phrase 'agro-military pork'
April 21, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Dave Bowman asks a terrific question here. Yes, we might suppose that wealthy people vote for the Rs to distance themselves from undeserving swine. But why do the tea party crowd, obviously neither educated nor affluent, buy into the rhetoric? It's bewildering.
April 21, 2009 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
...why does the tea party crowd. Damn.
April 21, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dear Dr. Nolan:
You write:
"In Polarized America, Keith Poole, Howard Rosenthal, and I document that in the late 1950s and early 1960s voters in the highest income quintile were no more likely to identify with or vote for the Republican party than those in the bottom quintile."
I wonder whether the early Cold War era was anomalous in this regard. Income tax rates were extraordinarily high during the Eisenhower Administration (and were cut by the Kennedy Administration).
It would seem as if the 1980-onward period was a return to the 1930s Democrat vs. Republican warfare over high vs. low taxation.
April 21, 2009 11:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why presume the tea party crowd isn't affluent? It's been reported that 80% of party attendees were male -- middle aged white males. As such, they are members of the most affluent cohort in our economy, in their peak earning years. Relative to many important constituencies that make up the Democratic base -- women, minorities, young people -- they are both likely to be much more affluent and to see their economic interests very differently (perhaps even competitively). Relative to the trade, manufacturing and professional union members who also tend Democratic, even more important than relative affluence is the difference in the likely SOURCE of their income. They are, for instance, likely to be self-employed -- independent contractors, small business owners, farmers, etc. As such, they may be very affluent even though they are "working class" -- not professionals or among the educated elite -- and, whether they are or are not more affluent, they may have greater expectations of, or aspirations to, affluence and therefore identify with the interests of the affluent class they are striving to join. Very affluent or not, they will also, of course, have very different experiences with taxation. Whether those taxes are genuinely burdensome or not, there is a huge psychological difference between having taxes autotically removed from your check by your employer and writing those big quarterly checks to the IRS from your own bank account, between having your employer pay half your SS and Medicare payroll taxes and paying the full amount yourself (and additonally paying half the payroll taxes of employees). As for those tea baggers who are employed by others -- it is likely they work in a non-union and/or small business environment and identify their economic interests with those of their employers, or, they may work in the service sector serving the interest of, and therefore seeing themselves as dependent on the best interest of, much more affluent people.
April 22, 2009 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
re likely to identify with or vote for the Republican party than those in the bottom quintile. But by the 1990s, the top quintile was twice as Republican as the bottom. We suggest that such a pattern of growing income-based voting is consistent
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