In my post below I refuted the contention that the Democrats are the party of the rich. As I noted there is some evidence that the super-rich may tilt Democrat. There are some economic and social sectors which lean Democratic because of their social liberalism, but there is no preponderance that I have seen in the data for the rich identified with that party. As I have observed, even in New York City, one of the citadels of cultural liberalism, the wealthy tend to be more Republican. The only precinct in Manhattan with more Republicans than Democrats is in the Upper East Side across from Central Park.
But there is more granular nuance here. In Andrew Gelman’s Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State he reports data which shows that though Democratic leaning states tend to be wealthier, on average within those states the wealthy tend to vote Republican. Another detail is that the correlation between income and voting Republican is weaker within Democratic leaning states, but very stark in Republican states. Even when you control for race in states like Mississippi this remains the case. Gelman’s data and analysis tends to rebut the argument in What’s the Matter with Kansas?.
And yet going back to the aggregate, there’s still more to be said. As noted in the comments there is actually data to suggest that the modal Republican is middle class, while Democrats have a more varied socioeconomic coalition. Quite often middle class Republicans tend to be above average in income and wealth, but are not necessarily college educated. By contrast, the lower classes lean strongly Democratic. The upper classes are more polarized. So one model using the aggregate Democrat and Republican coalitions is that the former are an alliance between the lower class, minorities, knowledge professionals and liberal wealthy, and the latter are a coalition between the middle class, the business class, and the conservative wealthy.
Below are some data from the GSS. The survey was taken in 2006, and had a variable which inquired into household wealth. I looked at voting for Bush, Republican identification, and liberal and conservative orientation, for whites. As one ascends education, intelligence, an wealth, the ideological landscape becomes more polarized, so I thought that showing “one half of the equation” was misleading in the last case. I added the tick-marks for confidence intervals since the sample sizes get small as you go up the class ladder.
Note: The previous post brought out a lot of empty and baseless (aside from one’s own self-worth) commentary in people, some of which I did not publish. I understand that political posts tend to bring the retard out in people, but try to keep it under control unless you want to waste time tapping away at a keyboard and not having anything to show for it. Having your comment published is not a right. Here’s a link to the GSS ANES browsers.
Variables:
Row – wealth(r:1-3″Less than $40 K”;4-5″$40 – $75 K”;5-6″$75 – $150 K”; 7″$150 – $250 K”;8″$250 – $500 K”;9″$500 – $ 1 million”;10-12″More than 1 million”)
Column – PRES04 partyid(r:0-2″Democrat”;3″Independent”;4-6″Republican”) polviews(r:1-3″Liberal”;4″Moderate”;5-7″Conservative”)
Select – race(1)
Comments are closed.