Don’t read this if you’re sick of hearing about income and voting

Could it make sense for the Republicans to support geographically-localized policies that help the poor and geographically-diffuse policies that help the rich?

Craig Newmark wrote regarding this entry of mine and this entry of his own. I’ll give his comments and my reply.

Near the end of my reply, I suggest some possibilities for research studying the idea that Republicans, even though they get disproportionate support from the rich, might be serving the interests of poorer voters–because these voters live in areas where the Republicans are more popular. The thought is that, in some issues, policies are necessarily geographically-based, and so you help your supporters by helping their areas. For some other issues, policies can be targeted at individual voters or non-geographic groups, in which case you’d expect to see Republicans’ policies favoring the rich over the poor.

Yet another issue is the influence of elites in policymaking (thus, the “trust fund Democrats” could be unduly influencing the Democrats’ policy positions even though they are a small minority of the party–but that’s another story and i’m not addressing it here.

Craig wrote:

Andrew,

Thank you very much for your detailed e-mail. I’m sending you my last comment, not so much in the hope of changing your mind, but because I think I can focus our disagreement sufficiently to suggest a possible research topic for you or one of your students.

Let me address two of your points.

Here, I honestly don’t think Barone realizes that the Democrats do better among the “commoners” (at least, as defined by income) and not so well among the more financially successful.

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe this. This makes Barone either stupid or dishonest. Surely he is aware of the exit poll numbers you cite. Let’s assume that his conclusion, even if awkwardly explicated, is something else. Specifically, he is not comparing all the “financially successful” to the “commoners”, just one small part.

“Yes, I agree that it’s possible–I just don’t think it’s likely. Given that 62% of the rich folks voted for Bush, the trustfunders would have to be a lot different from the others for Barone’s claim (that they are “very liberal politically”) to hold water. I don’t see the evidence to support the claim.

I think this is the heart of the issue. I conjecture that Barone’s conclusion is based on the following points: 1) “trustfunders” are a small part of the highest income class (> $200,000/year); much less than 50% and probably as small as 20 or 10%; 2) yes, the trustfunders */are/* “a lot different” from other high-income voters; they vote overwhelmingly Democratic: 80%, say; 3) point 2 is based */not/* on fallaciously working backward from how rich areas vote, but is based on Barone’s years of observation, years of talking with political professionals, and maybe even on some finely detailed poll internals not widely circulated; finally, 4) if you belong to a group that votes 80% Democratic, even when the “common people” mostly vote Democratic–55 or 60%– you will be disappointed and you might well second Pauline Kael’s sentiment or write /What’s the Matter with Kansas?/.

Instead of asserting that Barone is unaware of exit poll results and is also committing the ecological fallacy, you should refute either point 1 or point 2.

You write that there is no evidence to support #2. Fine. But that surprises me, because Barone is simply asserting, I think, the existence of Liberal Guilt. Has there been no research on that cliche? Is there no research on how inherited wealth and status–especially via trust funds :-) –affects political identification and voting?

If not, I submit that “further research is needed”.

My reply:

dear craig,

thanks for the note. it is helpful to explore these issues. to respond briefly:

i have read the almanac of american politics but am otherwise unfamiliar with barone. i certainly wasn’t trying to imply that he was stupid or dishonest–merely that he had made a mistake. even deep thinkers can get stuck on the wrong track at times. i don’t know how barone would answer if you asked him: “which party’s voters are richer on average: the dems or the reps?” if asked that way, he might recally the poll data and realize that all the data lead us to believe that republicans are, on average (and on median) richer than the democrats.

however, i do suspect that, with his focus on localities (including the excellent almanac!), barone might be particularly subject to the ecological fallacy. for those without quantitiative training, some basic statistical ideas can be highly counterintuitive. i’m guessing that, for barone, the “real” or important patterns are those describing communities, not individuals.

and maybe he’s right. it might really be that, as representatives of richer communities (on average), the democrats tend to cater to richer voters–even though the richer voters in these rich communites are actually more likely to be republicans. and, conversely, the republicans, as representatives of poorer (on average) communities, might be serving the interests of these communities–including the poorer members of these communities–even while these poorer voters are supporting the democrats.

i don’t know–it’s an interesting issue, and one i hadn’t thought about (at least in these terms) until this very moment. the argument would be that individual voting patterns don’t matter much, to the extent that policies have local and regional, rather than individual effects. thinking this along further, one would expect different sorts of income-biased policies from the 2 parties depending on the issues. for example, in tax policy, one can target individuals, and you’d expect to see the dems favoring their poorer supporters and the reps favoring those higher up on the income level, and we do see that. but in other issues (e.g., transportation spending, military policy, school vouchers, …) one might see the dems favoring the richer localities and the reps favoring the poorer localities.

continuing from there, one might see certain policy areas where the dems, as friends of the rich areas, become friends of the rich, and maybe this is what barone is talking about.

to get back to the trustfunders, i imagine they’d be a hard topic to study but maybe somebody has. my presumption, given the data i’ve seen so far, is that the republicans would continue to be a majority as one goes up the “income” or “assets” ladder. are the “guilty rich liberals” outnumbered by the “complacent rich conservatives”? i don’t know. however, as i noted in my original post, even if there are only a few rich democrats, and even if they are fewer in numbers than the rich republicans, it could be a problem for the dems if they dominate the party. it could be a problem with the republcans too i suppose.

to get back to barone, i think a lot of it is a matter of emphasis. he’s sort of all over the map in his column. i think his main substantive point is the bit about cultural conservatism, and that’s an intersting point, but i don’t think he helps himself with pat-buchanan-type rhetoric about the “commoners”. reading his column on its own, one would certainly come to the conclusion that the majority of the “commoners” support the republicans–not the weaker claim that “over 40% of the commoners support the republicans.”