Irish American, Italian American and Polish American vote: how do they differ?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Precinct data suggests that Polish voters are more left-leaning than Italian voters, which isn't surprising. Poles had a much larger presence in heavy industry, which were dominated by leftist, CIO-affiliated unions. Thus, there's a pretty close association between Polish ancestry and classic "white working class" voting patterns. This association does not hold for Italian or Irish voters. Although Italian and Irish voters show a similar trend, their respective allegiances appear to be more quite tribal in nature and linked to machine politics rather than shopfloor politics.

This is lazy psephology but I think this map exemplifies my point


In the US, Poles are associated with the steel industry and the auto industry. The USW, along with the UAW, were two of the more radical CIO affiliates known for their advocacy of "left-liberal"/social democratic politics. In short: Poles are proles.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Interesting.  So the Polish American vote for the "party of the working man" has really held up.

I wouldn't attribute this to any ethnic-specific causal factors. Eastern Europeans had a much larger presence on the shop floor of large factories that featured tight-knit work-related cultural activities and left-liberal unions. As far as I know, Italian-Americans were less proletarian and had higher rates of entrepreneurship.

Irish-Americans are hard to pin down: Irish-American identity is very symbolic at this point. There isn't much that distinguishes Irish-Americans from WASPs outside of religious identity. At this point, there's a lot of overlap between both groups. There aren't many "pure" Irish-Americans in the US. It's easier to pin down the voting behavior of German-Americans than Irish-Americans because there are many, many communities in the Midwest which have retained many German traditions and sensibilities. German Catholics, in particular, have maintained their ethnic traditions and this is reflected in their voting patterns. They're very "swingy".

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I think that's a bit of a stretch unless limited to a few rural areas. German-Americans are one of the most assimilated groups. Probably a majority of Upper Midwesterners have some German ancestry (good point here: most Midwest whites don't fall under just "German" or "Norwegian", just about everyone here is mixed.) German-Americans as a distinct culture thus only exists in a few enclaves. By all means they're there (New Ulm, MN, south central North Dakota, and some areas in SE Wisconsin now being gobbled up by Milwaukee exurbia) but that's a small portion of the German population.

Also notable is that Midwesterner cities don't have "ethnic" neighborhoods, they have white and non-white. There aren't any German/Scandinavian/Irish parts of Minneapolis, on fact we actually have more distinction amongst black neighborhoods because of the African-American vs. African immigrant thing, they tend to be segregated. St. Paul did once have a heavily Irish area but that's mostly diluted now, same with the Eastern European population in South St. Paul (actually a suburb) that came during the boom of the meat packing industry, some are still around but most people there would just be seen as "white" today. Even more so in places like Des Moines and Madison, and as a result I'd imagine there's not much difference in voting patterns amongst different groups of whites.

I probably should have noted that I was referring to rural communities.

I agree with your post but I'd posit that there's still statistically significant differences in voting patterns among different ethnic communities due to differences in class background, especially among the elderly. There aren't many elderly Polish-Americans who worked as white collar workers or in entirely non-unionized professions. I imagine that class background is still the most important cleavage among elderly non-Southern whites.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Irish-Americans are hard to pin down: Irish-American identity is very symbolic at this point. There isn't much that distinguishes Irish-Americans from WASPs outside of religious identity. At this point, there's a lot of overlap between both groups. There aren't many "pure" Irish-Americans in the US. It's easier to pin down the voting behavior of German-Americans than Irish-Americans because there are many, many communities in the Midwest which have retained many German traditions and sensibilities. German Catholics, in particular, have maintained their ethnic traditions and this is reflected in their voting patterns. They're very "swingy".

Oh, If only...

I mean symbolic in this sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_ethnicity

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The most Polish American county is Luzerne County, PA. It usually votes Democratic.

I wonder how much of the Polish population there lives in the city of Wilkes-Barre itself. I couldn't find any info on that. The county also has large Italian and Irish populations that combine to outnumber the Poles. Of course the whole region of NE PA should be voting D because it's the remnants of coal country. Ethnicity or urbanisation may not be part of it.

Poles tend to live in outlying proletarian communities that are very Democratic. Two of the most Polish municipalities in the country are in Luzerne County; these communities gave President Obama over 60% of the vote in 2008. I'd wager that these towns are far more Democratic downballot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_E._Kanjorski
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trumka
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcy_Kaptur

When I think of Polish-American politics, I think of Kanjorski, Trumpka and Kaptur.