Why is affluence associated with voting Democratic now?

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

As recently as 2012, being rich was associated with being Republican. Now, it feels like it has completely flipped, where being rich seems to be associated with voting Democratic.

We could see this from some very rich areas, such as Loudoun, Fairfax, Arlington, Santa Clara, etc. all being very Democratic. In 2020, Biden won counties totaling 71% of America's GDP.

[Roll Roons]

Education is a big part of it. There's a strong positive correlation between income and education levels, and Trump-era political alignments and trends have largely been driven by highly educated voters becoming increasingly Democratic while voters with less education have become more Republican.

[xavier110]

If you visit a Nikki Haley event, it’s a lot of old people in polos. What we used to think of as classic upper middle class professional Republicans.

If you visit a Donald Trump event, it’s a lot of what those same people would consider white trash.

This has caused a cultural and political realignment, tbh.

[ملكة كرينجيتوك]

Adding onto what Roll Roons said- the highest household income areas are dominated by professional (upper-middle) class voters, not 1%ers. So much of this is Dems doing better in high cost-of-living areas and GOP doing better in lower cost-of-living areas.

Similarly, even if at the individual level, wealth is positively correlated to tendency to vote Republican, we observe that wealthier states tend to vote Democratic. For example, in 2004, the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, won the fifteen poorest states, and the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, won 9 of the 11 wealthiest states. Yet 62% of voters with annual incomes over $200,000 voted for Bush, but only 36% of voters with annual incomes of $15,000 or less voted for Bush.[2] Aggregate-level correlation will differ from individual-level correlation if voting preferences are affected by the total wealth of the state even after controlling for individual wealth. It could be that the true driving factor in voting preference is self-perceived relative wealth; perhaps those who see themselves as better off than their neighbours are more likely to vote Republican. In this case, an individual would be more likely to vote Republican if she became wealthier, but she would be more likely to vote for a Democrat if her neighbor's wealth increased (resulting in a wealthier state). However, the observed difference in voting habits based on state-level and individual-level wealth could also be explained by the common confusion between higher averages and higher likelihoods as discussed above. States may not be wealthier because they contain more wealthy people (i.e. more people with annual incomes over $200,000), but rather because they contain a small number of super-rich individuals; the ecological fallacy then results from incorrectly assuming that individuals in wealthier states are more likely to be wealthy.

For decades, the Democrats have been viewed as the party of the poor, with the Republicans representing the rich. Recent presidential elections, however, have shown a reverse pattern, with Democrats performing well in the richer “blue” states in the northeast and coasts, and Republicans dominating in the “red” states in the middle of the country and the south. Through multilevel modeling of individual-level survey data and county- and state-level demographic and electoral data, we reconcile these patterns... [W]e find that income matters more in “red America” than in “blue America.” In poor states, rich people are much more likely than poor people to vote for the Republican presidential candidate, but in rich states (such as Connecticut), income has a very low correlation with vote preference.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

There are four groups of people:

Low Education, Low Income
Low Education, High Income
High Education, Low Income
High Education, High Income

Of those 4, LEHI is usually the most Republican whereas HELI is the most Democratic. LELI is trending R while HEHI are trending D, however since the latter is higher prospenity they have more impact in off year and lower turnout elections.

[TML]

It's education that's the main driving factor. People with higher education are more likely to have substantial interaction with people of different demographic groups from their own, as well as exposure to viewpoints other than the ones they grew up with, both of which are factors that favor voting for left-leaning parties (this, incidentally, is also a key reason why most mainstream media outlets are socially liberal, because the corporations controlling them see the need to appeal to people belong to demographic groups other than white men).

This phenomenon is not just limited to the US - in other western democracies, vote shares for left-leaning parties (e.g. Labor in Australia, Liberal/NDP in Canada, Labour in the UK, etc.) have also increased among people with higher education in the last several decades. One particular French economist has coined the term "Brahmin Left" to describe this phenomenon of left-leaning parties gaining among voters with higher education at the expense of working-class voters with relatively little education (on the flip side is the "Merchant Right" where right-leaning parties are dominated by people with higher incomes but relatively little education).

[oldtimer]

High Income is associated with liberal social issues and fiscal conservatism.

The more money you have the more scroogey you become because you have more money to lose, and more easy going with sex and drugs because of less fear of repercussions.

[Agonized-Statism]

Performative diversity from corporations as not to alienate potential customers, handled in a clunky way even for marketing people as the pretext for post-9/11 conservatism fell apart and the LGBT and minority acceptance that had been happening gradually before suddenly accelerated. More importantly, Trump's is a movement of the petty bourgeoisie and white working class whose stated goal is to take a wrecking ball to institutions, including the financialization and globalization that the high bourgeoisie like. I don't wanna throw around the "f word", but similar right-wing twentieth century movements started out as middle class and petty bourgeois things, needing some kind of buy-in like a crisis to get the powers-that-be on-board with sacrificing some profit.

[jojoju1998]

Performative diversity from corporations as not to alienate potential customers, handled in a clunky way even for marketing people as the pretext for post-9/11 conservatism fell apart and the LGBT and minority acceptance that had been happening gradually before suddenly accelerated. More importantly, Trump's is a movement of the petty bourgeoisie and white working class whose stated goal is to take a wrecking ball to institutions, including the financialization and globalization that the high bourgeoisie like. I don't wanna throw around the "f word", but similar right-wing twentieth century movements started out as middle class and petty bourgeois things, needing some kind of buy-in like a crisis to get the powers-that-be on-board with sacrificing some profit.

But isn't Trump a member of the very same finance capitalist class, that he now claims to hate ?

[Agonized-Statism]

But isn't Trump a member of the very same finance capitalist class, that he now claims to hate ?

He thinks of himself, and is thought of by his followers, as nouveau riche who's looked down on just as much.

[ReaganLimbaugh]

Super rich hypocrite elitist are mostly Democrat now.

[MyLifeIsYours]

Many of the poorest people in the States are the most staunchest supporters of the Democratic Party. The upstake in upper-class professionals being more partisan Democrats is a result of the downgrading of working class labor losing their voice in the political process, which is how the affluent have become bigger decision makers in shaping the policies of the party. That has been the norm for Democrats since the shift to the right in the last half of the twentieth century with the neoliberalism policies moving center-left parties to the right, see Labour in the UK. Being a strong supporter of abortion rights matters more than collective bargaining to the upper class partisans that make up the rank and file Democrats.