How does relative income relate to partisan American politics?

[ProgressiveModerate]

There's so much discussion around things like college attainment and urban v rural in our politics which correlate with income, but very little discussion about income directly.

I think it's interesting because a lot of people argue that Republicans are now the party of the lower income common man, but 2020 exit polls still largely showed Biden winning over the lower income brackets. Maybe this will flip in 2024, especially if the college non-college divide grows and age polarization shrinks, but far from a given and it'll still be close.

All other factors being equal, what impact does income have on one's politics here in America? How does income interact with factors like race, education, and geographic location when it comes to politics?

[Flats the Flounder]

There's so much discussion around things like college attainment and urban v rural in our politics which correlate with income, but very little discussion about income directly.

I think it's interesting because a lot of people argue that Republicans are now the party of the lower income common man, but 2020 exit polls still largely showed Biden winning over the lower income brackets. Maybe this will flip in 2024, especially if the college non-college divide grows and age polarization shrinks, but far from a given and it'll still be close.

All other factors being equal, what impact does income have on one's politics here in America? How does income interact with factors like race, education, and geographic location when it comes to politics?

I think a big reason why income isn't often mentioned when it comes to partisan affiliation is largely because although class is a defining feature of American life in my opinion, it really doesn't factor that much into which party we vote for.

The fact that Dems are still winning the working class despite the narrative that they're increasingly trending Republican is because that narrative only tells half the story; the story of the white working class. 45% of the working class in America are people of color, who despite other narratives claiming they're becoming Republicans too, still vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

This is going to be more of a vibes-based analysis, but I think decades of Cold War propaganda telling Americans that capitalism is the only way has kept the country from really considering class as a major identity marker, and as a result, other identity markers like race, gender, education status, etc. play a much bigger role in how we actually vote today. If you study the politics of other democracies, it's a very different story. 

[TML]

There's so much discussion around things like college attainment and urban v rural in our politics which correlate with income, but very little discussion about income directly.

I think it's interesting because a lot of people argue that Republicans are now the party of the lower income common man, but 2020 exit polls still largely showed Biden winning over the lower income brackets. Maybe this will flip in 2024, especially if the college non-college divide grows and age polarization shrinks, but far from a given and it'll still be close.

All other factors being equal, what impact does income have on one's politics here in America? How does income interact with factors like race, education, and geographic location when it comes to politics?

I think a big reason why income isn't often mentioned when it comes to partisan affiliation is largely because although class is a defining feature of American life in my opinion, it really doesn't factor that much into which party we vote for.

The fact that Dems are still winning the working class despite the narrative that they're increasingly trending Republican is because that narrative only tells half the story; the story of the white working class. 45% of the working class in America are people of color, who despite other narratives claiming they're becoming Republicans too, still vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

This is going to be more of a vibes-based analysis, but I think decades of Cold War propaganda telling Americans that capitalism is the only way has kept the country from really considering class as a major identity marker, and as a result, other identity markers like race, gender, education status, etc. play a much bigger role in how we actually vote today. If you study the politics of other democracies, it's a very different story. 

Actually, other democracies around the world have also shown evidence of education-based realignment, where left-leaning parties are doing better nowadays among voters with higher education while losing ground with working-class voters without higher education. This has been referred to by economists as the "Brahmin left" (the counterpart is the "Merchant right" - which comprises of people who are wealthy but are not well-educated). An example of this can be found in Canada: in southern Ontario (a region analogous to the Rust Belt), the Liberal Party (the Canadian center-left party) used to dominate the region by winning almost every seat there in elections up until 2000, but from 2004 onwards it (along with other left-leaning parties like the Green Party, NDP, etc.) has only won seats in major urban centers in that region, whereas primarily rural seats there have been dominated by the Conservative Party in all elections after 2000.

[Orser67]

A few years ago, I think it was the case that higher income correlated to voting Republican, and higher education correlated to voting Democratic, and that those two things tended to cancel each other out somewhat. Thus a high-earning non-college voter was more likely to favor Republicans, a broke PhD holder was more likely to favorite Democrats, etc. Not sure if that's still the case because I think Democrats have made gains with higher earners the last couple of presidential cycles, and Republicans have made gains with lower earners during that time period (and of course lots of other demographic factors also impact any given voter), but I'd guess there's probably at least some truth to it.

[Roll Roons]

A few years ago, I think it was the case that higher income correlated to voting Republican, and higher education correlated to voting Democratic, and that those two things tended to cancel each other out somewhat. Thus a high-earning non-college voter was more likely to favor Republicans, a broke PhD holder was more likely to favorite Democrats, etc. Not sure if that's still the case because I think Democrats have made gains with higher earners the last couple of presidential cycles, and Republicans have made gains with lower earners during that time period (and of course lots of other demographic factors also impact any given voter), but I'd guess there's probably at least some truth to it.

It's definitely still true that high-income, non-college voters are very Republican and low-income, college-educated voters are very Democratic.

[ملكة كرينجيتوك]

A lot of GOP gains with lower-income voters and Dem gains with higher-income voters has to do with relative cost of living. At the national level, this means D’s winning the bottom and top of the household income distribution while R’s do better in the middle.

I remember there was a pre-2020 online quiz that attempted to predict how someone would vote based on various demographic variables. My likelihood of voting D stayed around ~90% at every income level, holding everything else constant.