Democrats and demographics: Tomorrow's identity politics, part II.
Over on his new blog at Josh Marshall's TPMCafe, my favourite New Dem pundit Kenneth Baer (former Gore speechwriter and author of Revinventing Democrats which Amazon simply refuses to send me) is writing about the future of liberal voting in the U.S. and how class (specifically income class) is supplanting ethnicity as the great determinant of how people vote. In particular, he's talking about a new report out from the new, unfortunately named, Evan-Bayh-mentored policy shop, Third Way.
The report isn't up yet on Third Way's site, but the findings (gleefully reported in the Washington Times) can be summarized as follows:
Although Mr. Bush's popular-vote margin of victory over Sen. John Kerry in 2004 was less than three percentage points, the Massachusetts Democrat lost the middle class -- defined by the report as voters living in households with incomes between $30,000 and $75,000 -- by six percentage points. Among white middle-class voters, the gap was 22 percentage points.
Voters from middle-class households made up 45 percent of the electorate last year, those making less than $30,000 constituted 23 percent of the vote, and households above $75,000 accounted for 32 percent of the vote. The median income among the voters was $54,348.
Among white voters, the income cut-off above which Bush starts winning a majority of voters is around $23,000, barely above the ridiculously low US poverty line for families with more than one kid. And while Dems continue to stay competitive because of their base of Hispanic and Black voters, Baer sees trouble there too:
Adios Ethnic Voting. Hispanic voters are becoming more like ethnic voters of times passed – e.g. Irish and Italians – than like black voters. As Hispanics earn more, they vote more Republican -- and Hispanics are earning more. Their income levels have increased at twice the rate as the rest of the nation. In 1996, only one in four Hispanic voters lived in households that earned over $50,000, in 2004, one in two Hispanic voters lived in these households. So while Kerry beat Bush by 21 point among low-income Hispanics, his margin over Bush was only 10 points among the middle class and zero points among those with household incomes greater than $50,000 [there is some confusion here as today Baer writes that in fact Kerry won Hispanics earning more than $50,000 by 2 points; this can be reconciled once Third Way posts their report].
The story is roughly similar among blacks. Baer notes that the top 10% of African American earners (those who make over $100,000 a year) gave Bush 21% of their vote. Excepting the 1992 and 1996 elections when Perot drew roughly equally from almost all segments of the US population, Dem presidential candidates over the past two decades have regularly enjoyed overall percentages of the black popular vote between 86 and 91%. The Democrats have not gotten creamed in a presidential contest since 1984. Without the black vote, that would simply not have been the case. (It would also be interesting to know how the numbers fall out downticket, but it's worth remembering that the presidential candidate has outpolled the congressional class in the 2-way (Dem/Rep) vote in every election since 1988.)
There's lots of talk about the report across the professional liberal blogosphere, but the basic point is obvious: as the Democrats' core ethnic and racial constituencies get richer, they start voting Republican just like white rich people do. For a lot of reasons, this is a culturally happy development, as is the fact that American blacks and Hispanics are ontrack to keep getting richer relative to the rest of the population (and as the whole population continues to get absolutely richer). But it's bad news for liberals. If whites are a template for how a unselfconcious minority votes (although the Christian Right is not exactly unselfconcious, so they might need to be factored out in constructing the template), then the Democrats are in a world of shit. Even beyond the numbers themselves, there is the problem that a party whose viability depends on turning out and winning huge majorities of certain racial groups by appealing to an increasingly-distant history faces a natural disadvantage in the type of targetted, and occassionally demagogic campaigning it has to do (remember those James Byrd TV ads from 2000), which is one of the underlying reasons for all the (slightly unfair) carping we've heard about the Democrats having no broadly unifying message over the past two cycles.
Ignoring race (and sexual orientation and unionization and gender), how stark is the split between the parties on income? Trends are hard to interpret because of the decling protest vote since 1992 (protests are usually against the incumbant but in 1992 and 1996, some were also against the two-party system in general). But according to the New York Times exit polls (quite similar to the official the NEP/MSNBC/CNN exits but available in a trusty spreadsheet), the Dem share of the roughly 23% of poorest voting households (those making under $30,000 US2004) has been steady since 1996 at about 57%, trending up ever-so-slightly in 2004 (although this may be sheerly a function of the unprecedented inner-city GOTV operation last year.) The Dem shares among upper-middle-class ($75,000-$99,000) and wealthy ($100,000+) households have also been relatively steady at 45% and 42%. On the other hand, Philip Klinkner argued in TNR after the election that Bush's popular vote gains in 2004 could be chalked up to his improved performance among the $100,000+ class, measured by "voter performance": a slightly increased percentage of the electorate in the category, times that category's slightly higher GOP support. With the high level of statis inherent in US presidential political voting, he may have a very good point; two or three point changes among a fast-growing segment of the population (the rich) can have huge consequences for election results.
So what, then, is to be done? That's a tricky question for the party of the public interest. If American voting is increasingly based on financial and income status (and it's worth remembering that income status remains secondary not only to race but also to marital status and religion as a raw determinant of voting behaviour), then the Democrats need to find a way to tap into this. The Washtington Times piece concludes:
Polls show that voters identify the Democratic Party as the party of the middle class and that Democrats beat Republicans on middle-class issues such as jobs, health care and education, but that hasn't translated into votes, said Jim Kessler, policy director for Third Way, which was created after the 2004 election with the goal of "modernizing the progressive cause."
"Middle-class voters think Democrats care about issues they care about, but they don't care about the middle-class voter as much as they care about other voters -- that they're No. 4 or 5 on the priority list," Mr. Kessler said. Put another way, he said, "they think Democrats care about somebody else's schools, health care, jobs."
Part of this, I think, is the simple and pervasive belief among middle class Americans that government can't and won't really help them, that government provides a vaguely defined public good that is aimed at helping people in dire straights, but not the somewhat-above-average joe, which, according to surveys, is how Joe American generally sees himself. This used to take uglier forms than it does today (the increasing wealth and socio-political power of blacks and Hispanics has helped eradicate those uglier forms of the argument.) But the gist remains. Which is why I think -- though I'm not going to expand on it here -- that the Democrats' number one goal has to be defending and reaffirming the role of government itself. Until middle class and upper-middle-class Americans start believing the government, particularly an active domestic government, is a benevolent entity worth supporting with your tax dollars, the pro-growth, anti-tax party is going to keep the natural advantage.
The report isn't up yet on Third Way's site, but the findings (gleefully reported in the Washington Times) can be summarized as follows:
Although Mr. Bush's popular-vote margin of victory over Sen. John Kerry in 2004 was less than three percentage points, the Massachusetts Democrat lost the middle class -- defined by the report as voters living in households with incomes between $30,000 and $75,000 -- by six percentage points. Among white middle-class voters, the gap was 22 percentage points.
Voters from middle-class households made up 45 percent of the electorate last year, those making less than $30,000 constituted 23 percent of the vote, and households above $75,000 accounted for 32 percent of the vote. The median income among the voters was $54,348.
Among white voters, the income cut-off above which Bush starts winning a majority of voters is around $23,000, barely above the ridiculously low US poverty line for families with more than one kid. And while Dems continue to stay competitive because of their base of Hispanic and Black voters, Baer sees trouble there too:
Adios Ethnic Voting. Hispanic voters are becoming more like ethnic voters of times passed – e.g. Irish and Italians – than like black voters. As Hispanics earn more, they vote more Republican -- and Hispanics are earning more. Their income levels have increased at twice the rate as the rest of the nation. In 1996, only one in four Hispanic voters lived in households that earned over $50,000, in 2004, one in two Hispanic voters lived in these households. So while Kerry beat Bush by 21 point among low-income Hispanics, his margin over Bush was only 10 points among the middle class and zero points among those with household incomes greater than $50,000 [there is some confusion here as today Baer writes that in fact Kerry won Hispanics earning more than $50,000 by 2 points; this can be reconciled once Third Way posts their report].
The story is roughly similar among blacks. Baer notes that the top 10% of African American earners (those who make over $100,000 a year) gave Bush 21% of their vote. Excepting the 1992 and 1996 elections when Perot drew roughly equally from almost all segments of the US population, Dem presidential candidates over the past two decades have regularly enjoyed overall percentages of the black popular vote between 86 and 91%. The Democrats have not gotten creamed in a presidential contest since 1984. Without the black vote, that would simply not have been the case. (It would also be interesting to know how the numbers fall out downticket, but it's worth remembering that the presidential candidate has outpolled the congressional class in the 2-way (Dem/Rep) vote in every election since 1988.)
There's lots of talk about the report across the professional liberal blogosphere, but the basic point is obvious: as the Democrats' core ethnic and racial constituencies get richer, they start voting Republican just like white rich people do. For a lot of reasons, this is a culturally happy development, as is the fact that American blacks and Hispanics are ontrack to keep getting richer relative to the rest of the population (and as the whole population continues to get absolutely richer). But it's bad news for liberals. If whites are a template for how a unselfconcious minority votes (although the Christian Right is not exactly unselfconcious, so they might need to be factored out in constructing the template), then the Democrats are in a world of shit. Even beyond the numbers themselves, there is the problem that a party whose viability depends on turning out and winning huge majorities of certain racial groups by appealing to an increasingly-distant history faces a natural disadvantage in the type of targetted, and occassionally demagogic campaigning it has to do (remember those James Byrd TV ads from 2000), which is one of the underlying reasons for all the (slightly unfair) carping we've heard about the Democrats having no broadly unifying message over the past two cycles.
Ignoring race (and sexual orientation and unionization and gender), how stark is the split between the parties on income? Trends are hard to interpret because of the decling protest vote since 1992 (protests are usually against the incumbant but in 1992 and 1996, some were also against the two-party system in general). But according to the New York Times exit polls (quite similar to the official the NEP/MSNBC/CNN exits but available in a trusty spreadsheet), the Dem share of the roughly 23% of poorest voting households (those making under $30,000 US2004) has been steady since 1996 at about 57%, trending up ever-so-slightly in 2004 (although this may be sheerly a function of the unprecedented inner-city GOTV operation last year.) The Dem shares among upper-middle-class ($75,000-$99,000) and wealthy ($100,000+) households have also been relatively steady at 45% and 42%. On the other hand, Philip Klinkner argued in TNR after the election that Bush's popular vote gains in 2004 could be chalked up to his improved performance among the $100,000+ class, measured by "voter performance": a slightly increased percentage of the electorate in the category, times that category's slightly higher GOP support. With the high level of statis inherent in US presidential political voting, he may have a very good point; two or three point changes among a fast-growing segment of the population (the rich) can have huge consequences for election results.
So what, then, is to be done? That's a tricky question for the party of the public interest. If American voting is increasingly based on financial and income status (and it's worth remembering that income status remains secondary not only to race but also to marital status and religion as a raw determinant of voting behaviour), then the Democrats need to find a way to tap into this. The Washtington Times piece concludes:
Polls show that voters identify the Democratic Party as the party of the middle class and that Democrats beat Republicans on middle-class issues such as jobs, health care and education, but that hasn't translated into votes, said Jim Kessler, policy director for Third Way, which was created after the 2004 election with the goal of "modernizing the progressive cause."
"Middle-class voters think Democrats care about issues they care about, but they don't care about the middle-class voter as much as they care about other voters -- that they're No. 4 or 5 on the priority list," Mr. Kessler said. Put another way, he said, "they think Democrats care about somebody else's schools, health care, jobs."
Part of this, I think, is the simple and pervasive belief among middle class Americans that government can't and won't really help them, that government provides a vaguely defined public good that is aimed at helping people in dire straights, but not the somewhat-above-average joe, which, according to surveys, is how Joe American generally sees himself. This used to take uglier forms than it does today (the increasing wealth and socio-political power of blacks and Hispanics has helped eradicate those uglier forms of the argument.) But the gist remains. Which is why I think -- though I'm not going to expand on it here -- that the Democrats' number one goal has to be defending and reaffirming the role of government itself. Until middle class and upper-middle-class Americans start believing the government, particularly an active domestic government, is a benevolent entity worth supporting with your tax dollars, the pro-growth, anti-tax party is going to keep the natural advantage.
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