Professor Gelman, Welcome to the Lake.

Matt, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

I’m glad to be here.

Professor Gelman, glad to have you hear, I enjoyed your book very much and like the blog, too.

To start, ever since the 2000 election map came out showing rich coastal states going blue, while poor states in the south and center went red, there’s been a lot of debate over the question of what Democrats can do to appeal to those poor voters in red states. Your view is that the whole debate is misguided. Can you explain why?

First off, generally when a party gains votes, it’s roughly a uniform national swing. We saw this with Obama: true, he gained more (compared to Kerry) in the Midwest and less in some of the South, but it wasn’t so far off from a uniform 4 or 5 percentage point improvement. So, in that sense, the way for the Democrats (or the Republicans) to do better is to try to move the center of gravity: to be seen as more competent and more moderate than the other party.

Matt, thanks so much for the great introduction. And prof. Gellman, this book was a great read. Thanks so much for all the work that went into the writing of it.

I’m fascinated by the dynamic of the stereotypes that get perpetuated every news cycle versus the altogether different realities you found in so many cases. Were you shocked by a lot of this or were you expecting it?

Beyond this, yeah, Democrats actually have been doing ok among poor voters in red states. It’s the rich voters in red states where the Dems were really getting hosed.

If you want, you can pull out slices of low income people who vote Republican, for example, low-income whites in some states. But overall the Democrats have been doing well among voters in the lower third of income.

Can we tell yet if the structure of this pattern shifted in 2008, or was the swing pretty uniform across demographic groups in the same way it was pretty uniform across states?

Welcome to FDL Prof Gelman and Matt!

I have not had the opportunity to read the book but do have a question/comment.

I grew up in Kentucky and have lived all over the country, both in deeply “red” and deeply “blue” states as well as in some of the purple states.

One of the little gotchas that seems to be frequently glossed over is the disparity in taxes paid versus Federal dollars received. The deeply Red states seem to receive far more Federal dollars per capita and the deeply Blue states pay far more than they receive.

How do we get this disparity out to the world? Especially since the Congress men and Senators from the Red states seem far more likely to be working against the will of the majority of the country on most every issue.

Welcome, Professor Gelman.

The result is the famous “culture war” waged not between yuppies and the working class, but between the wealthy residents of wealthy states and the wealthy residents of poor states.

Nice to hear someone say that out loud. Still, I think it makes a difference that poor states are, by and large, right to work states, and there are pressures on the working class that aren’t as strong as they are in states where you have a shot at being able to support your family if you’re not in lockstep with the company store.

As my friend once said to me in 10th grade English class: I don’t know why they keep telling us not to use cliches. They’re cliches for a reason!

So, sure, some of the stereotypes are fine. I’m a college professor, and as far as I can tell the stereotypes of college professors’ political attitudes are pretty true.

But there are a couple things that do bug me, and that bugged me enough to start this project several years ago. To say it most generally, I don’t like when people try to marginalize the other side. Are Democrats just a coalition of trust fund babies, attorneys, public employees, and welfare moms? Are Republicans merely an unstable mix of corporate fat cats and bible thumpers? No on both counts. We’re talking about a (close to) 50/50 nation here, and I don’t think any good is served by putting down everybody on the other side of the aisle.

More specifically, I was bothered by the whole “Democrats are yuppies” thing.

Sometimes you hear discussion of how the red states get more from the government than they pay in taxes while the blue states get less and pay more. This is slightly misleading because the blue states are richer and rich people pay a higher rate of income tax, but it does raise the interesting question of the national effects of the graduated income tax.

For some perspective on where this is coming from, here’s a fun bit from chapter 9 of our book:

In our office is a map from 1924 titled “Good Roads Everywhere” that shows a proposed system of highways spanning the country, “to be built and forever maintained by the United States Government.” The map, made by the National Highways Association, also includes the following explanation for the proposed funding system: “Such a system of National Highways will be paid for out of general taxation. The 9 rich densely populated northeastern States will pay over 50 per cent of the cost. They can afford to, as they will gain the most. Over 40 per cent will be paid for by the great wealthy cities of the Nation. . . . The farming regions of the West, Mississippi Valley, Southwest and South will pay less than 10 per cent of the cost and get 90 per cent of the mileage.” Beyond its quaint slogans (”A paved United States in our day”) and ideas that time has passed by (”Highway airports”), the map gives a sense of the potential for federal taxing and spending to transfer money between states and regions.

I live in WV — my state is one of those that is very difficult to pigeonhole. Especially in the last election cycle, where race played as much a part as economics, religion and the NRA in some areas. It’s confounding to see such a Democratic tilt at the local and state level, and see the state go red at the presidential level.

You write, “I think it makes a difference that poor states are, by and large, right to work states, and there are pressures on the working class that aren’t as strong as they are in states where you have a shot at being able to support your family if you’re not in lockstep with the company store.”

That could be. Although we didn’t see these patterns 30 or more years ago. This suggests to me that a lot of the red-state, blue-state divide arises from the relatively recent linkage of social issues with political partisanship. A change that was foreshadowed by the cultural battles of the 60s and 70s but didn’t really come to flower, in terms of voting patterns, until the 90s.

Question:

It is more than obvious to me that members of Congress hold very little regard for the people that actually voted to put them in office, much preferring the company of the big money donors. Certainly the food and drink are better at those parties than any gathering I could throw and perhaps that’s the main reason but what is it about these elected officials that makes them despise the common people so much? Are fair wages, a roof over one’s head, education and health care really that much to ask? Once in office, why not just hurry up and pass all the things that will help the majority of people before the lobbyists can start whining (and wining) them?

Compared to 2004, WV had about a 3% Democratic swing in the House vote (about half the national swing) and a 0% swing in the presidential vote.

To what extent has the sort of state-to-state redistribution succeeded in actually changing the hierarchy within the country. One gets the sense that there’s been a shift in economic vitality away from the northeast and toward the sunbelt.

Lots of reasons why congressmembers are more responsive to the rich than the poor, I think, including:

- Congressmembers themselves are mostly pretty rich, so I imagine they can more relate to the concerns of the rich.
- Congressmembers see lobbyists every day; personal connections mean a lot.
- If you’re a congressmember and you piss off a rich or influential person, you can be stirring up a lot of trouble.
- And, in addition to all that, rich people vote too!

I found Gelman’s book especially helpful in trying to describe the religious right. People tend to assume that they’re uneducated hillbillies living in shacks, but a high proportion of the religious right is prosperous and educated. Prosperity gospel churches might be born-again or pentecostal, but they’re not poor people. It’s a feel-good religion for rich people.

A couple speculations: rich liberals will live in real cities and like urban things, and they’re likely to have a humanities or liberal arts education and/or an interest in “the arts”. Rich conservatives will be more likely to live in exurbs or medium-sized cities and have a technical or business education and little interest in “liberal arts bullshit”. Christianity will fill the space in their lives which liberals fill with what is called culture or the arts. Conservatives tend to think of themselves as unpretentious or down home, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t ostentatious, or arrogant toward their trashy local inferiors.

A third split, I think that conservatives are more likely to be in the business world, whereas liberals are more likely to be in government, non-profits, academia, or the media part of the business world. I think that tech people tend to be divided, and I’d like to see a study of that.

Hello Andrew,

I haven’t had a chance to read your book, so this may be a stupid question, but if I take a state I know (MA) then if the rich people all woke up injected with a drug that made them vote Republican, it might make the State closer to a swing state, but there’s still more poor people and if they keep voting Dem, then the Dems would win.

How are the Red states different? Or are there subtleties to the definitions of rich and poor?

That has been ongoing for generations. When the textiles industries moved from the Northeast to the South in the 50s and 60s to escape the unions, it started a lot of that.

Growing up in Kentucky in the 50s and 60s, there were numerous manufacturing groups from the north that moved south to get away from unions.

Standard lose-lose as it allowed the companies to pay lower wages and left the old areas less economically vital.

There’s some interesting data on voting behavior by occupational category in this post on Prof Gelman’s blog. I recall seeing a prettier version of these graphs in the book, but can’t quite recall the discussion.

Not only do rich people vote, but so do their friends, their employees, their colleagues, their business associates…the list is endless in terms of influence and reach. Whereas with someone poor? They can’t smply go out and buy advertising, start a PAC and make the member of COngress’ life miserable. Or, at least, they couldn’t.

Now they can start a blog. *g*

We saw some interesting patterns comparing economic changes in red and blue states. In the 1980-2000 period, the poor actually improved their incomes most in red states, and the rich did best in the blue states (contrary to what your intuition might be based on the governance in these states).

I asked various experts what they thought about this and I got the following answers:

1. The safety net worked. Poor people in red states were poorest and were brought forward the most.

2. Income growth at the high end was concentrated in just 5 or 10 counties in the whole U.S. (Manhattan, suburban Connecticut, San Francisco, etc.), and these places were in or near major cities in blue states.

3. Sunbelt states had economic growth (benefiting from air conditioning, the interstate highway system, etc.) which tends to help the people at the bottom of the ladder.

4. Sunbelt states tend to have fewer labor unions, which some say benefits economic growth and helps people at the bottom.

But really all these 1,2,3,4 above are beyond my ability to evaluate. What I can do is tell you about the trends, tell you what happened. I’ll let others provide the explanations.

You wrote, “People tend to assume that they’re uneducated hillbillies living in shacks, but a high proportion of the religious right is prosperous and educated. Prosperity gospel churches might be born-again or pentecostal, but they’re not poor people. It’s a feel-good religion for rich people.”

The correlation between income and religious attendance is positive in poor states and negative in rich states. I.e., in the red states it’s the more prosperous who go to church.

Regarding your other point, yes, I think it’s true that liberals are more likely to work in government-supported fields, which makes sense, of course.

Thanks for hosting, Matt, and thank you for joining us today, Professor Gelman. I haven’t read your book, although I look forward to it, so my question may seem simplistic; for that I apologize.

How do you account in your analysis for purple states, particularly the rapidly bifurcated states like Virginia or even North Carolina, where spreading sub/urbanized cores house diverse populations amidst a bastion of the old confederacy? Do you see other Southern states, perhaps Georgia, becoming more like these states over time?

I appreciate you both taking time to chat at FDL today!

Nor, Gelman shows, is it true that downscale voters are ruled by their religious or moral sentiments rather than economic self-interest
Not to be contentious, but that’s not my person to person, vs. ivory tower idealst experience.
I had conversations with folks in my neighborhood about Prop 8. Many people told me they didn’t know the details of the debate, but because of religous views had chosen to pass the bill.
Two points: speak to what you know or don’t.
Fractionalised groups should work harder and smarter about bills that support their cause and stop spewing their feelings without any real support. It just undermines the causes.

This came up obliquely talking about West Virginia, but how does race play into this? You sometimes hear people say that the Democratic-tilt of poorer people is entirely explained by the lower socioeconomic status of non-whites.

I wondered about that also in terms of a lot of what Tom Schaller has written about with the South becoming a sort of GOP concentration, but it thinning out a bit elsewhere, including out West. Is it a like attracts like quality — or merely a factor of economic drift bringing in the sort of people who have a particular ideological bent as well?

Fascinating stuff, either way, if you could make those connections…

You write, “if I take a state I know (MA) then if the rich people all woke up injected with a drug that made them vote Republican, it might make the State closer to a swing state, but there’s still more poor people and if they keep voting Dem, then the Dems would win.”

What is more likely to happen is that there will be a close to uniform swing. Massachusetts will likely stay Democratic for awhile, but Minnesota might flip to the Republicans in 2012 or 2016.

Updated graphs are here:
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~…..ne-of.html

Professionals (doctors, lawyers, and so forth) and routine white collar workers (clerks, etc.) used to support the Republicans more than the national average, but over the past half-century they have gradually moved through the center and now strongly support the Democrats. Business owners have moved in the opposite direction, from close to the national average to being staunch Republicans; and skilled and unskilled workers have moved from strong Democratic support to near the middle.

These shifts are consistent with the oft-noted cultural differences between Red and Blue America. Doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, and office workers seem today like prototypical liberal Democrats, while businessmen and hardhats seem like good representatives of the Republican party. The dividing points were different 50 years ago. The Republicans still have the support of most of the high-income voters, but these are conservatives of a different sort. As E. J. Dionne noted in analyzing poll data from 2004, the Democrats’ strength among well-educated voters is strongest among those with household incomes under $75,000—”the incomes of teachers, social workers, nurses, and skilled technicians, not of Hollywood stars, bestselling authors, or television producers, let alone corporate executives.”

We tried to take our analysis further by regressing on income within occupation groups, but we didn’t find anything exciting; there wasn’t much evidence of different rich/poor voting gaps in different occupation categories. The Teixeira and Abramowitz article adds something to this picture because they talk about how the relative sizes of these different groups are changing.

John Allen Paulos talks about how certain numbers become ‘anchor’ numbers even if they are off base and then people argue about if the real number is higher or lower. The right wing media threw out the ‘anchor’ number of 73 dollars an hour wage for the big 3 autoworkers in the union and have been repeating it even when it has been debunked. It has become a zombie fact.

Are there zombie facts that you see in the media that drive you nuts that you especially want to counter here?

So, by implication, Mississippi has more rich people who vote than poor people who vote? Is this a matter of turnout, or the structure of the society in the state?

You ask: “How do you account in your analysis for purple states, particularly the rapidly bifurcated states like Virginia or even North Carolina, where spreading sub/urbanized cores house diverse populations amidst a bastion of the old confederacy? Do you see other Southern states, perhaps Georgia, becoming more like these states over time?”

My reply: We haven’t really tried to forecasts trends in this way. But I’ll say this: the change from 2004 to 2008 was about the same in Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. The Democrats were just starting from a lower base in Georgia.

I think that an analysis down to the Congessional-District level would verify the state-by-state results. Minnesota has two rural conservative districts, three urban liberal districts, and three swing districts.

One difference might be that the urban / non-urban distinction might cut into the rich / poor distinction.

It was a tough one to quantify here in WV, honestly, this year. Our state public radio had a whole series of interviews around the state on the racial and religious intolerance issues (the whole “Obama is a Muslim” e-mail hit here pretty hard in a lot of areas). Part of it, though, was how scarce the Obama folks were in campaigning. We tend to be a “retail politics state, and by and large, the biggest complaint I heard across the board canvassing or making calls was that people didn’t feel they’d gotten to know him because he hadn’t been here. And that made them nervous.

So was it race? Religion? Or some other intangible? There were outright racists, absolutely, but a lot of folks were more comfortable with McCain because they felt like they knew him more. (Even though most of what they knew was his PR branding and not really his policies or long-term voting record.)

And I heard that for PA and OH as well — until closer to the primaries when they started having a much higher rate of campaign visits there into the end of the general. This Appalachian pocket is filled with a lot of folks who mistrust “outsiders.” Which is where the retail end of it becomes so important.

But you do have county-by-county data which shows which kinds of places within Virginia, NC, Georgia, etc. are more likely to look favorably on Democrats, right?

We wrote that religion and social issues matter more to the poor (in determining their vote choice) than among the rich. But these are just averages. I completely agree that in many individual cases the opposite pattern will occur.

I should also note that economic issues are particularly important when voting for president or congress. Less so when voting on a gay rights initiative.

How is the period 1980-2000 representative of anything but itself?

It was, principally, a time of technological manufacturing based on early to mid-scientific breakthroughs.

early to mid-20th century scientific breakthroughs.

At least up through 2004, there was a positive correlation of income and Republican voting, looking separately at each ethnic group:
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~…..th-th.html

Ethnicity explained some of the correlation between income and voting but not all.

One difference might be that the urban / non-urban distinction might cut into the rich / poor distinction.

This is an interesting point. Of course cities are very demographically different from non-cities in a bunch of ways (income distribution, racial composition, marital status) so I imagine it’s difficult to understand these relationships.

Yeah. Why education is so important.
Poor people just don’t matter.

We broke down the 2004/2008 swing in a couple of ways:

First, by region (midwest/west/northeast/south) and county income (poor/middle/rich counties):
http://redbluerichpoor.com/blo…..-counties/

To focus on the south: In middle-class and rich southern counties, there was a close to uniform swing from Kerry to Obama. In poor southern counties, not much movement.

We also graphed by county population. There we found that, throughout the country but particularly in the south, Obama gained the most (relative to Kerry) in high-population counties. The graphs are pretty striking, and they actually continue some trends from 2000 and 2004:
http://redbluerichpoor.com/blo…..ty-barack/

It’s so nice to have an overtly urban President. I sort of like rural life, but the rural mystique has been toxic in American life.

We have some hypotheses about the effect of people moving. We discuss this a bit in chapter 10 of the book but it’s pretty speculative. The idea is that nowadays, lower-income people might not have much choice where to live but richer people can choose to live in, say, Austin or San Francisco or Chicago (if they’re liberal) or a more conservative suburb if that’s their choice.

But, the story goes, 30 years ago (when there was no red/blue divide in the way there is now), maybe upper-income Americans were _not_ so free to move where they wanted. Maybe they were more likely to move if tranferred by their company, or whatever. So the idea of moving to where you want to be, culturally, might be relatively new, at least at the national level.

Who was the last urban president before Obama? Nixon?

Political scientist Jonathan Rodden has written about the interesting phenomenon that cities tend to be more liberal, and the countryside tends to be more conservative, in many different countries in many different time periods.

One striking thing about recent American politics is how tightly these liberal/conservative patterns have matched to Democratic/Republican voting patterns. Fifty years ago, big cities weren’t routinely giving Democrats 80 percent of the vote.

Ranches and such notwithstanding, I think it could be argued that both Reagan and Bush I were urban presidents even though they worked against urban life in most ways.

It’s Kennedy, right? The part of California where Nixon lived is pretty suburban now, but I think was rural back then.

Nixon didn’t admit to it. Kennedy was from Boston.

Krugman, in Conscience of a Liberal, argues that poverty in the south is a legacy of slavery. Slavery didn’t just lower the slaves’ standards of living, it had a spillover influence in reducing the wages of poor whites, for whom the slaves were substituted. Fast forward to today, when the situation is better, but far from equal. Thus discriminiation against blacks in the south not only holds down their wages, but also those of the poor whites who compete with them. And the rich whites make every attempt to institutionalize the status quo thru laws like right-to-work.

What do you think of that hypothesis and does it have implications for the ways that Ds should try to penetrate the south? Or should the Ds just leave the south to the Rs, now a regional party, not a national one.

The operative word was “overtly”. Bush is in reality an urban President.

Whew–this is exhausting! Sort of like playing tennis when many different people are on the other side of the court, whacking balls over at me. I should’ve gotten my coauthors to help . . . .

Which reminds me, before I forget, to thank my coauthors:

David Park
Boris Shor
Joe Bafumi
Jeronimo Cortina

They were all poli sci Ph.D. students at Columbia when we began this project. Now they’re asst profs (at George Washington, Chicago, Dartmouth, and Houston).

I thought Nixon lived in NYC and practiced law in the years immediately before 1968. But maybe I’m misremembering this.

I don’t think of Reagan and G.H.W. Bush as urbanites; I just can’t imagine them walking around and participating in city life. But perhaps that’s just my Manhattan-centrism talking.

You commented on the legacy of slavery and then wrote, “What do you think of that hypothesis and does it have implications for the ways that Ds should try to penetrate the south? Or should the Ds just leave the south to the Rs, now a regional party, not a national one.”

First, I don’t think either party would be smart to ignore any states: don’t forget there are governors, state legislatures, and congressional seats to pick up. Beyond this, any state is a mix of parts. Certainly it wouldn’t have been smart for Obama to ignore Virginia and North Carolina!

I thought Nixon lived in NYC and practiced law in the years immediately before 1968. But maybe I’m misremembering this.

That’s true. I was thinking of his early life and career in elected office when he base was in Orange County. Apparently the county gets it’s name because until quite recently it was full of citrus farms.

In recent elections, Democrats have done best among the lowest and highest educated groups and Republicans have done best in the middle. But the differences have been small, in the range of 45-55 and 55-45, not as big as differences in voting between rich and poor.

Bush I = Houston
Reagan = LA

Not urban in the northeast or rust belt sense but urban nevertheless.

But JohnEmerson is correct in that they would all deny being able to see anything positive about urban life

Political scientist Jonathan Rodden has written about the interesting phenomenon that cities tend to be more liberal, and the countryside tends to be more conservative, in many different countries in many different time periods.

This reminds me that the book had some discussion of putting the trends you observe in US politics in international context. Maybe you could tell our audience something about what you found?

52: In “Made in Texas”, Lind argues that Bush is the political heir of the Confederate planters of East Texas. They specialized in resource industries (now oil) and were oriented toward third world aggression, and to them an impoverished, poorly educated, disenfranchised, helpless, working class was what God intended.

You’re doing great

Interesting discussion here!

When Matt wrote “Much media confusion about American politics then stems from what’s essentially a coincidence,” it made me curious: what would (the two of) you consider to be the most egregious examples of such confusion?

Also, Prof. Gellman, I guess I don’t understand your explanation of why the south votes R. You state that it’s the rich in the south who determine the outcome, and that poor southerners vote D. But aren’t there many more poor than rich? If so, why the observed outcome? Are voting rates of rich southerners that much higher than those of poor southerners? If so, how much is owing to voter suppression?

We looked at survey data from about 35 countries, mostly European. For each country, we looked at voters for right-of-center and left-of-center parties.

1. The rich-poor divide in voting was larger in the U.S. than in most of the other countries. In Europe, right-of-center parties tend to do slightly better among the rich than among the poor, but less so than the U.S.

2. The religious-nonreligious divide is not unique to the U.S. In other countries as well, church attenders vote for conservative parties more than non-church-attenders do.

To me, both these findings were surprising. Before looking at the data, I’d naively thought that (1) voting was more class-based in Europe than in the U.S, and (2) religion mattered more in the U.S. than elsewhere. But not so.

And there must be vast differences in the rates at which the rich votes R or D. In NYC, the rich vote D in large numbers, and also support D candidates. I’ve read that 60% of Obama’s war chest came from Wall St.

I’m obviously not Prof Gelman but if I may postulate:

The south has far more small towns where everyone knows everyone else, including their business and how they vote. The small number of rich folks in these small towns have an outsize influence beyond their raw numbers and their attitudes carry extra weight in the political discussion.

So the voting influence then has them pushing, often subtly, folks to vote against their self interests.

Or I might be an idiot.

You write, “what would you consider to be the most egregious examples of such confusion?”

Here’s one:

“It evidently irritates many liberals to point out that their party gets heavy support from superaffluent “people of fashion” and does not run very well among “the common people.”" — Michael Barone, 2005

Here’s another

“Where Democrats had a good year in 2004 they owed much to trustfunders. In Colorado, they captured a Senate and a House seat and both houses of the legislature. Their political base in that state is increasingly not the oppressed proletariat of Denver, but the trustfunder-heavy counties that contain Aspen (68 percent for Kerry), Telluride (72 percent) and Boulder (66 percent). . . .” — Michael Barone

I went and looked it up. Actually, Kerry got 70% of the vote in Denver.

Here’s another:

“)K, but here’s the fact that nobody ever, ever mentions—Democrats win rich people. Over $100,000 in income, you are likely more than not to vote for Democrats. People never point that out. Rich people vote liberal. I don’t know what that’s all about.” —- Tucker Carlson, 2007

The funny thing is, if Carlson had just waited until mid-November 2008, he would’ve been right!

You write: “And there must be vast differences in the rates at which the rich votes R or D. In NYC, the rich vote D in large numbers, and also support D candidates. I’ve read that 60% of Obama’s war chest came from Wall St.”

Yeah, both parties get lots of their $ from the wealthy. And you gotta figure that’s going to affect their policies on issues that affect the rich.

Tom Ferguson (who we cite in the book) has done a lot of work looking at political contributions over time, from Franklin Roosevelt on. In recent years, Republicans have had the support of most of big business, including oil, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals, but the Democrats have had the support of finance.

In Europe, right-of-center parties tend to do slightly better among the rich than among the poor, but less so than the U.S.

Weren’t there actually a few countries—France, Ireland, and Israel I think—where the left does better with the poor than with the rich?

I’m guessing:
Roe v Wade 1973
The Moral Majority 1978
Ronald Reagan presidency 1981-1989
Fairness Doctrine repealed 1987
I’ve aged 10 years just thinking about all that. ;)

Tucker Carlson = stopped clock

Yes, I think it’s perfectly rational for people to vote for what’s good for their friends and neighbors and local areas, and not just focus on their own pocketbooks. For example, I live in NYC and, whatever my income happens to be, I don’t want the subways to return to 1970s and 1980s-style.

What accounts for the industry division of the rich?

I actually got distracted from my question. Are there differences in the % of the rich voting R in the north vs. the % of the rich voting R in the south?

You write, “Weren’t there actually a few countries—France, Ireland, and Israel I think—where the left does better with the poor than with the rich?”

Here it is . . . page 103 . . . Yup, you remembered correctly!

Yes, what’s striking about all of this is that it was only _after_ these 1970s and 1980s cultural battles that the strong correlations began showing up linking Republican voting with religious attendance and conservative attitudes on social issues.

With the media we’re not dealing with innocent misconceptions, but with the ingenious productions operatives with agendas, which in turn are motivated by the desire to please the management.

In other words, if one of those guys comes up with a powerful new misconception, he’ll improve his status in the media world.

Guess you haven’t been on the subways recently. Graffiti’s making a comeback, and with the financial problems, that, general maintenance, crowding, slower schedules will be back in an eyeblink.

You write: “What accounts for the industry division of the rich?”

I dunno, but some of it has to be region (e.g., FDR did well in Texas and Louisiana and also had the support of the oil industry) and some must be tied to policy, and some must have to do with attitudes of the individuals in the industries in question.

Then you write: “I actually got distracted from my question. Are there differences in the % of the rich voting R in the north vs. the % of the rich voting R in the south?”

Yes, the rich tend to vote more Republican in the south. See page 54 for an example.

That’s pretty weird, eh? In Israel it’s easy to see why non-economic issues would have unusually high salience. But Ireland and France are harder to figure out.

I usually ride my bike but I do take the train occasionally. Service isn’t perfect but it’s much much better than I remember from the 1980s.

Professor Gelman, Welcome to the Lake.

Matt, Thank you for hosting today’s Book Salon

In other words, if one of those guys comes up with a powerful new misconception, he’ll improve his status in the media world.

I think that’s right. Political scientists such as Larry Bartels were pointing out right out of the gates that the underlying premise of What’s the Matter With Kansas? was wrong but that didn’t stop it from being *the* political book of 2005. Barone’s kind of a different case; he has the journalistic equivalent of tenure and will be a semi-important commentator no matter what he says or does.

Yeah, as of late December the NYC subway service was still considerably better than what I remember even from my teen years in the 1990s.

Don’t forget to Digg this great chat!

You write, “That’s pretty weird, eh? In Israel it’s easy to see why non-economic issues would have unusually high salience. But Ireland and France are harder to figure out.”

I’ll say two things. First, we really weren’t doing a thorough analysis here. We represented each country by a single election. At the very least, I hope to do a better analysis of France during our forthcoming sabbatical year in Paris…

Second, although it’s not easy to explain why the pattern goes in the “wrong” direction, it makes sense to me (retrospectively) why the correlation between income and conservative voting is close to zero in these places. Basically, the mainstream left and right in these countries don’t differ much on economic issues. To put it briefly. the welfare state is too popular to abandon and it’s too expensive to be expanded. So, unlike in the U.S., there’s not so much for the two parties to disagree on, econmically.

John Huber and Piero Stanig (my colleagues who gave us these data) have written about this; see here:
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~…..-poor.html

Re European results on religion.

” 2. The religious-nonreligious divide is not unique to the U.S. In other countries as well, church attenders vote for conservative parties more than non-church-attenders do.

To me, both these findings were surprising. Before looking at the data, I’d naively thought that … (2) religion mattered more in the U.S. than elsewhere. But not so.”

I don’t find these inconsistent. Did you correlate percentage of churchgoers in US v. percentage of churchgoers in Europe? Based on my experience in Europe, the churchgoers would tend to vote for more conservative parties, but the percentage of the population that is churchgoer is smaller than the U.S. Thus “religion does matter more in the U.S.”

Or am I missing what really surprised you?

I agree with Larry Bartels about virtually everything, but I do think that the book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” (which, amusingly, was given the title, “What’s the Matter with America” in its British edition) has a lot of virtues, tracking the battles within the Kansas Republican Party and tracking the appeal of conservative rhetoric.

What you say is about right, I think. I just hadn’t really thought it through before seeing the data.

Basically, the mainstream left and right in these countries don’t differ much on economic issues. To put it briefly. the welfare state is too popular to abandon and it’s too expensive to be expanded. So, unlike in the U.S., there’s not so much for the two parties to disagree on, econmically.

Plus with less income inequality and a more generous welfare state, there’ll be less difference between the interests of rich and poor.

You write, “I don’t understand your explanation of why the south votes R. You state that it’s the rich in the south who determine the outcome, and that poor southerners vote D. But aren’t there many more poor than rich? If so, why the observed outcome? Are voting rates of rich southerners that much higher than those of poor southerners? If so, how much is owing to voter suppression?”

Southerners in general are more conservative, but this is particularly the case among middle-income and upper-income Southerners. Put everyone together, and you find that the South is more conservative, and more Republican, than other regions. The South of course didn’t use to be more Republican; this trend is related to the increasing trend of ideological voting (the disappearance of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans).

And what accounts for the greater attachment of rich southerners to the R party vs. rich notherners?

You write, “With the media we’re not dealing with innocent misconceptions, but with the ingenious productions operatives with agendas, which in turn are motivated by the desire to please the management. In other words, if one of those guys comes up with a powerful new misconception, he’ll improve his status in the media world.”

Sure, but think of someone like Michael Barone. His credibility comes from being an authority on political geography. I doubt he makes factual errors on purpose; my guess is that he is operating under some broad misconceptions which lead him to just assume certain things are true, without bothering to look them up.

But aren’t there many more poor than rich?

IIRC, the way the analysis is done “rich” just means the top third of the income distribution while “poor” is the bottom third, so there are equal numbers of rich and poor by definition. Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal make the point in “Polarized America” that the bottom third of the US income distribution includes an awful lot of non-citizens who can’t vote, so their interests should be structurally underrepresented in politics.

One of the striking statistics of Gelman’s book was that in the South everyone was more conservative / Republican, but that the rich whites were still more conservative than the poor whites.

Is there a separation between poor Southern states and poor non-southern states (Montana is one, I think)?

You ask, “what accounts for the greater attachment of rich southerners to the R party vs. rich notherners?”

My reply: Rich southerners are more conservative, on both economic and social issues, than rich northerners.

Actually, what we’ve looked at is rich/poor people in red and blue states (see Plate 10, opposite page 107) but I’m assuming this holds comparing north to south as well.

Political Power in the US has always been about the Rich against the poor, it just seems that some of the poor just don’t realize they are voting against their own self interests!

Dugg! this great Book Salon!

One of the things about credibility is that you accumulate it at the beginning and sell it off in the end. People have observed this dynamic among politicians, and I presume it’s true of journalists and academics.

“If you want your lie to be believed, send an honest man to deliver it.” A good reputation is fungible.

Sure, but think of someone like Michael Barone. His credibility comes from being an authority on political geography.

The issue here is that he’s gotten a deal where he’s still credited for the excellent reference volume, The Almanac of American Politics, but he doesn’t actually do the work besides writing an introduction. Consequently, he’s fallen out of touch with the very data for which he has a reputation for having mastered.

You write, “A good reputation is fungible.”

Cool! I’d like to take advantage of that some day . . .

Actually, I already have. Several years ago, one of my colleagues told me that I had a reputation for writing very lukewarm letters of recommendation. The next time I had an important letter to write (for a colleague I had a lot of respect for), I took advantage of this and wrote an extremely positive letter. He got the job.

Interesting point about Barone. I first read the Almanac of American Politics back around 1988, and I found it fascinating, but even then I noticed something of a conservative bias, something about how he wrote about the different parts of the country.

You write, “Political Power in the US has always been about the Rich against the poor, it just seems that some of the poor just don’t realize they are voting against their own self interests!”

But Edlin, Kaplan, and I argue that it’s most rational to vote, not for your self interest, but for what you think is good for the country (or, at the very least, for your group); see here for the quick version:
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1032
Or here for the longer version:
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1032
Or here for the full version:
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~…..final6.pdf

To loop back to your original question: to the extent the debate about the economy can be framed as in terms of “what’s good for the economy” with “the economy” referring to the stock market, well, that’s good for the rich and maybe not so good for the poor.

To put it differently, media persuade and they inform. People who pay for media pay to persuade others and (possibly) to inform themselves. You can see this clearly in the WSJ, whose news pages provide valuable information for people who need informations, and whose editorial pages provide egregious ideological nonsense and lies. So which is Barone?

How about age? We had a lot of discussion first in 2004 and then again in 2008 about Democrats being powered by a youth surge. Did that come through, or did young people’s affection for Obama just reflect the general swing toward him plus perhaps the smaller proportion of white people in the youngest cohort?

A thought on why the rich who vote R are segregated by industries. In large part, it’s new economy (Silicon Valley, Wall St.) vs. old economy. The distinction was stark when W took office: all of a sudden, oil, paper, aluminum, railroads were the people in power. Turned the clock back decades.

Of course, we now know all that new economy “financial engineering” was back to the old tricks of the 1920s: fronting fees for issuing paper and not caring what happens to it afterwards. (Disclaimer: I worked on Wall St. for over 25 years.)

Pharma might seem to be the outlier, an allegedly research-intensive industry that supports Rs. But as 80% of its research is “me too” (i.e. chasing the smallest patentable difference from an existing blockbuster), I think that’s not as much of a new economy industry as some believe.

I’ve never met or corresponded with Barone, but I can conjecture that his political positions eventually evolved to become so strong that he felt more comfortable playing the role of activist rather than impartial activist. At some point, you (metaphorically) put down the pen and take up the sword, and maybe Barone reached that point.

You ask about age. Indeed, Obama did very well among the young; my favorite graphical summary is here:
http://redbluerichpoor.com/blo…..body-else/
He beat McCain 2-1 among 18-29-year-olds.

Bill Clinton also did well among the young, but even when he ran against Bob Dole he didn’t pick up Obama numbers.

I would guess that some of the patterns of industries supporting one party or the other is simple path dependence, i.e., they supported those people before.

Wow, I’m going to read the book simply based on this comment alone.

And the evangelical description synchs with what I’ve seen. As does the rest of the synopsis. The overlay it with environmental issues, and you can see the potential for homebuilders vs nurses/docs, as well as some other fractures around environmental issues that is not well explained by red/blue descriptors.

I would guess that some of the patterns of industries supporting one party or the other is simple path dependence, i.e., they supported those people before.

To perhaps flesh the mechanism out a bit, once a given industry supports a particular party, then that party tends to support that industry’s pet interests and issues. And that encourages the cycle to continue.

Um, the “path dependent” industries, those would be the old economy, no?

To continue with the discussion of age: the cohort pattern is large. I was talking with an economist of about my age and he described himself as a “Jimmy Carter Republican.” I said, oh, you like his deregulation? He said, No, Jimmy Carter made me a Republican. I knew what he meant. Back in 1980 everyone I knew hated Jimmy Carter. We were mostly Democrats and didn’t like Reagan, but we hated Carter.

Nowadays, I think there are a lot of George W. Bush Democrats.

Maybe new economy also, depending on the time frame of the path dependence. But, yes, I admit I was just speaking vaguely. We tended to keep such speculations out of the book. I’d put in speculations, my coauthors would take them out. Also, having 5 of us was a pretty good filter keeping out any partisan bias from either side any of us might have had.

As we come to the end of this great Book Salon,

Professor Gelman, Thank you for stopping by the Lake and spending the afternoon with us discussing your new book.

Matt, Thank you very much for Hosting this great Book Salon.

Everyone, if you haven’t bought this book yet, there is a link above.

Thanks all.

Thanks to everyone for the great discussion.

Thank you . . . that was fun (as well as exhausting). Perhaps we can do another one in a few months for my forthcoming book (of which I’m an editor), A Quantitative Tour of the Social Sciences!

CHS, anecdotal only on my part, but in my observation it comes down to caliber of candidate plus campaign organization.

In 2008, women that I know who tend to be Republican (moderates) were donating money and votes to Obama. They took one look at Sarah Palin and flipped out.

Tina Fey was the icing on that cake.
They don’t trust government, but the ‘incompetence and dishonesty’ of GWB and McCain put them over the edge between Sept and Nov.

Totally anecdotal info, no stats involved.

Thanks for this great chat, Mr Gelman, and thanks to Matt also for hosting today.

Pharma might seem to be the outlier, an allegedly research-intensive industry that supports Rs. But as 80% of its research is “me too” (i.e. chasing the smallest patentable difference from an existing blockbuster), I think that’s not as much of a new economy industry as some believe.

i don’t have the numbers at hand, but iirc pharma in generala is far more marketing and lobbying intensive than research intensive.

Also I should mention our blog,
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/blog/
In case you want to keep up with our latest thoughts…

I don’t see any discussion of WHY the states are trending bluer or redder over time, which surely bears on the discussion.

I blame mobility.

I live in an area of San Diego (comprising several square miles) that I call a “refugee camp”. Nearly NO ONE who lives here is from around California. They’re mostly folks who couldn’t stand the redneck attitudes in Chicken Leg Arkansas (or wherever) and got away as soon as they could. There has been a “brain drain” of creative, bright, open-minded people departing permanently from “fly-over country” and fleeing to the coasts and the larger cities. This leaves rich reserves of closed-minded, self-righteous, un-challenged folks, back home.

I see this trend accelerating, thanks to the Internet. If everybody there tells you that your life will be better away from where you grew up, then why would you stick around if you have a choice?

Given this premise, how would you predict some facts might change in your book over the next few decades?

#107, #102, #83: Lest I wasn’t heavy-handed enough in #99, etc.: besides individual shifts from impartiality to advocacy (Barone), and besides the rewards given to people with a vivid hypothesis (Frank), in a lot of the media people are rewarded for being less liberal and less Democratic one way or another, whether in a conservative, centrist, or cynical way. And for complex reasons, dishonesty and confusion often pay off better than honesty.

New post

Arguably, they were our suburban presidents.
And it was an era of enabling massive sprawl, and much of their money came from people involved in sprawl related activities: gas, oil, home building, autos, insurance, mortgage brokers, realtors… and there’s overlap with the whole ‘prosperity gospel’ megachurch layer in those demographics, also.

But as 80% of its research is “me too” (i.e. chasing the smallest patentable difference from an existing blockbuster), I think that’s not as much of a new economy industry as some believe.

FOTFLMAO ;-))