Having just been through a national election, many of us have seen those maps that show states as being either red (Republican) or blue (Democratic). However, when voting patterns are displayed at the county level, the states do not appear so monochromatic. For example, Texas is a quintessentially “red” state, but there is a string of “blue” counties along its southern border.  Conversely, California is mostly blue along its West coast and red in the interior.  The typical “swing” states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida show a “patchwork” pattern of red and blue. These maps get even more interesting when they have been mathematically distorted based on population density and shadings of purple based on how close the electoral split is at the state and county levels.

Some studies have identified divisions that are not necessarily “red vs blue,” but may impact political leanings. These divisions are based on demographics (age, race and income) as well as “cultural” factors such as church attendance and where people shop. Income (and related wealth) is certainly one of the more salient factors, but there is some debate about whether the wealthy favor Republicans or Democrats.  Some of us intuit that wealthy people will favor Republicans based solely on policy preferences. Yet there exists a persistent media-fueled stereotype of opera-season-ticket-holders and chardonnay-sipping Democrats versus NASCAR-attending “Joe six-pack” Republicans.

In Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State, a group of political scientists first present data that supports a correlation between higher income and voting Republican at the individual level, along with increasing stratification of voting patterns. Paradoxically, the richer states tend to vote Democratic. The authors then exhaustively analyze the data in an attempt to answer the following research question:  Why do rich people vote Republican and rich states vote Democratic?  After meticulous parsing (a statistical multi-level modeling) of the data, the authors find that rich people in poor states are more likely to vote Republican (i.e., in accordance with their economic interests), while in rich states, income has almost no correlation with voter preference—suggesting that voter preferences in wealthier states are based more on cultural factors than economics.

Data confirmed a historical pattern of rich counties traditionally supporting Republicans, although this has been steadily declining over the past forty years. Moreover, rich voter support for Republicans varied by region, with the strongest correlation between income and Republican support in the most Republican-leaning of the Southern states. The authors acknowledge that income is also correlated with race, particularly in the South, so preferences might be race-based as much as income-based. Alternatively, there are correlations between higher income and higher education.  Higher education is also correlated with preferences for Democrats, which could result in a higher-income Democratic preference (the so-called “liberal elites”). However, even outside of the South, voting patterns are predictable in the same manner:  higher individual income predicts support for Republicans and living in a wealthier state (regardless of individual income) predicts support for Democrats.

This group of political scientists next analyzed whether “cultural” factors might provide an explanation. They look at trends in “issue polarization” on the basis of economic, civil rights, moral and foreign policy issues.  Party identification has indeed become more associated with economic issues in poor states and with civil rights and moral issues everywhere, with moral issues especially becoming “increasingly correlated with liberal-conservative ideology and with each other.”  One counterintuitive result was that that low-income voters—who also tend to have less education, interest, and participation in politics—are “surprisingly complex,” exhibiting “no clear left-right opinion clusters.”

The next question to be addressed was whether or not there was a religious correlation; e.g., religious observers voting Republican and secular voters voting Democratic. For low income voters, there was little difference in voting patterns when comparing religious vs secular voters. Only among high-income voters does religious observance predict Republican voting. Religious and secular voters are increasingly different in their voting pattern higher up the income scale, which is also manifested in their attitudes on economic and social issues.  Thus it is richer Americans in richer parts of the country—more than the poor and rural—who are creating the cultural divide based on “God, guns and gays.”

The authors then asked whether income inequality may be affecting voting patterns, especially since it has “changed in recent decades,” but conclude (without much analysis) that income inequality does not explain the differences in voting patterns either. However, while income inequality (as far as the authors could establish) does not per se affect voting patterns, it “keeps the economic issues relevant and allows the polarization to continue.” Data at the international level indicates that countries with the biggest differences in voting preferences between rich and poor are those where the left and right parties are furthest apart on economic issues.

Although the authors could not offer an explanation for these results, they were confident in saying that a “typical Republican voter” was a rich person in a poor state and a “typical Democratic voter” was a lower-income person in a rich state. Further discrete findings were:

• The red-blue divide is sharpest among the richer and more politically influential voters.
• The voting gap between rich and poor is larger in republican states.
• The division between rich and poor voters is highest in poor states.
• Divisions between religious and secular voters are highest among high income voters.
• The strongest rich-poor divides are those in which the major parties are furthest apart on issues of redistribution.
• The data does NOT support generalizations that rich people vote based on economic issues while lower-income people are “more likely to be swayed by emotions.”

Here are my own possible explanations for these results:

1. The votes of higher income voters have a more significant impact than the votes of moderate and low income voters. Not only do wealthy people vote at higher rates, they are more likely to be politically active and support political issues and causes (as well as framing them) in public forums other than strictly voting. In summary, the concerns of wealthier voters are more likely to drive overall voter motivation at the polls.

2. When voters are more communitarian (“we’re all in this together”) on both social and economic issues, everyone in the aggregate is better off. This a reverse cause-and-effect explanation. That is, the Democratic-leaning values are what makes the state itself better off as a whole, so economic issues are neither as salient nor as divisive.

Which leads to the suggestion for additional testing for correlations between Gini coefficients, social welfare policy preferences, and voting patterns. Also not addressed by this study (but suggesting subject material for a future study) is the extent to which stricter state voting regulations might be discouraging lower-income individuals from voting.

Toward the end of their findings, the authors pose the question why Democrats have not been more successful than they have been. The economy is a key issue for many voters, not just low income ones, and there is more than ample evidence that the economy has generally performed better during Democratic administrations. The authors allude to some anomaly created by the confluence of electoral and economic cycles as well as deliberately gerrymandered redistricting, but it is not entirely clear, nor does it explain the phenomenon they are looking at. Perhaps it is because neither party has either coalesced or captured the debate about economic angst:  “Conservatives argue that the Democrats have lost relevance and authenticity, while liberals accuse the Democrats of selling out.”

As for predictions, the authors predict that increasing voter polarization could increase the probability of extremely close elections, and that “it will take more to swing voters away from their usual attachments.” Indeed, the recent election—with its extremely close results and sharp partisan rhetoric aimed at increasingly disaffected voters—seems to support this prediction.