Income and Voting in Vermont
For a bit more on National Review’s Jay Nordlinger’s assertion that contrary to the image of the Republican Party as “the party of the rich” in Vermont “modestly off people” are Republicans, whereas “comfortably off people, such as those that own ski chalets” are Democrats. In fact, Vermont is one of the states with a relatively weak relationship between income and voting behavior. But the relationship is that the more money a Vermonter makes, the more likely a Vermonter is to vote Republican. Razib offers these graphs. First, here’s the shape of a statewide race the GOP won:
And here’s the shape of a statewide race the GOP lost:
Clearly, when Republicans win they’re more than “the party of the rich” just as when Democrats win they’re more than “the party of the poor.” But richer people are friendly to Republicans than are poorer people, presumably because Republican policies are friendlier to richer people than they are to poorer people. It’s rather astounding that you see professional political commentators getting this wrong so frequently. The correlation between income and proclivity to vote for the more conservative political party exists in all U.S. states, has existed for a long time, is in line with traditional stereotypes, is replicated in almost every country around the world (Israel and Ireland are, I think, the main exceptions), and follows straightforwardly from the parties’ competing policy priorities. It shouldn’t be difficult to remember.
57 Responses to “Income and Voting in Vermont”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:27 am
Just curious, but does that relationship still hold true if you control for race (I realize Vermont may be idiosyncratic in this respect)? When pundits say “people who are less well off support Republicans,” it seems like they are usually thinking of a very specific (white) subset of poor & working class Americans.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:28 am
The analysis seems off to me. First, the elections seem overdetermined. In the winning race, even the v. poor start off giving the Republicans 40% of the vote, and the Republicans have more than 50% of the vote for people making more than $15K. In the losing race, even the rich give the Dems more than 50% of the vote. Second, I assume there are many more people who are poor than rich in VT. So the GOP might be more popular within a rich cohort than within in a poor (or middle-class, as I think the Cornerite charged) cohort and yet have more poor (or middle-class) voters than rich ones.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:31 am
More accurately, the Democratic party is the party of the middle class and poor, not just the poor.
The charts you’ve provided show this. It would be nice to show and talk about which demographic has what percentage of the population as well
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:34 am
nice #”s..
http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/whymccainhaslost/
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:41 am
you wouldn’t by any chance be willing to switch those colors on the graphs, so as not to mislead people?
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:41 am
I’d like to see this data controlled for age. For those over a certain age (say 55 or 60), I don’t doubt its accuracy. For those under this age, I don’t think it holds true.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:50 am
Matt, you and your foolish “data” can’t possibly compete with Nordlinger’s intuition. Silly boy.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:53 am
You’d almost think that political scientists would have addressed this sort of topic before.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:54 am
It’s not astounding that anyone from NR would mouth the Republican party line. Why the likes of Chris Matthews follow this line is another question.
It is interesting that the two races are not differentiated by changes in slope, but mass relative movements of all voters. This seems to indicate that voters were not actuated at that time by class-based economic issues, but by some other aspects of the candidates - it would be useful to know what those aspects were. It will also be interesting to see if there is much change in slopes in the upcoming election, where economic issues may be more important.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
As we can see from this thread, we shouldn’t be surprised when people simply reject out of hand information that might make them change their mind.
I’m kinda guessing Nordlinger might be among them. Sometimes it seems the more people “know”, the more tools they have to quibble. Even when they have started by saying that what they “know” is a kind of gut feeling based on what they can see with their eyes. Or maybe a taxi driver told them.
But we don’t need to call these people professionals, or wonder why professionals would do such things. Professionals don’t- that’s part of being professional.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:59 am
You need to normalize the data for the total number of voters in each category to show the total number of votes from category. The graph makes it look like there are as many voters making more than $150K as making $50K
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:01 am
Calling conservative Vermont citizens “Real Vermonters” is offensive. The anti-civil union forces back in the day called their campaign, “Take Back Vermont.” It failed miserably.
Most “ski chalets” in Vermont are owned by folks like Nordlinger from New York City or Boston, so those folks might be wealthy liberals, but they don’t have any impact on the state’s voting patterns.
Vermont is such a geographically small state that you are going to live within a short drive of a ski area no matter where you live, so there’s not much need to buy a second house closer to a ski area. The Green Mountains go right up the middle of the state along Route 100, the Skiers’ Highway.
http://www.skivermont.com/flash/home.php?type=alpine
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:06 am
Check out the update from Nordlinger - the post title suggests how he feels about fact-based rebuttal:
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 am
Sorry - here’s the update post:
“Impressions Only”
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 am
There is something deeply wrong with a political party that must spend so much of its time hiding what it really stands for.
But I guess you can’t really run as the fiscally incontinent racist party of the rich.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:14 am
“ It’s rather astounding that you see professional political commentators getting this wrong so frequently. .. It shouldn’t be difficult to remember.”
But, do you think he doesn’t remember?
I think it’s dangerous to assume that just because he says it he genuinely
believes it.
On the contrary, for many political commentators, it’s pretty
clear they are not genuinely seeking the truth—in some cases because they
take the role of propagandist, in other cases because they’re trying to be
showy and provocative, to be the center of attention and build up readership.
Even though I think pundit remedial education is a fool’s game, it’s a positive public service for you to point out falsehoods like this.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
Hey, McCain said it best : A true maverick in the Republican party is a Republican without money.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 am
I am sure Jay Nordlinger’s head already exploded seeing that Vermont is represented in the Senate by Pat Leahy and Bernie Sanders. It would be enough to make any NRO‘er mutter things to themselves and make up stupid shit.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 am
those you asking for controls, etc., should do one thing: read Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do. or, go to berkeley’s GSS interface. if you’re really curious about controlling for background variables, then stop blogs and analyze data or check scholarship which does.
(and yes, the dynamic that gelman talks about is true after correcting for race, though is magnitude is reduced)
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:57 am
What was more hilarious in Nordlinger’s original post were his comments about New York. Even though most people’s impression of NY demographics is undoubtedly skewed because of its portrayal in the movies and on TV, I’m sure that the number of people who do the cleaning, driving, cooking, etc. outnumber those for that work is done by a factor of 25 (at a minimum).
Yet New York votes overwhelmingly liberal. Interesting math thay use there in Greater Wingnuttia.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:09 am
NS, Vermont is about 97% non-Hispanic white, so you don’t really have to control for race. It might be interesting to control for age as Westwoodmom says, though with these exit polls your sample sizes would get pretty small.
Anyway, it’s kind of funny that Nordlinger is making some kind of stand on Vermont, which is tiny, rural, and super liberal. Democrats + Progressives have a 2-1 advantage in the state House, Democrats have a 3-1 advantage in the state Senate, the Democratic U.S. Representative actually won the Republican nomination as a write-in because no one bothered to file against him, and last cycle a self-proclaimed socialist won a U.S. Senate seat in a landslide. There’s a popular Republican governor and that’s all the GOP has going on.
The state used to be reliably Republican, as much of New England did, but that’s long gone. I guess it’s easier to explain that by blaming flatlanders like me than by engaging in self-reflection about how the GOP has alienated huge swathes of the country.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:10 am
The confusion is deliberately spread.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:13 am
ok, in the follow up nordlinger asked about new york city, even though i cursorily addressed it in the post linked by jim manzi from the corner. i have a follow up on new york city (all of 5 minutes on google + 5 minutes of posting, this isn’t hard).
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:22 am
so nordlinger is an idiot, is where we’re going with this? noted.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:43 am
did someone on the palin campaign team put these graphs together? look at the legend for the vermont senate race: bernie sanders turned down the democratic nomination and he still gets listed as a “socialist”… some guys just can’t catch a break.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 am
Yes, there’s a correlation between income and voting behavior. But the correlation is relatively weak, and describing it in such simplistic terms as “The Republicans are the party of the rich” or “The Democrats are the party of the poor” is a gross misrepresentation.
Gelman also points out that since other variables are correlated with both income and voting behahvior, the correlation between income and voting “shouldn’t be interpreted as a causal effect.”
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:12 pm
mixner, but misrepresentations trump assertions which are just plain wrong.
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
“My false assertion is less false than your false assertion!”
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Why is it “Republican” vs. “Socialist” in the second graph?
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Some of the comments in this thread (and the first one) seem to miss the point. Let’s review:
(1) Nordlinger claimed there was a correlation in one direction (people of “modest means” vote GOP, rich elitists vote Democratic).
(2) Razib, Yglesias, etc. point out that Nordlinger has this backwards — the correlation isn’t really strong, but insofar as there IS a correlation, it’s in the opposite direction. On average, the very wealthy are more likely to vote Republican than the poor or middle-class.
(3) Various commenters jump in to point out that the picture is murky and income alone doesn’t determine voting.
Well, if that’s your argument, take it up with Nordlinger, who’s the one who made the original claim. The response from this side specifically acknowledges that income isn’t a perfect predictor of party, but if you insist on saying *something* about income vs. party, you’d say the opposite of what Nordlinger does.
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Nice try, J, but Matt summarized the relationship as “rich people vote Republican,” which is just as false as what Nordlinger said.
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Elana, the “Socialist” is Bernie Sanders, an independent who sometimes describes himself as a “Democratic Socialist” (but one who thinks we should be more like Scandinavia rather than one who thinks we ought to nationalize all the means of production). As tomdr2 mentions, he was offered the Democratic nomination but declined it, basically so that the Democrats didn’t run anyone against him but he preserves his nominal independent status.
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Mixner spake: Nice try, J, but Matt summarized the relationship as “rich people vote Republican,” which is just as false as what Nordlinger said.
Nice try yourself, but that was one highly simplified line surrounded by plenty of qualifications.
In other words, Yglesias was overgeneralizing but in the right direction, and with lots of qualifiers and disclaimers. Nordlinger was overgeneralizing and doing it in the opposite direction from reality, and with no (zero!) qualifiers in the original post.
How you can possibly equate these is a mystery to me.
Plus, this followup post nicely addresses some of the comments from the previous thread. People didn’t like aggregating the data into two categories (poorest third and richest third). So this new post nicely addresses that — it shows voting as a function of income. And while the trends aren’t all monotonically increasing or decreasing, the pattern is clear.
Bottom line: Razib, Gelman, Manzi, and Yglesias are obviously correct, and Nordlinger was wrong. People ought to be able to acknowledge that and move on now.
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Matt Weiner!
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:08 pm
In other words, Yglesias was overgeneralizing but in the right direction, and with lots of qualifiers and disclaimers. Nordlinger was overgeneralizing and doing it in the opposite direction from reality, and with no (zero!) qualifiers in the original post.
No, Yglesias’s statement wasn’t merely an “overgeneralization.” It was a gross misrepresentation of the facts. As was his equally silly claim that among “poor voters” “you see overwhelming support for Democrats.”
Plus, this followup post nicely addresses some of the comments from the previous thread.
Translation: Yglesias furiously backpeddles from his original claims after being shown how grossly they misrepresented the evidence.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Mixner says: No, Yglesias’s statement wasn’t merely an “overgeneralization.” It was a gross misrepresentation of the facts.
No, no, no. To first order, Yglesias was correct. In Vermont as elsewhere, the richer you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican. See the graphs in this post. Yglesias was right and Nordlinger was wrong.
If you want to look at it in more detail, then the picture gets more complicated. But that’s true of ANY analysis. It would be absurd to label the statement “Rich white married southern baptists who voted GOP in 2000, 2002, and 2004 also voted GOP in 2006″ as a falsehood because somewhere out there there’s a RWMSB who voted Republican in 2000-2004 but not 2006. Sorry, but that way lies nihilism. Yes, Yglesias generalized, but unlike Nordlinger his generalization was in the correct direction.
Get a grip, man.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:26 pm
These graphs also demonstrate how much of a centrist/swing state Vermont is in some respects, and how much individual candidates matter– Sanders (Senate) is very popular, and Douglas (Governor) is more or less popular by default, as his opponents tend to run terrible, terrible races.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:31 pm
These graphs also demonstrate how much of a centrist/swing state Vermont is in some respects
Really? I’m new to the state, but all I can see is that these graphs demonstrate that there’s one popular Republican politician, Douglas. Otherwise, after making a try with Rainville, the Republicans pretty much can’t oppose the Democrats for the federal offices, and the Dems/Progressives outnumber the Republicans two to one in one house of the state lege and three to one in the other.
I think the moral is that a popular politician can win the governor’s race in a state that’s pretty much dominated by the other party — also happened in OK and WY (though the Dems are putting up a fight in the Congressional race), with Arnie in CA, and with a couple of GOP governors in MA. Inept opponents help too.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:28 pm
J,
No, no, no. To first order, Yglesias was correct. In Vermont as elsewhere, the richer you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican. See the graphs in this post. Yglesias was right and Nordlinger was wrong.
No, no, no, no, no. A thousand times no. Nein. Non. Nyet. Yglesias didn’t say “the richer you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican.” He said “rich people vote Republican.” And he made an equally silly claim about the voting behavior of “poor people.”
Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be even much of a correlation between income and voting in rich states, according to Gelman and his colleagues: “in rich states (such as Connecticut), income has a very low correlation with vote preference.”
For goodness sake, pull yourself together, man.
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Actually, Yglesias said “rich Vermonters, like rich Alabamans and rich Oregonians and rich Texans voted for George W. Bush” — that is to say, a majority of those groups did so, which is inarguably true — and, a sentence later, that “rich people vote Republican” — that is to say, a majority of rich people vote Republican, which is also inarguably true.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:11 am
laptop battery
laptop batteries
February 4th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Great blog. I’m glad I found it. Thanks again, Erik
February 8th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
laptop battery
February 19th, 2009 at 1:48 am
I enjoyed reading your work! GREAT post! I looked around for this… but I found you!
Anyway, would you mind if I threw up a backlink from my site at whiterabbitcult.com to your site?
March 11th, 2009 at 4:24 am
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:01 am
tramadol
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:20 am
buy viagra online
Incredible site!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:02 am
Incredible site!
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:02 am
Great site. Good info
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 5:02 am
It is the coolest site,keep so! viagra