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26 October 2007

Income, partisanship, and voting

Andrew Gelman has an interesting post up about voting behavior in rich states and poor states, showing how voting patterns differ across the country when you condition on the income of the voters. There is not much of a relationship between per capita income and support for Democrats among poor voters, but there is a strong relationship among rich voters: rich voters in poor states are much more likely to support the Republicans than rich voters in rich states.

On a related note, Larry Bartels will be speaking at the Inequality seminar at Harvard on Monday, October 29 at noon in the Taubman Dining Room at the Kennedy School. His talk is entitled "Partisan Biases in Electoral Accountability," and draws on a forthcoming book. Much of his evidence focuses on differences in the reactions of lower, middle, and upper-income voters to economic performance. Gelman and Bartels are great examples of political scientists who are trying (with limited success, perhaps) to knock down some of the conventional wisdom about the "Red State, Blue State", "values voters" divide with careful data analysis, and are always well worth attention.

Posted by Mike Kellermann at October 26, 2007 3:52 PM

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