Voting against self-interest

The economic aspects of the Republican ideological agenda are driven by the concerns of the super-rich. Surprisingly though, the bulk of Republican voters are lower-income workers

The US midterm elections confirmed the “Cold Civil War” thesis some commentators have been touting. US voters are mostly frozen on either side of a high ideological fence. Unlike in the historical Civil War where the Mason-Dixon Line demarcated Southern slave-owning states from the Northern non-slave-owning states, this ideological fence is less easy to define.

Prior to 2020, pollsters bemoaned low voter turnout and election strategists tried to “swing” a great central mass of citizens, who didn’t bother to vote. The last two elections (the 2020 presidential race and the 2022 midterms) have seen extraordinarily high turnouts, including rising turnouts of younger people.

So that has changed and both parties have energised their bases. There aren’t that many swing voters left. Most of America’s map is coloured red (Republican) or blue (Democrat). There are very few “purple” areas, or battleground states.

While drawing a neat line across the continent, ala Mason-Dixon is impossible, strong correlations make voter attitudes highly predictable. Minorities and people of colour tend to be Democrat voters. Densely populated urban areas (usually multi-racial in aggregate) tend to be blue strongholds, while sparsely populated rural areas tend to be red. Graduates and postgraduates tend to vote Democrat; voters who didn’t go to college tend to vote Republican.

Since education and income correlate, the bulk of Republican voters are lower-income. This also gels with the rural and urban divide. Big densely populated cities have higher per capita than rural communities. It is even true at the state level. The states with the lowest per capita income are reliably red. 

What is puzzling is that the economic aspects of the Republican ideological agenda are driven by the concerns of the super-rich. The last two elections saw Republicans across America campaign on pledges to cut Medicare, thereby promising to hurt the low-income Republican voter as much as they would hurt the low income Democrat voter.

Republicans have also consistently pushed for income tax cuts since the Reagan era of the 1980s. This again benefits the super-rich ideologue. Why would the lower-income voter who pays little or no tax care? If she does care, she should vote against tax cuts on higher-income folks, since lower tax revenues reduce the government’s ability to provide Medicare, or fund public services such as the US Postal Service. Republican ideologues also hate unions and minimum wage agreements, which protect lower-income workers.

Donald Trump launched a tariff war against imports (especially Chinese) and all American consumers ended up paying more for their consumption basket. Even the anti-abortion measures Republicans espouse hurt low-income women disproportionately. This is quite apart from concerns about the state interfering with the fundamental rights of individuals. A rich woman who wants an abortion could travel to a place where it’s legal. A poor woman may not be able to.

The per capita graph of America is interesting. The top quintile (top 20 per cent) of Americans picked up 52 per cent of total household income in 2021. The bottom quintile earned just 3 per cent. One would assume, given the economic agendas, that the top quintile would be blanket Republican voters, and the lowest quintile, blanket Democrat.

This is not true. When sorted on per capita and poverty rates, nine of the bottom 10 states (Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, among others) are overwhelmingly Republican and have been so, for decades. Only two of the top 10 states (including DC) are Republican bastions.

How does a political party persuade generations of voters to vote against their own interests? Presumably by convincing them that other things such as protecting their religious faith (whatever that is), and the supremacy of their specific race/ colour/ caste or other differentiator, is more important than improving their quality of life indicators. It’s an object lesson in flim-flam. As a great Republican once said, you can’t fool all the people all the time. But you can fool a sufficiently large number of them often enough to stay in power indefinitely.