What’s
Wrong Today:
It has
already started. The gas bags on the right are spinning that the election was stolen by people that do not
contribute to the economy. They are talking about the income
distribution of voters as reported by the exit polls in the New York Times. The inescapable conclusion is that
the big divide in the 2012 vote
was income-based voting.
On
election night, Bill O’Reilly said :
It’s a changing country, the
demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore, and there are 50
percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going
to give them things? President Obama.
Ann Coulter
said Wednesday:
“If Mitt Romney cannot win in this
economy, then the tipping point has been reached. We have more takers than
makers and it’s over. There is no hope.”
Tom Ferguson, political economy
commentator for the Institute for
Public Accuracy
says in a post about the exit polls:
“… in sharp
contrast to 2008, the partisan split along income lines is huge…
Obama’s vote
percentage declines in straight line fashion as income rises. He got 63 percent
of the votes of Americans making less than $30,000 and 57 percent of those
making between $30,000 and $50,000. Above $50,000, the Other America kicks in. Romney won 53
percent of the votes of Americans making between $50 and a $100 thousand and 54
percent of the votes of Americans making above $100,000...”
Look at
the graph below, Mr. Obama gets more than 50% of income levels up to the low
$50k’s. He gets more than 46% of the vote in all income groups over $75k. If we had an America where everyone made at
least that much, he might face a landslide loss. Maybe Republicans
should be for income redistribution,
particularly if they want to control both houses of Congress and the
White House.
Source:
Institute for Public Accuracy
Well,
discovering that people earning $50k are a majority of Americans and that they
support Obama wouldn’t come as a shock to Coulter and O’Reilly if they looked
at the chart below, since median household income is $50k, unchanged since 1999.
Why we would call someone who makes the median
income a “taker?”
The Wall Street Journal reported in September on Census
Bureau data which showed a continued steep decline in Real Median Income, falling by 1.5% in the past year,
declining by a total of 8.1% since
2007. It stands at $50k, just below the income levels where Mr. Obama
starts to garner less than 50% of the popular vote.
Implications for the Fiscal Cliff
It is fascinating to consider the
implications that this voter income
skew may have on the Fiscal Cliff negotiations.
The Republican Party has long since staked
out the deficit hawk position and they are unlikely to give ground on it
easily. And continued control of the
House of Representatives favors their continued adherence to their position.
How will Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner read the
tea leaves about the income-based voting gap? Boehner will probably see that
supporting the >$75k universe with tax cuts may add to the Republican base
in the 2014 mid-term elections.
Was this an
historic election?
Let’s
compare the raw vote in 2008 vs. 2012:
|
Year |
Democratic Vote |
Republican Vote |
Totals |
|
2012 |
61,178,405 |
58,163,977 |
119,342,382 |
|
2008 |
69,456,897 |
59,934,814 |
129,391,711 |
|
Change |
-8,278,492 |
-1,770,837 |
-10,049,329 |
|
Percent |
-11.9% |
-1% |
-7.7% |
There WAS an enthusiasm gap in 2012. And it was shared
by both candidates. Mr. Obama got nearly 12% fewer votes than he did in 2008,
while Mr. Romney got a little less than 1% fewer votes than did Mr. McCain in 2008.
Overall,
10 million fewer people voted in 2012.
In 2012,
Republicans had Citizens United on
their side. They had the 8% unemployment issue. They had the antipathy
about Obamacare.
And Mr. Obama won anyway. So, we not only
elected a black president, he was re-elected
when the bloom was off the rose. Very damning for the Republican
strategy.
Previously,
Republicans have been able to align lower and middle class whites with them despite espousing a platform of income redistribution
to the top: Lower capital gains taxes, lower income tax tiers, small
government and deregulation.
They accomplished
this by focusing on the social issues
that resonate with those groups. But Mr. Obama’s victory, so reliant on
income-based voting, may require a
change in political positioning by the Republican Party.
Changing
demographics and cultural change in the US may be forming an enduring new
coalition.
And the new coalition’s positions are as
deeply held as those of the social conservatives. Moving them
towards the Republican camp may not be as simple as embracing middle class tax
cuts and immigration reform.
Karl Rove and the Koch brothers may no
longer have a sufficient bloc of fools to manipulate to help them achieve
their goals of income redistribution and dismantling of the social safety net.
