Income Inequality Doesn’t Explain Partisan Divide

Alan Abramowitz: “Perhaps the single most important political decision that American voters get to make is who will occupy the White House for four years. If social class has a powerful influence on public opinion and political behavior, we should find evidence of its effects in presidential voting decisions. Given the contrasting positions of the two major parties on economic policies benefitting upper and lower-income Americans in recent years, as well as the contrasting backgrounds of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, one might have expected upper-income voters to be much more likely to support the Republican candidate than lower-income voters. However, the evidence displayed in Figure 1 shows that family income was only weakly related to presidential voting decisions.”