ELECTIONATE JULY 19, 2012
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
Affluent voters were an important element of Obama’s coalition in 2008. Will that change this year? Some observers believe that Obama might alienate former supporters with attacks on Bain Capital and renewed calls to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. While the assumption that these tactics would alienate upscale voters is superficially appealing, most polls tell a different story.
Voters from households making more than $100,000 year were an important part of Obama’s coalition; especially in the “new coalition” states where Obama primarily drew support from well-educated suburbs and minority voters. In some states, one-third of Obama’s supporters came from affluent households and meaningful losses among these voters would endanger Obama’s chances.
But while a business person with a history of moderate social views might seem like a good candidate for affluent, educated suburbanites, polls show that Obama continues to maintain elevated levels of support among voters from households making more than $100k/year. While some might be tempted to discount the polls, the behavior of the campaigns confirms that the polls are right. Obama hasn't even spent one million dollars on advertising in the critical Washington media market and they haven't spent a single dollar in Philadelphia. The Romney campaign has made a similar choice: They've spent nothing in either market. Now, Washington and Philadelphia are inefficient markets: Dollars are wasted in Maryland, D.C., and New Jersey, but Obama has spent more than one million on Davenport, Iowa—a highly inefficient market where resources are wasted on Obama's homestate. If the campaigns thought Virginia and Pennsylvania would be decided by affluent suburbanites, they would be airing at least a few advertisements.
Even optimists about Obama’s chances might be surprised by Obama’s resilience. The Obama Administration has pursued a relatively populist policy agenda and many of those efforts, as well as the decision to table the debt commission proposal, would seem likely to alienate culturally moderate but fiscally conservative suburban voters. Even if Obama’s policy decisions were consistent with the predilections of affluent suburbanites, one might still expect Obama to be faring worse than in 2008, when a highly advantageous political climate bolstered Obama’s standing. Although well-educated and more affluent voters are more likely to be partisans, there are plenty of well-off Bush-Obama voters who ought to be persuadable.
So how is Obama defying conventional wisdom? Part of the issue is that high income voters might be less conservative on economic questions than self-interest suggests. Take today’s Quinnipiac poll of Virginia. It was a bad poll for Obama, but the President still earned 44 percent among those making more than $100,000 a year, down just slightly from 46 percent four years ago. But as strong as the President might appear among affluent voters, he’s less popular than his own proposal to raise taxes on precisely those voters. According to the same poll, 62 percent of voters making between $100-250,000/year support Obama’s tax plan and so do 48 percent of voters making more than $250,000/year. In 2008, Obama only received 47 percent of Virginia voters making more than $200,000/year.
Another possibility is that higher economic confidence translates to sustained support for the President. While I’m not aware of any poll that disaggregates economic confidence by education or income, wealthier voters might maintain higher levels of economic confidence, since the recession has disproportionately hurt the working class. The unemployment rate among high school graduates is twice that of college graduates, and many professional workers enjoy high levels of job security. Voters insulated from the economy might be more likely to vote on social issues or personal appeal—areas where the President holds an advantage over Romney.
Could Obama’s efforts eventually backfire? Certainly. Obama’s more affluent version of the Democratic coalition is holding firm, at least for now. But if upscale voters are more amenable to tax increases than the conventional wisdom might suggest, then Obama might just be able to appeal to working class voters without risking a backlash among educated suburbanites critical to his chances in Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire.
Follow me on twitter @electionate or at the Electionate blog.
13 comments
There is nonsense out there that attacks on the predator class that runs the banks and the largest corporations will alienate upscale people who earned their 100k honestly. Upscale voters are going to go for BHO because they are smart. This is not the predator class of egomanic gazillionaires. These are educated, successful, smart people who understand that government regulation is required in a whole range areas, and that government spending on education, healthcare and infrastructure is essential to civil society. One look at the Republicans, even on simple economic issues like regulation and taxes, shows that they are batshit crazy. The upper middle class likes money, but they are essentially practical, and the Republican agenda is not practical. The Republican agenda is ideological, to the point of fanaticism. And these folks won't buy it.
- Vogelfam
July 19, 2012 at 2:37pm
OFFS, "relatively populist"?? I swear the f**King venture capitalists and the like are a bunch of crybabies. If anything, Obama hasn't been hard enough on people who don't work for a living. This is coming from someone who does work hard and gets around 100K. Not nearly alienated.
- miceelf
July 19, 2012 at 4:05pm
There's a pretty simple reason why people who earn over $100K tend to be pro-Obama on the whole -- because they were pro-Obama in 2008 and have also done fairly well for themselves the last four years. So there is no reason to change or re-consider their affinity for Obama, especially as the Republican Party has done everything possible to turn off affluent and educated 2008 Obama voters. Middle-income voters who have experienced economic regression or stagnation since 2008 are more willing to throw out the incumbent and start over, but not people who have done well for themselves. As for the criticism of private equity or Wall Street in particular, Obama has caught on to something that other successful Dems like Elliott Spitzer or Dick Durbin understood all along but which has eluded some other members of their party -- that the educated, affluent professional class actually LIKES IT when politicians go after the malfeasance of the rich. Remember, voters who make between $100K and $300K are the ones who hold an appreciable amount of their assets in mutual funds and stocks, and they don't like it when market fluctuations or financial shenanigans caused by the wealth make their assets decline in value. They don't tend to fetishize wealth and uncritically believe that whatever Wall Street does is best because they tend to be smart enough to understand how bankers screw up on occasion and resentful enough of politicians who run to help banks while letting most other businesses twist and fail. And they actually tend to understand how a proposal to increase taxes on income above $250K doesn't mean that all money earned by a taxpayer who makes more than that is going to be taxed at higher rates. That sort of nuance escapes people with only a high school or community college education, or most journalists for that matter. One other poing to make about Democrats who criticize the Bain-bashing, like Cory Booker and Ed Rendell, is that they tend to represent (or used to represent) poor constituencies who lack a solid upper middle class residential tax base. Those folks need to suck up to captains of industry -- especially the financial industry in the Northeast -- as a means to pay the bills in their cities and fund urban redevelopment. Hence their dismay when other members of their party kick around the same wealthy donors whose largesse these politicos need to keep their cities going. Methinks if Philly's or Newark's tax base had more upper middle-class professionals and fewer poverty-stricken people in need of basic services, Booker or Rendell would be less enamored of bankers bearing gifts.
- wildboy
July 19, 2012 at 4:32pm
You know what, all the above comments make sense. That said I don't care if some really rich voters are alienated because this all needs to be said. And, this goes for some formerly vocal Obama supporters, one of whom shall be nameless but whose company doesn't have a great record vis a vis labor. SO I HOPE SHE'S LISTENING. And does something about the secretaries and the maids, because we all matter, we're all part of an economic ecosystem and we all deserve dignity, security and a decent life in exchange for our labor (which is hard even if we didn't go to certain schools). Who the hell knows, maybe corporate morality will come into fashion?
- Sophia
July 19, 2012 at 6:55pm
It is also because there is strong relationship between affluence and political knowledge and, nowadays, understanding what the parties actually stand for is going to make a person lean Democratic. http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.4/fowler_margolis_voter_knowledge_political_preference_democratic_party.php
- XLProfessor
July 19, 2012 at 7:58pm
There's another possibility. If filthy rich is defined by 100K or 200K or up to 1M, then the filthy rich I know are like drofnats. They DO understand what is going on. They gave big time to BHO in 2008-- they'll give to selected House ad Senate campaigns in 2012. They won'y vote for Mittens, but they won't be terribly upset if BHO ain't Prez. They play chess or bridge or Go.. not roulette or War (the card game).. They may not like it, but they regard a Dem loss in 2012 as an opportunity, not a curse.
- drofnats1
July 19, 2012 at 9:07pm
Oh great, now we learn our resident Burn The House Down revolutionary, I mean, "progressive," is a rich guy. Go figure. I have an idea Drof. Put yourself in the shoes of people who'd really, really be hurt by Mittens then suggest we'd be better off with him (and the Ryan budget) in power. You know what. We really do have a class problem in the US. It's on both sides of the political spectrum too.
- Sophia
July 19, 2012 at 10:25pm
Ok, so the rich vote for Obama, but do the lower middle classes know it? I suppose a Rush Limbaugh would love nothing better than to be able to tell his white lower middle class audience that the rich (which means to him the snobbish "elite") vote Obama. So let's keep it a secret, shall we.
- arnon1
July 20, 2012 at 12:41am
A salesman earning $60,000 and her spouse, a teacher, earning $40,000 are rich? There is a sea of difference among households earning more than $100,000. I would also point out that households earning between $100,000 and $250,000 is a bit misleading: they aren't spread evenly but are located mostly near the lower end of the scale. Same when identifying those earning more than $250,000: most are located at the lower end of that scale. Of course, Obama uses $250,000 as the dividing line between rich and not rich, so it isn't surprising that those below $250,000 would identify with Obama; indeed, I'm surprise the percentage of support isn't higher. What many lower income folks don't appreciate but upper middle income folks do is the incidence of the payroll tax: it hits those earning up to $200,000 very hard, in particular two income households with a combined income of $200,000 and with each earning about the same amount - they bear a combined $30,000 in payroll taxes. And they pay a marginal income tax rate of about 25%. In fact, these folks, not the super rich, pay the highest effective tax rate. For them, climbing the income ladder is a very steep climb, a phenomenon others have emphasized.
- rayward
July 20, 2012 at 7:15am
Sophia. With a Repub House and/or Senate, what is BHO going to do for the poor or middle classes 2013-2016? That Mittens wont. The most important factor is going to be the size of the budget/deficit in a liquidity trap continued recession or even Depression. Like it or no, Mittens is likely to get a bigger budget passed than BHO, in large part due to a larger military budget. It'll be trickle down.. but that's better than nothing.
- drofnats1
July 20, 2012 at 9:47am
Suppose the Mafia "foot soldiers" realized they could earn an honest comfortable living without running the risk of being rubbed out by the Godfather? Would they go for it? Suppose the Mexican narco drug lord executioners realized they could get away with "going straight" without too much personal danger, how many would take that option? How many of the Taliban terrorists would stop blowing people up in a similar situation? So set up a "witness protection" program for the middley classey rich and stop "outing them" on TNR before Romney, Gingrich, Bachman, et al. hunt them down.
- skahn
July 20, 2012 at 2:53pm
You're discounting what I imagine must be the primary reason for this: affluent/highly educated voters tend to be more instrumental, rather than expressive, voters. Obama's populist messaging hasn't driven them off because they simultaneously see its value as a campaign tactic and don't believe that it's an actual reflection of what Obama really believes/would push for once in office. When it comes to Romney, I think many of those who would otherwise support quite a few of his positions have simply made a judgement call that the trajectory of Romney and the conservative wing of the GOP (that's become increasingly influential) is so far to the populist right that even if Obama is slightly to their left, he's still closer to their ideal policy positions.
- lizard1567
July 22, 2012 at 6:42am
While a lot of good points are being made this discussion is still skewed because of some facts that we are all systematically ignoring. For some reason that's a mystery to me, the only "average" household income EVER discussed in any context anywhere is median household income, which tends to come in around $50K, so all of our discussion about what constitutes "rich" or otherwise high income is based on this underlying figure whether people come out and say so or not. Never discussed, ever, anywhere, by anyone, is "mean" household income - which happens to be the kind of average understandable to most people and which very definitely does bear on understanding the distribution of income. It is especially informative when we compare mean and median and see the trajectory and volume of difference between the two. Mean household income is not difficult to compute. Get the census figures for mean personal income and multiply by average household size. There's another way to compute it too that gives the same figure. Do it - then, TNR - do a write-up and analysis of it. It should disturb everyone and its a discussion we need to be having. When people think "average" household income is $50K and a household with a police officer and teacher is pulling $90K, they think they are doing alright, relatively speaking. Fact is: they aren't. On average - they are falling behind, and further every year. A straightforward, open discussion of real average incomes versus most common incomes would do much to explain why so many Americans feel like they are falling further and further behind as they try harder and harder to keep up. Mathematically, quantitatively and in the real world - they really are falling behind. Fast.
- dcwood10
July 22, 2012 at 7:02am