gov. arnold speculated that the democrat GOTV actually brought out the black and hispanic voters who would more likely vote for prop 8.

still upset that boyda (d-ks) lost her race.

I'm going to guess that poor white people in Mississippi vote for Republicans. McCain got 89% of the White vote in Mississippi this year. That's virtually everybody, and the exceptions are presumably mostly middle class liberals, not poor people. Democrats win poor people in Mississippi because poor people in Mississippi are overwhelmingly Black.

I agree with all of this on substance, but I disagree that it's "time to let that go." Democratic paranoia about Republican success led to a process of self-criticism and all-out hard work that has turned the party into a national party again. We should be constantly vigilant about protecting and enhancing that success, and worrying constantly about where and how Republicans could cut into it.

Please send a e-mail to all progressives to stop using that meaningless graph. It means absolutely nothing and convinces no one.

First it requires parties to be randomly selected. There is nothing random about when Democrats and Republicans are elected. Democrats have a greater tendency to be elected when economic issues are most relevant (i.e. during a recession), republicans when foreign policy matters.

Furthermore, each piece of legislation has different lag times and periods of effectiveness. Reagan's deregulation effects us today, the CRA took 30 years to take effect, and so on and so on.

For all I know Democrats could be increasing income growth even more but this chart can't tell me that.

the CRA took 30 years to take effect

Say what?

Wait, the median income of people without four year degrees is above the national median? Wouldn't that imply that a four year degree depresses income?

@ Anthony Damiani: I was just going to say the same thing. Clearly something is wrong here.

the CRA took 30 years to take effect

This is an evolution of the wingnut mind I did not forsee.

Wingnut: "The mortgage meltdown is all due to the CRA!"

Normal person: "Actually, the CRA passed in 1977. You can't really claim that the housing bubble of 2003-2008 was caused by the CRA."

Wingnut: "The consequences of the CRA just took 30 years to take effect!"

In the wake of the housing bubble and easy credit, homeownership rate went from 65.4% in 1996 to 69% in 2003. This was not caused by the CRA, and this increase in homeownership was a symptom (ie, easy credit which caused housing bubbles in Spain, Ireland, and other places, as well), not a cause of the economic mess we're in.

No, the median income of white people without four year degrees is (slightly) above the median.

Posted by: Anthony Damiani | November 11, 2008 3:03 AM:
Wait, the median income of people without four year degrees is above the national median? Wouldn't that imply that a four year degree depresses income?

No, it says the mean wage of people without four year degrees is above the national median.

The national mean wage is also above the national median ... we have a skewed income distribution, so the mean tends to be above the median.

2008 was a relatively close race, remember, until the economy bottomed out. Then it wasn't a close race ever again.

This has been a conservative talking point - if it hadn't been for the financial crisis, we might have won! But is it true? All depends on how you define "relatively", I guess.

When I look at the Pollster.com graph aggregating all national polls, I see a pretty comfortable lead for Obama ever since early June, three months before the crisis emerged. Varying between 2-6 points. The only real break in the pattern was the short-lived Convention bounce for McCain.

This article goes a long way towards explaining the voting patterns of conservative or rural working class voters. It fits my experience living among such folks, and it is a good corrective to uncomprehending, simplistic, or condescending analyses that assume voters are always bamboozled. I don't think people who talk about this are usually willing to grasp how different subcultures can shape very different moral/mental universes, or if they are willing to grasp it, to get beyond the reaction that says "us right, them wrong" and embrace the rhetorical need to speak to people on their own terms first.

Is it in the their "economic self-interest" for upper middle class/rich to vote for Democrats? Especially because they are pro-choice and believe in liberal policies? If you think abortion is murder, then you just might vote on that issue, even if you don't have that much money. Worldviews matter. Religious beliefs matter. The fact that low-income people vote less than other income groups matter. Why is this so hard for liberals to understand? Why did Republicans win in 2000 and 2004? Ezra is right about security issues I think, but also, Republicans were just better organized and better at framing issues. This time we had a far better politician who built a far better political machine.

There is nothing random about when Democrats and Republicans are elected. Democrats have a greater tendency to be elected when economic issues are most relevant (i.e. during a recession)

Larry Bartels, who as a political scientist knows about correlation and causation and things like that, has written a post answering those objections and many more!

"But the bottom third of the income distribution includes students, retirees, and non-profit magazine writers, which isn't exactly what folks are going for when they reference the white working class."

Non-profit magazine writers? Really? I find that hard to believe.

I say keep using the silly chart, but make sure you update it throughout the disastrous years of the Obama administration. What will the chart look like after the next two years? And will you insist on judging Obama on the same criteria, or will you weasel?

Anonymous - great article. It provides some highly sociological insights, yet is readable for the non-sociology majors of the world (and we need more of them!)

Anyway, I liked this in particular: "I had escaped from my prior partisan mindset (reject first, ask rhetorical questions later), and began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society."

We don't have to be moral relativists, but trying to understand how and why people have different versions of what is "good" and "bad" is very important if we want to cultivate our consciences and a more ethical world.

[tongue implanted firmly in cheek]

For people with good education, a job/profession that leads somewhere, and a community that is upward looking, voters are focused on policies that let them make 'getting ahead of the Jones' gains. They are trying to make social gains for themselves and their children.

For voters with little education, poor jobs or job prospects, in stagnant communities, the focus of the white folks is having a subordinate group that they can feel socially better than, and the focus of minority folks is to gain equality in social status. The focus of the white folks is keeping minorities down, especially in not being governed by the non-white population (it makes them feel at the bottom of the heap).

Obviously, some other factors are at work, but class/race resentments are a huge factor in stable/stagnant communities that have historically have had race biases. For the recent decades, the Dems are labelled as the party of the minorities and race/class outlook drives the behavior toward the two parties.

The appalachian/mountain/highlands chain of red in the electoral maps from SW PA to AR demonstrates this analysis.

the CRA took 30 years to take effect

Yes, and just wait until the effects of the 1813 tax on sugar refining kick in. Whooo boy!

That CRA comment was a joke but it is not hard to come up with thousands of actual legislation (welfare reform, entitlement spending, military spending...) which could lag into the next presidency.

Matt Weiner,
I am sorry but this is unconvincing. Look, all liberals have to do to make their point is compare major Republican policy to that of the Democrats. Give us an unbiased expected job or income growth over some time period for each main policy. Then discount for the size of the labour market.

For instance compare Reagan's anti-regulation legislation to Clinton's minimum wage laws.

"I had escaped from my prior partisan mindset (reject first, ask rhetorical questions later), and began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society."

I read that article when it was linked off of metafilter a couple of months ago. It was excellent. The thing is that what liberals miss is that they aren't two differing ideas of how to get to the same place-- they're two "deeply conflicting" visions of what a "good society" looks like in the first place. Conservatives know this and are willing to fight tooth and nail against liberals over it. Liberals are convinced that if they just explain the issue to people, once they become better informed, they'll come around to a mutually beneficial agreement, and that those who disagree are stupid or dishonest. Liberals who finally realize what the actual dynamic is like will have a bit more respect for the other side, but they'll also realize how great the stakes are and what they're up against and stop resorting to half-measures.

Non-profit magazine writers? Really? I find that hard to believe.

I believe that the TAP writing fellows make about $20,000/yr. I'd mock the earnest liberal penchant for believing that something is only "valuable" if you pay people crap wages to do it, but I spent many years in grad school living on a stipend, so I'm in no position to criticize.

all liberals have to do to make their point is compare major Republican policy to that of the Democrats.

It's pretty simple. Democrats support policies whose main point is to create more jobs and increase incomes. Republicans believe, on principle, that the government should always lower taxes and eliminate regulations. They claim that these policies will, as a side effect, increase wages and reduce unemployment, but their base doesn't really care one way or the other, since the end-goal is simply lower taxes and fewer regulations.

The party which looks for policies that will specifically increase wages and unemployment is going to have a better track record in these areas than the party that only cares about those results as a happy side effect of other policies it considers to be of utmost importance in and of themselves ("reducing taxes and reducing government").

Bartels own numbers showed that white voters in the South were the main reason Democrats either lost elections or had close elections they should have won without a cliffhanger. They consistently voted on cultural issues, and this still occurred in Kansas this year. As Bartels said in his study, "Indeed, in the case of low-income whites the erosion is entirely confined to the South."

Bartels' study also defines working class as those making less than $35,000. This is appropriate for low income states, but not industrialized, higher real estate cost states, starting with California and NY. Just bumping up the figure to $40,000 starts to undermine Bartels' thesis that the working class was not deserting the Democratic Party in the past elections.

Obama's victory is significant because the economic crisis gave some of those working class cultural voters a chance to vote for their class interests--and even vote for a half-black guy to secure those class interests. Whether this break in the pattern will hold is another question..

Isn't it true that WASPs tend to vote republican at lower levels of income than non WASPs.

You can save yourself and a lot of analysts a lot of tortured logic if you first remember that only two-thirds of eligible Americans are registered to vote.

So when you start talking about "the bottom third of the income distribution" you are comparing an entire population group, only a portion of which is actually eligible to vote.

If the entire population group was registered to vote, then we wouldn't be having this convulouted discussion because the party with the progressive economics would be winning most elections hands down.

The real problem here is not that people are voting against their economic self-interest, but that not enough of them are voting.

That's the logic behind voter registration drives and the attempts by Obama and non-profit groups like ACORN to expand the electorate.

Poor people make up a disproportionate share of the non-registered, while rich people are overrepresented. That's why regressive candidates win for the most part (now you can start adding in cultural issues and religion and race and what not to explain unexpeced outcomes).

None of this is to downplay the impact of cultural identity on political choices, religion, even cognition and political pyschology, but you can't have a serious debate about the choices that certain population groups are making at the ballot box without understanding who is and is not voting.

I've always thought the "you have to nominate a white Southerner for the Democrats to win an election" has been much more the product of the desires of right-wing, corporatist, pro-war, anti-minority, pro-religious right Democrats than any rational electoral thinking. McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis lost because they went up against very popular presidents, not because they weren't from the South. Kerry lost because he supported the Iraq War, and he barely lost at all.

It was always obvious that there were plenty of people who would vote for non-Southern liberals. It just took Obama to prove it. My hope is this will discredit the project of the DLC types to have two conservative parties in America.

According to cnn exit polls, Obama won 53% of those with no college degree (and also 53% of college graduates). But among whites, the numbers are 40% without college, 47% among college grads. The difference isn't huge but it's real.

Nathanhj: Most of what you say is correct. But elections in countries that enforce compulsory registration, or even compulsory voting, don't necessarily favour the more economically progressive party. What's the matter with Australia?

bradluen: I can't answer about Australia but I think you will observe that in most advanced countries, the ruling parties, whatever their ideological positioning, need to somehow appeal to the economic interests of low-income voters. They cannot wage the kind of full-blown class war that we have seen in the US during the last decade and stay in power. They cannot openly give away a large chunk of the treasury to the top richest 1% without feeling the wrath of the lower 50%. The US is really different from other advanced countries in that the large population of the disadvantaged tends to be silent and apathetic. No riots, no mass protests, no strikes, no radical populist parties to threaten the establishment. The reasons for this are complex but suppressing voter registration is part of it. Preventing the poor from voting has been as important a factor for Republican electoral success than bringing out their own base.

I get annoyed when Franks's critics present a reductive view of his argument in order to dismiss it, and you do better than some (e.g. Yglesias) in acknowledging that significant numbers of voters do vote (or have voted) against their "rational actor" economic interests. But to suggest that Obama was even more "elite"-seeming than Kerry, or that the failure of the Florida and California anti-gay marriage amendments to "[trick] voters into opposing Obama" somehow proves Frank wrong seems pretty thin to me. I personally think that a candidate's "authenticity" is a vastly over-rated quality, but I think Obama had it all over Kerry in that respect (an effect of his Kansas roots, no doubt), and the polling ("shares our values") confirms that. And the anti-gay marriage