Full Citation

Title: Nationally poor, locally rich: Income and local context in the 2016 presidential election

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2020

ISBN:

ISSN: 02613794

DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2019.102068

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: When social scientists examine relationships between income and voting decisions, their measures implicitly compare people to others in the national economic distribution. Yet an absolute income level (e.g., $57,617 per year, the 2016 national median) does not have the same meaning in Clay County, Georgia, where the 2016 median income was $22,100, as it does in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where the median income was $224,000. We address this limitation by incorporating a measure of one's place in her ZIP code's income distribution. We apply this approach to the question of the relationship between income and whites' voting decisions in the 2016 presidential election, and test for generalizability in elections since 2000. The results show that Trump's support was concentrated among nationally poor whites but also among locally affluent whites, complicating claims about the role of income in that election. This pattern suggests that social scientists would do well to conceive of income in relative terms: relative to one's neighbors...In the following section, we present our approach, which incorporates information about an individual's place in a local stratification order based on their ZIP code, by illustrating how income distributions and costs of living vary across geographical locations and by explaining why that may matter for vote choice. We then apply this approach to the behavior of white voters in elections since 2000 using data from the waves of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (Ansolabehere and Schaffner, 2008–2010) and National Annenberg Election Survey (Annenberg Center for Public Policy, 2000–2004), with a focus on the 2016 presidential election. We find that relationships between income and vote choice differ if income is considered relative to a local distribution or relative to a national distribution. The results contribute to ongoing debates about the role of income in whites' support for Donald Trump, and also the role of income in whites' voting decisions more generally. As discussed in the concluding section, the findings also have implications for research on the relationship between income and a wide range of variables of interest to scholars of public opinion and political behavior.

Url: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379419300691

Url: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0261379419300691

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Authors: Ogorzalek, Thomas; Piston, Spencer; Puig, Luisa Godinez

Periodical (Full): Electoral Studies

Issue:

Volume: 67

Pages: 102068

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other

Countries: