Pocketbook Politics.

A look at how each state voted in the presidential election, based on the income of the voters, via Andrew at FiveThirtyEight:

pewmaps

The five income categories I used in the analysis are: 0-20,000; 20-40,000; 40-75,000; 75-150,000; over 150,000. The graphs above show the estimates for the highest, middle, and lowest of these five categories. I assume the numbers represent family income (as reported by the survey respondent).

I have to admit that I’m a little surprised. Despite legitimate fears about whether poorer Whites in the Rust Belt would go blue, I figured Obama had a good shot at those Democratic voters. But I really didn’t think he would have so completely edged out poorer voters in the Deep South. Then again, these maps don’t tell us what the margins were.

But what’s up with Idaho and Wyoming? They’re as solidly red regardless of socioeconomic status as the Northeast and Cali are blue. Any ideas why?

G.D.

G.D.

Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
G.D.
  • Ron

    Wyoming is a conservative place. Not so much even in a “libertarian” sort of way, as much as it’s just skeptical of pretty much anything and everything outsiders say.

    Even Democrats in Wyoming are pretty much nominal Republicans, save for the very small percentage of progressive liberals who live in certain parts of the state.

    People there (and Idaho is similar in this regard) are very reluctant about things like taxes, outsiders and other people spending their money or taking their guns.

    Couple that with the homogeneity of the population (it’s almost all white, save for the Native Americans on reservations and Hispanics speckled about the state) and the relatively isolation from things like national politics and insulation from most of the economic crisis that hit the country and you get a situation where people are inoculated from the generally populist groundswell that have seemed to have swept up the rest of the country.

    A pretty timely article about that is right here from the Economist blog yesterday: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/03/whats_right_with_wyoming.cfm

  • Ron

    The Hathaway scholarship is really new and they’re changing the requirements next year to make it a bit more stringent, people thought it wasn’t challenging kids to take harder classes in school. A lot of folks didn’t like that, because they recognize that not every kid is going to go to college and get a “desk job” and others wanted it more open to students who get 2-year degrees.

    But the Hathaway money isn’t really all from the mineral severance tax, though that’s what initially funded it, the scholarship is a $400 million trust fund that funds the scholarships.

    So it’s not a program that will be subject to the ups and downs of the economy. Also, Wyoming only has 1 four-year university and seven state funded community colleges dotted around the state. So there’s no real “state college” infrastructure like in other places.

  • young_

    Thanks for posting this. Interesting findings although it’s possible that they wouldn’t hold up with better data (especially data on the racial breakdowns and margins…)

    538 had some interesting speculation on Mike Steele’s future today too…