Bartels on the political science of "bitter"

Larry Bartels, an eminent political scientist at Princeton, writes in the New York Times about how Obama's description of less educated rural voters is wrong:

For the sake of concreteness, let’s define the people Mr. Obama had in mind as people whose family incomes are less than $60,000 (an amount that divides the electorate roughly in half), who do not have college degrees and who live in small towns or rural areas. For the sake of convenience, let’s call these people the small-town working class, though that term is inevitably imprecise. In 2004, they were about 18 percent of the population and about 16 percent of voters.

For purposes of comparison, consider the people who are their demographic opposites: people whose family incomes are $60,000 or more, who are college graduates and who live in cities or suburbs. These (again, conveniently labeled) cosmopolitan voters were about 11 percent of the population in 2004 and about 13 percent of voters. While admittedly crude, these definitions provide a systematic basis for assessing the accuracy of Mr. Obama’s view of contemporary class politics.

Small-town, working-class people are more likely than their cosmopolitan counterparts, not less, to say they trust the government to do what’s right. In the 2004 National Election Study conducted by the University of Michigan, 54 percent of these people said that the government in Washington can be trusted to do what is right most of the time or just about always. Only 38 percent of cosmopolitan people expressed a similar level of trust in the federal government.

Do small-town, working-class voters cast ballots on the basis of social issues? Yes, but less than other voters do. Among these voters, those who are anti-abortion were only 6 percentage points more likely than those who favor abortion rights to vote for President Bush in 2004. The corresponding difference for the rest of the electorate was 27 points, and for cosmopolitan voters it was a remarkable 58 points. Similarly, the votes cast by the cosmopolitan crowd in 2004 were much more likely to reflect voters’ positions on gun control and gay marriage.

Small-town, working-class voters were also less likely to connect religion and politics. Support for President Bush was only 5 percentage points higher among the 39 percent of small-town voters who said they attended religious services every week or almost every week than among those who seldom or never attended religious services. The corresponding difference among cosmopolitan voters (34 percent of whom said they attended religious services regularly) was 29 percentage points.

It is true that American voters attach significantly more weight to social issues than they did 20 years ago. It is also true that church attendance has become a stronger predictor of voting behavior. But both of those changes are concentrated primarily among people who are affluent and well educated, not among the working class.

Mr. Obama’s comments are supposed to be significant because of the popular perception that rural, working-class voters have abandoned the Democratic Party in recent decades and that the only way for Democrats to win them back is to cater to their cultural concerns. The reality is that John Kerry received a slender plurality of their votes in 2004, while John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, in the close elections of 1960 and 1968, lost them narrowly.

For more, see his working paper "What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?" (PDF). In general, it's amazing how little of this debate bothers to consider actual evidence.

Comments

[SomeCallMeTim]

I'm becoming more and more convinced that Obama was being patronizing to the SF donors. Offer them the story they want to hear, take their money, etc.

[Josh R.]

I'm becoming more and more convinced that Obama was being patronizing to the SF donors. Offer them the story they want to hear, take their money, etc.

And upon what evidence do you base this burgeoning belief?

[Josh R.]

Addendum: Especially in light of the fact that Obama made a similar comment in 2004 on the Charlie Rose show and Bill Clinton makes a similar comment in his memoirs (in other words, this isn't a strange comment emanating purely from Obama's addled mind).

[Howard]

The article you quote is very interesting and informative but I don't think it quite shows that Obama was "wrong".

For example, "trusting the government" (Bartels' term) is different from what Obama said, which was more along the lines of "trusting that the government will respond to your specific (regional) economic needs".

Also, Bartels introduces the right to abortion as a proxy for "social issues" but I don't believe Obama was grouping all social issues together or that he was talking about political affiliation and a stance on social issues.

Certainly, I don't think Obama was talking about how a stand on a specific issue influenced a vote in the prior Presidential election. I think he was talking more about which issues people focus on in general - which issues people feel they have a say in, or which issues are given political prominence.

I'll add that the degree of 'political prominence' may may be based strongly on outside sources (the media, for example).

Bartels also implies that Obama said that small-town, working-class voters were more likely to connect religion and politics. But here Bartels ignores what Obama said in the debate on that point : that he wasn't speaking of religion as a voting booth issue.

Another thing I took from the article was that urban voters who were ‘conservative’ across social issues were more uniformly pro-Bush in the last election, as compared to to the non-urban voters who were also ‘conservative’ on social issues.

That’s interesting but it seems unrelated to Obama’s comments, either original or follow-up.

[Jinchi]

let’s define the people Mr. Obama had in mind as people whose family incomes are less than $60,000 (an amount that divides the electorate roughly in half)

That's quite a straw man. Suddenly Obama was describing half the electorate! Where's the evidence he meant anything of the sort? Certainly not in the 450 word transcript of Obama's original remarks (http://thepage.time.com/transcript-of-obamas-remarks-at-san-francisco-fundraiser-sunday/).

Of course, you could also assume Obama was speaking of the segment of the population who do cling to guns or religion or anti-immigration rhetoric, rather than assume he was speaking about every blue-collar worker in rural America.

This has to be the most over-analyzed statement of the current election. The punditry is furious at what they think Obama must have meant, rather than the words he actually said. On the rare occasions that someone bothers to actually ask the man on the street, it turns out that they aren't particularly offended by his words after all.

[BG]

The $60,000 income level is flawed for a simple reason: cost of living is much lower in small towns. While $60,000 may divide the population in half, a $60K household in York would be well above the national median in measuring household income indexed by cost of living.

Furthermore, I would hazard to guess that Bartels' definition of small town is overly restrictive. I understood Obama to be including cities as large as Scranton (pop. 76K) in his statement. Certainly he would have included Norristown (pop. 31K). What was Bartels' cut-off for "small town"?

I would use any people living outside MSA's of over 200K with household incomes of 35 or 40K.

[mark]

At the time, Brendan, as you may recall, Frank replied to WTMWWTMWK, and you should link to that too. Can't immediately find a link.