The 47% and Voter Self-Interest

Cynics, like Mitt Romney in his by-now-famous 47% line, think that people simply vote their own interests. In his formulation, people dependent on government handouts vote Democratic to insure that their handouts continue. Actually, this is not true at all, and this is a very interesting fact.

A cynic would imagine that rich people vote for low taxes and less social spending, while poor people vote for higher taxes and more social spending. On average, this is true, but as Brian Caplan shows in this article,  the effect is much smaller than you might think:

Moving from the lowest to the highest income category reduces the probability of being a Democrat by only 9.6 percentage points, and increases the probability of being a Republican by only 11.2 percentage points. In contrast, black ethnicity increases the probability of being a Democrat by 32.5 percentage points. . . . Male gender by itself reduces the probability of being a Democrat by 6.4 percentage points -- an estimated effect greater than a fall in family income from $45,000 to less than $10,000.

Economic interest matters in how people vote, but it is not the determining factor. Education matters more; if you ask, "Are taxes too high?", the answers people give depend much more on education than income, with the better educated saying "no" and the less educate saying "yes."

As I have noted before, many American conservatives have little interest in free market economics, and consider themselves conservative because they want a more religious nation, or one more attached to traditional social attitudes. How people feel about gay marriage is, right now, a better predictor of party affiliation than beliefs about taxation and regulation.

To me the key is identity. People vote their identities much more than their interests, and this explains why so many poor people dependent on government assistance vote Republican, and so many rich people vote Democratic.