Apparently it takes a so************************t countries' paper to take a fair look
I strongly rec going to the link and reading it in its' entirety. It's pretty good.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...ica-republican
"There is nothing more vexing to liberals than poor Republicans. Their very existence rankles. It turns their world on its head and their assumptions inside out. The effort to explain them is understood not just as a political paradox but a psychological disorder. They have been duped. They must have been. How else would one explain putting your cross next to the man who derided them as "victims" among the 47% "I don't worry about". To many liberals these are turkeys voting for Christmas or lemmings off for a leap; the condemned tying the noose for their own execution.
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"In Republican states, rich and poor have similar views on social issues," wrote Andrew Gelman, Lake Kenworthy and Yu-Sung Su in a paper, Income inequality and partisan voting in the United States, in the Social Science Quarterly. "But in Democratic states, the rich are quite a bit more socially liberal than the poor. Factors such as religion and education result in a less clear pattern of class-based voting than we might expect based on income in- equality alone."
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On some level explaining why poorer whites would vote for the Republicans demands a resource sorely lacking in American political culture at present – particularly during election time: empathy. There are more to "interests" than just the economic. If someone's core conviction is that abortion is murder or gay marriage is wrong then their decision to vote for a candidate who is against abortion or gay marriage is not an act of delusion but conviction. In any case working class white voters who are against abortion are significantly more likely to vote Democrat than their more affluent counterparts. So the economy still matters.
But it is not the only consideration. In 2008 Obama won narrowly among people who earn $200,000 or more. Given his plans to tax high earners more heavily many of them were voting against their economic interests as do Warren Buffett, George Soros and all of Obama's wealthy funders. If poor states voting Republican is a paradox then the fact that 9 out of 10 states with the highest median income vote Democrat is no less so.
Moreover some people, despite being poor, legitimately believe in free market and small government, even if it doesn't benefit them in precisely the same way that wealthy people may favour greater government intervention even if it doesn't benefit them.
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He doesn't like Romney and said he thought the 47% remarks merely confirmed his believe the Republican candidate was a snob. "It doesn't surprise me about Romney because he's always struck me as a stuffed shirt. He's arrogant, and it's hard for me to get past that. It didn't change my mind about him because I always thought that about him." But when we met – a few hours before the first debate – he was still considering voting for him because he's concerned about deficit and thought Romney might do a better job. One could argue about whether his assessment of Romney's deficit-cutting plans are plausible. But one can't reasonably insist it wasn't a considered viewpoint.
Finally, as Weaver's circumstances illustrate, poverty is not necessarily a permanent state. People fall in and climb out of it. Americans are particularly reluctant to describe themselves as even working class let alone poor.
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In fact, the truly shocking thing about income and voting patterns in the US isn't the number of poor people who vote Republican but the number who don't vote at all. Inequality in income is intimately related to inequality in turnout. In 2008, 41% of voters who earn less than $10,000 voted; among those who earn more than $150,000 the figure was 78%. One can only assume that many poor people do not feel they have anyone to vote for.
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When liberals depict the existence of poor white Republicans as an expression of mass idiocy and false consciousness they not only disparage poor white people, they provide conservatives with one of their key talking points which is that liberals are elitists who look down on poorer whites.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...ica-republican
Pete