Voter Values Determine Political Affiliation

 

The Washington Post  Author: Thomas B. Edsall Date: Mar 26, 2001 Start Page: A.01

Battles over abortion, gun control and other cultural values are dramatically reshaping the voting behavior of the American electorate, turning longtime working-class white Democrats into Republicans and moving many affluent whites from the GOP to the party of Roosevelt, according to political analysts and election data.

The transformation of voting patterns over the past three decades has weakened the long-standing link between income and voting among whites. Racial issues such as busing and affirmative action have pushed blue-collar voters into the GOP, at the same time that cultural issues, especially abortion rights, have built Democratic allegiance among white professionals.

In the past decade, the rate of change has accelerated, influencing voting in contests at every level, and fracturing the traditional stereotype that pitted a Democratic Party of the working man and woman against a GOP of the rich.

"In the white electorate now," said Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California in San Diego, "the conflict is: Do you vote your pocketbook or your moral conscience?"

If trends have predictive value, conscience is winning.

As recently as the 1988 contest between Michael S. Dukakis and George Bush, voters making more than $50,000 a year voted for the Republican by a 25 percentage point margin, 62 percent to 37 percent. By the 2000 election, the spread in the $50,000-plus bracket fell to 7 percentage points, 53 percent Republican to 46 percent Democratic, and to 11 percentage points -- 54 percent to 43 percent -- among the richest voters, those making more than $100,000.

In the process, some of the nation's best educated and highest income communities have become Democratic bastions, and some of the nation's poorest white counties -- especially in southern border states -- have turned into GOP strongholds.

In 2000, the voters in 17 out of 25 of the nation's most affluent counties -- all with high percentages of people with advanced degrees -- cast majorities for Al Gore, sometimes by more than 70 percent.

In nine out of the 10 poorest counties in Kentucky, for example, places where the Democratic Party of Harry S. Truman ran roughshod over Republican adversaries, George W. Bush won, frequently by margins the mirror image of Gore's in the nation's richest and best educated counties.

These new voting patterns are changing the composition of the House. According to a study by the National Committee for an Effective Congress of the 88 congressional districts that shifted from Democrat to Republican from 1994 to 2000, 59 had average incomes below the national norm, and in 68, the percentage of residents with college degrees was below the national average.

Conversely, of the 46 seats that went from Republican to Democratic, 29 were districts that had higher than average incomes.

The changes have not produced a full-scale reversal of the two parties' traditional constituencies. In the bottom half of the income levels, the Democratic Party remains strong among African Americans, Hispanics and white union members, while GOP support has swelled among nonunion whites. In the top half, there has been a realignment of white, well-educated professionals (lawyers, doctors, scientists, academics), now one of the most reliably Democratic constituencies. But Republican loyalties have strengthened among small-business men, managers and corporate executives.

These changes pose challenges as Republicans and Democrats prepare for the 2002 and 2004 elections.

For advocates of a revived populism in the Democratic Party, the steady erosion of support among lower-income whites is a growing threat. A poll by Democrat Stanley Greenberg for the Institute for America's Future showed that whites without college degrees had significantly more positive feelings toward the Republican Party than toward the Democratic Party.

Asked whether their views were "warm" or "cool" toward the two parties, white women without college degrees were decisively favorable to the GOP, 49 percent "warm" and 27 percent "cool," while their assessment of the Democratic Party was less positive, 46 percent warm to 34 percent cool. For non-college white men, the differences were more dramatic: Their positive view of the Republican Party was 54 percent to 27 percent, and their assessment of the Democratic Party was negative: 38 percent to 41 percent.

Assessing the consequences of these trends for Democrats, Greenberg said: "We lost it downscale and gained it upscale. Progressives need to ask: What is the character of a progressive movement without the aspiration to represent working-class voters?"

These changes have had the most consequences in such states as Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky.

"Here in Western Kentucky, we've been a rock of the Democratic Party. There wasn't any other way to go when I was growing up. It was the party with compassion for the needy, frail and elderly, the champion of the working men and women, the blue collar people. Even George McGovern carried my county," said Mike Miller, Marshall County judge for the past 29 years.

But in the 2000 election, Bush "was the first Republican to carry my county," Miller said. "Our people are hunters. We are very religious-oriented people in this district. Some of the stands of the national Democratic Party do not line up with West Kentucky Democrats."

At the same time, Democratic gains among upscale and well- educated white professionals are changing the party's political base and its legislative priorities, altering the outlook of many elected Democrats.

Sen. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), heavily dependent on support from upscale suburbs in his state, was asked recently on Fox News what concerned him about the Bush tax cut. Torricelli did not raise classic Democratic objections about failure to benefit those on the bottom of the economic scale. Instead, he proposed shortening the capital gains holding period for stocks -- a concern of his more affluent constituents. He also said that the bill fails to have "a true understanding of what represents the middle class in a suburban New Jersey community," which he described as "people who have family incomes of $70,000, $80,000, $85,000" -- well above the median of $50,200.

In California, Democratic chairman Art Torres did not cite loyalty to the union movement or a commitment to the poor as key campaign issues for Democrats. Instead, he said, "the candidates who win are for a woman's right to choose, they are pro-environment, anti-gun, pro-education and pro-HMO reform" -- the agenda of well-educated white professionals, not the white working class.

Exit polls by Voter News Service (VNS) from the 2000 election show a slight majority, 52 percent to 48 percent, of whites with high school diplomas or less believe most abortions should be illegal. But whites with college and post-graduate degrees believe most abortions should be legal by a resounding 63 percent to 37 percent. On gun control, less well-educated whites split evenly, while well-educated whites strongly support gun control, 66 percent to 34 percent.

Even though Gore had a strong advantage over Bush on a number of such issues -- a solid 38 percentage points on the environment, 17 percentage points on a patients' bill of rights, and 9 on the economy generally, according to a survey by Greenberg -- many voters cast their ballots on the basis of values.

When voters were asked which candidate "shares your values," Bush beat Gore 45 percent to 41 percent, and this question was "the strongest predictor by far," Greenberg said. For Gore, the result was devastating:

He barely carried poor whites with household incomes of less than $15,000 a year, 49 percent to 46 percent, and lost every other white income group, according to the exit polls. Bush's margin was between 13 and 17 percentage points in every category, from voters making $15,000 to $30,000 (55 percent to 42 percent) to those making more than $100,000 (56 percent to 41 percent).

Pollsters are finding that one of the best ways to discover whether a voter holds liberal or conservative value stands is to ask: How often do you go to church? Those who go often tend to be Republican, those who go rarely or not at all tend to be Democratic.

Frequency of church attendance has become a better indicator of partisanship than income or education: Among whites who go to church more than once a week, Bush won by a decisive 79 percent to 20 percent. Among those who never attend religious services, Gore won 59 percent to 33 percent, according to VNS.

Piecing together a majority in this new climate is a difficult task that neither party has mastered. Greenberg said the 2000 election was fought on the issues of the culture war -- "guns, gay civil unions and choice" -- which together "reinforced the cultural gap between Al Gore and Democrats on one side and a large segment of the electorate on the other." Bush, in turn, was unable to convert his advantage on values issues into an Election Day victory, winning the presidency on the basis of a slim electoral college majority while losing the popular vote to Gore by 500,000 ballots.