Rich county, poor county
In his influential Atlantic magazine article, “One Nation, Slightly Divisible.” published after the 2000 election, David Brooks compared Montgomery County, Maryland, the liberal, upper-middle-class suburb where he lives, to rural, conservative Franklin County, Pennsylvania, a short drive away but distant in attitudes and values, with “no Starbucks, no Pottery Barn, no Borders or Barnes & Noble,” plenty of churches but not so many Thai restaurants, “a lot fewer sun-dried-tomato concoctions on restaurant menus and a lot more meatloaf platters.”
In Brooks’s home state of Maryland, there is no clear pattern of county income and Republican vote, and it was not difficult for him to go from Montgomery County, the prototypical wealthy slice of blue America, to a poorer, more Republican-supporting county nearby. Here are the data from 2000:
Brooks lives in a liberal, well-off part of the country. It is characteristic of the East and West Coasts that the richer areas tend to be more liberal, but in other parts of the country, notably the South, richer areas tend to be more conservative. A comparable journey in Texas would go from Collin County, a wealthy suburb of Dallas where George W. Bush received 71% of the vote, to rural Zavala County in the southwest, where Bush received only 25% of the vote:
When we showed our graph of Texas counties to another political scientist, he asked about the state capital, noted for its liberal attitudes, vibrant alternative rock scene, and the University of Texas: “What about Austin? It must be rich and liberal.” We looked it up. Austin is in Travis County and makes up almost all of its population. Travis County has a median household income of $45,000 and gave George W. Bush 53% of the vote in 2000, about midway between Collin and Zavala counties. (Austin has its own red-blue divide, with a highly Democratic university area and urban center, and strongly Republican suburbs.)
This is not to dismiss Brooks’s insights but rather to place them in the national context of income mattering more in poor states than in rich states, which is the subject of our forthcoming Red State, Blue State book (from which the above graphs were taken).
Comments
As a resident of Collin county today but having grown up in the fairly well off suburbs of the north, I can tell you that the reason I think rich urban southern counties vote differently than rich urban northern/coastal counties is that it has to do with what a “local” Republican vs. Democrat means. In the southern example, the Republicans enjoy control of the busienss and social infrastructure (especially church-going types). Whereas up north and on the coasts the local Democrats are in control of the unions, universities and civil controls (my opinion is that they don’t go to church…).
So, what I’m saying is that rich urban counties just go with the flow on who’s in charge. Sure this has an impact on a national Presidential race, but it isn’t politics driving this division. It is just common sense of all involved getting in where they fit in.
Posted by: Michael O'Neill | May 27, 2008 01:41 PM
Just curious: how do these questions look with other measures of social class? i.e. type of job, parent’s occupation.
Posted by: Simon Kiss | May 27, 2008 03:21 PM
it is OK with me if you do dismiss Brooks’ “insight”
Posted by: BillCinSD | May 27, 2008 03:32 PM
I’m not completely convinced the conclusion (to the extent I understand it) follows. The pattern seems to be more something like this: below around 30k, people vote Democrat. Much above that, average income ceases to be explanatory on voting pattern, and whatever the “red-blue” divide is, it isn’t anything to do with income. A salient point here is that the highest levels of support for Bush in Texas are not found in the richest counties, but rather just in the upper portions of that giant cluster. Get much above $45-$50k, and support for Bush drops back a bit to the relatively uniform 72% or so that is the state average. And while within that cluster there does seem to be an effect of county average income on Bush’s vote share, there’s so much variation I wouldn’t feel to comfortable citing it as a general voting pattern across elections. The pattern, to the extent there is one, seems to be more that there is a threshold below which income is highly explanatory on voting pattern, but that above that you need to look to other factors. To my mind, that speaks against “average income” doing much heavy lifting in characterizing the red-blue divide.
Posted by: Joshua | May 27, 2008 05:30 PM
Joshua,
Our point is that the rich-county, poor-county comparison looks different in different parts of the country.
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May 27, 2008 08:41 PM
Brooks is utterly unreliable, especially on the kind of details that make for such vivid description: Sasha Issenberg wrote a fantastic fact-check article for Philadelphia magazine that permanently put me off any trust in David Brooks. You can read it here - http://www.phillymag.com/articles/booboos_in_paradise/
If he’s right about the relationship between wealth and political opinion on the East Coast, it’s no testament to his insight.
Posted by: North | May 28, 2008 06:47 AM
Yes, but for counties beyond a certain income level (30k or so) it seems to look the same regardless of region. At least, that’s true for the two states you’ve shown. A relevant question is then whether this is true in general or just for the pair presented.
Posted by: Joshua | May 28, 2008 05:54 PM