Inequality is a disease, voter turnout the cure

[octoberlib]

June 29, 2015 2:00AM ET
by Sean McElwee


The 2016 election will be decided not just by who votes but by who stays home. Voters were for a long time assumed to be a carbon copy of the electorate, but new research suggests turnout is tilted toward conservatives. The key to implementing progressive policy is therefore boosting voter turnout by reducing barriers to registration and mobilizing low- and moderate-income voters.

A massive Pew Survey on the party affiliations of Americans across numerous demographic groups recently made headlines for showing the political preferences of Americans. However, in the published data, Pew did not distinguish between the registered and nonregistered population. I asked Pew if it could provide data on the political views of the Americans who are not registered to vote. As the chart below shows, nonregistered Americans strongly prefer the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. Particularly interesting is that while the richest voters prefer Republicans, the richest nonvoters prefer Democrats. (This is in line with my research examining the American National Election Studies (ANES) data.)


The most important fact about the above chart is that it shows Democrats are missing a huge opportunity by failing to register more low-income voters. While the richest nonregistered Americans prefer Democrats by a margin of 4 percentage points, the poorest nonregistered Americans prefer Democrats by a whopping 24 points. And the middle class (individuals with an average yearly income of $30,000 to $74,999) prefer Democrats by 16 points. In other words, the group that is least likely to be registered (low-income people) is most likely to support Democrats. According to 2012 census data (the most recent available), 65 percent of those earning less than $30,000 say they are registered, 26 percent say they are not registered, and 9 percent did not give a response.

To examine how boosting voting might affect policy on inequality, I asked Pew about its inequality survey. These data also show that the nonregistered population is more liberal than the registered population. Pew asked people which would do more to reduce poverty: “Raising taxes on wealthy people and corporations in order to expand programs for the poor” or “Lowering taxes on wealthy people and corporations in order to encourage more investment and economic growth.” While majorities of both registered and nonregistered Americans say that raising taxes on the wealthy would do more to reduce poverty, nonregistered respondents were more supportive than registered ones (59 percent and 51 percent, respectively). In addition, while 69 percent of registered respondents supported raising the minimum wage, 82 percent of nonregistered Americans did. While 60 percent of registered respondents supported a one-year extension of unemployment benefits, 69 percent of those who are not registered did. These findings conform to other research suggesting nonregistered Americans favor a far stronger economic role for government.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/6/the-cure-for-inequality-is-democracy.html?utm_content=opinion&utm_campaign=ajam&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow