Coastal vs country club elites

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JYiJwDob1w[/youtube]

For those of us who would rather not tie up our computers for 53 minutes of a video, could you please summarize the video?

Andrew Gelman tries to discover which narrative is right, the one of rich latte-sipping, volvo driving coastal elitists vs culturally conservative blue-collar stiffs or the one of rich sedan driving, golf-playing, country club conservatives vs poor working mothers. He looks at the data, which seems to indicate that the poor don't vote on cultural issues but rather based on economic issues. The higher up the income distribution you go, however, the less you vote on economic issues and the more you vote on cultural issues. So the culture war isn't between rich liberals and poor conservatives after all, but between rich conservatives and rich liberals.



http://andrewgelman.com/2008/11/electio ... -happened/

He also solves the paradox that individuals who are rich vote Republican, while states that are richer vote Democrat. Apparently, in poorer "red states" the electorate is more polarized based on income, with the upper middle class and upper class strongly favouring the Republicans. In richer "blue states" such as those in the North East or West coast, the upper middle class to upper class votes Democratic due to cultural issues - with the class-based voting of poorer Democrats combining to give rise to very blue states indeed.

Also, interesting. Poorer Democrats tend to be more conservative than more well off Democrats, but richer Republicans tend to be much more conservative than less well off Republicans.





http://andrewgelman.com/2009/08/who_are_the_lib/

Yes, I have seen this study... it shows that the conventional wisdom of misguided 'poor white trash' tilting elections towards the Republicans is mostly myth.