Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach. [See Update at end]
First, I heard three of the best, most moving, heartfelt, and real speeches of the election yesterday and today, from Trump, Clinton, and Obama. My congratulations to all three of them for a statesman-like response to the outcome.
Next, when I was a kid, the Democrats were the party of the poor and the Republicans were the party of the rich. However, somehow that changed when I wasn’t looking, and that is not now the case. See the results below. The wealthier the state, the more people voted for Hillary.
Finally, the chart below also reveals the reason that the talking heads were so shocked by the outcome … see the one state with 93% Hillary votes way up at the top there?
That’s the District of Columbia, which is more than 10 to 1 liberal … and they wonder why they don’t know any Trump supporters, why they have no idea of the pulse of the country, and why they thought he could never win? They’re stuck inside the Beltway Bubble, with the usual reality field distortion that occurs there.
My best to everyone on both sides. My hope is that we can all reach across the aisle and recognize that this is a huge chance for us to change a government which is frankly not working. We may not agree on any given proposed fix, but I do think we can agree that the present gridlock is intolerable.
UPDATE: At the request of a friend, I’ve expanded the analysis to include the 2008 election which brought Obama to power. Here’s the comparison:
This shows a couple of things. First, Obama got about the same support in the wealthy states, and more support in the poor states, compared with Clinton.
More interesting is the change in the District of Columbia. It would be hard for DC to vote more liberal than it was under Obama at 92% … but Hillary got it up to 93%.
Most interesting is that during this time, the overall average income in the states hardly changed at all … but the pluted bloatocrats in DC saw their incomes rise by about 25% … is it any wonder that folks inside the Beltway Bubble think the economy is fixed and everything is proceeding just fine in this best of all possible worlds? Hey, they’re getting rich, what could be wrong?
Best to all,
w.
As Always: I, like most folks, can defend my own words and claims. However, nobody can defend themselves against a misunderstanding of their own words. So to prevent misunderstanding, please quote the exact words that you disagree with. That way we can all be clear regarding the exact nature of your objection.
Willis- The important aspect of your graph is not that the wealthy are voting for Democrats, but that a single party has nearly unanimous support from the people who run the government year and and year out. That cannot be a health thing for our country.
Indeed. Having a single private political party as the party of government is a characteristic of many dysfunctional nations. Cause and effect? Or just correlation?
Bigger government means job security for government workers…
“America has the best politicians money can buy.” – Will Rogers
The Clinton Foundation is the new paradigm for buying politicians.
I supported Trump precisely because it’s awfully hard to bribe a billionaire.
I have noticed that the Left lives in ‘Projection Land’ – accusing everybody else of doing the same things they do, whether it is lying, hating, or representing moneyed interests.
Yes, the left accused Trump’s “Deplorables” as being violent, but Podesta’s Emails show that Hillary’s circus clowns were paying people $1,500.00 to cause trouble at his rallies…
It isn’t the Trump supporters who have spent the last day rioting.
Of all the people reporting an income in the top 1% – about half of them live in DC area. That’s no coincidence, it’s perfectly congruent to the famous Willie Sutton reply, “Because that’s where the money is.”
My wife made a good point:
If anyone had shown the DC result to a western journalist (without saying it was from the US) they would have instantly said it was a fix. Aren’t the these the kind of numbers you get in totalitarian regimes?
For those interested in Trump’s actual proposals here’s his statement ..
w.
It may be a minor, thing but I’ve been pushing for an increase in the minimum age for house/senate/president. The current values are 25/35/45 and were set in the late 1700s when life expectancy was a lot lower. I would like to see the numbers raised to 45/55/65. Perhaps higher.
Why does he have to wait until inaugurated to start looking for Scalia’s replacement. That’s something he can set up a team to do now. Have a name ready to present on day one.
The reason why companies close American factories and expand overseas is because they can’t afford to do otherwise. Until the problem of taxes and regulations is solved, such an act merely means that American companies go out of business and foreign companies take up the slack. Once those problems are solved, there will be no need for such an act.
Here’s to hoping that the economy building ideas will be able to outweigh his economy destroying ones.
I agree, making the U.S. business friendly with lower taxes and regulations is the best way to keep our businesses here in the U.S. and is the best way to attract businesses from other parts of the world.
Move our capital from Washington, D.C. to Nebraska. Many advantages to having the seat of government more centrally located.
The problem is, can you talk the Nebraskans into accepting it?
Another problem is that Nebraska is a relatively low population state.
Move a couple of million government workers into the state and they quickly take it over.
It will turn Virginia Blue and get rid of the rot in the state.
Sorry, turn it red.
The WSJ has a great interactive graphic by county showing the pattern over the four quadrants of stronger Clinton, stronger Trump, voted more Dem than 2012, voted more Rep. than 2012. The scatter plot can be reduced to counties of one state at a time over the background cloud of the total scatter plot and each dot has pop up percentage data.
This income / vote pattern by state is comparable with the voting pattern in the
UK Brexit vote which is I understand went
Average incomes in UK pounds
to leave the EU18000
to stay in the EU 35000
The areas of UK with the high average incomes
Were the capital city London plus leading
University towns of Oxford and Cambridge
Rest of England voted to leave
Rest of UK Scotland and Northern Ireland
Voted to stay but they are regions with limited self governing so they were getting EU subsidies.
Same pattern in Australia
Self governing Australian Capital Territory with
High incomes supported by taxpayer has just
Re-elected for 20 years in a row a Green/Labour government similar
To what Hillary’s would gave been like in terms
of policies
For three Presidential elections in a row, the winning candidate has found his victory margin by identifying and energizing a constituency with little education, and a history of political apathy.
In 2008 and 2012, the media reported that President Obama had energized large numbers of mostly-black citizens to register and vote for the first time. The media never mentioned that those new voters were mostly non-college educated.
In 2016 Trump energized large numbers of mostly-white citizens to register and vote for the first time. But this time the media incessantly reminds us that the new voters are non-college educated.
The truth is that the great majority of college-educated citizens, whether black or white, already vote, at least in Presidential elections. So if large numbers of “new” voters are going to be inspired to vote, they will be disproportionately non-college educated.
So, why do you think that when the media are talking about such voters, they only mention the new voters’ lack of education if they’re white Republicans?
That’s a rhetorical question, of course. The answer is obvious:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=207
I truly am sick of hearing about the uneducated non-college voters. Somehow I am supposed to believe that just because you studies liberal arts, you are somehow smarter and more qualified to pick a president than a high school graduate who runs his own business (or someone who works in the trades)?
It is my opinion, that anyone who paid to take a liberal arts degree is mentally unstable. Who on earth would pay to be brainwashed by an extremist, socialist prof.? It is my opinion that these people are unqualified to pick a president.
Flip it around a bit. I think there are values-locked and gullible people in all stations of society. Values locked at both ends of the political spectrum. These things really don’t correlate to education or class. Maybe they do within selected regions but not nationally.
Good point. Thanks
I’d like to see that graph but with county data. Even in the poorer states, the richer cities typically were voting Clinton, whereas the poorer rural areas were voting Trump.
Jeff:
This is fast and dirty, but the ‘land area’ metric is even more telling. Going state-by-state, looking at the counties and the red/blue split, it’s even worse.
I do not have the income data, but many websites provide county-by-county election results. IF — — — and that is not a suggestion to change the Constitution — — — we look at the “land area” won by the candidates, Clinton would have won the following states:
California (55)
Connecticut (7)
Hawaii (4)
New Jersey (14)
Massachusetts (11)
Rhode Island (3)
Vermont (3)
D.C. (3)
No third-party candidate took any county; the remainder went to Trump. The number of counties won by Trump is about four (or five) – to – one over Clinton.
Upthread is a discussion of ‘Clinton-votes’ vs. ‘non-Clinton-votes’. She took less than 50% of the total votes cast on Tuesday.
Vlad
If I am remembering correctly, the county map has been R>>>>D for some time, going by the number of counties. Counties with large cities tend to go D>>>>R.
Sabo nails it …
w.
Incoming 🙂
The move to Canada appears to be starting up. The servers of Canadian government have crashed under the load of requests for information about residency.
Given that, I foresee that the Mexican government will now gladly build that wall, even maybe is initiating its construction right now, to stop the influx from US asylum seekers.
After the election that put Ronald Reagan in the White House there was a story going around of a dumbsmacked NYT journalist who complained that he just could not understand the result since all the people he knew had voted for Carter.
Tunnelvision doesn’t quite cut it, methinks.
I heard a similar story, but it was about Nixon.
When leftists become a majority, the first thing they do is shut down any voices that disagree with them.
Either by just drowning them out, or through threats of violence.
Then after a few years of talking only to each other, they act surprised when they find out that there are still people in the country that don’t agree with them.
Here’s what Wiki has to say about that: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pauline_Kael, yet I have a memory of that also, at the time, said to have been uttered by a writer at The New Yorker magazine.
The democrat party is the party of Evita:
This was the “definitive” Evita, by Patti Lupone which I was lucky enough to see in Broadway in early 1980.
Listen to the lyrics.
And then study what she and her hubby did to Argentina……
Oh yeah. I saw that play once, in Birmingham. Obviously not done by the same acting troupe.
Willis: Data aggregated by state tells us nothing about the voting preferences of individuals Let’s try this data, where the percentages (stupidly) are percentages of all voters (in parenthesis), percentages of Clinton voters, and percentage of Trump voters.
http://www.people-press.org/2016/08/18/1-voters-general-election-preferences/
Income $150K+ (11%): Clinton 15%. Trump 7%.
Income $100-150K (13%): Clinton 12%. Trump 15%.
Income $75-100K (13%): Clinton 12%. Trump 15%.
Income $30-75K (33%): Clinton 27%. Trump 40%.
Income below $30K (23%): Clinton 28%. Trump 14%.
If you are rich (and have a lot to lose) or poor (and have a lot of government benefits to lose), you voted 2:1 for Clinton. The rich represented 11% of the vote and the poor 23%. If you are in the middle 66%, you voted 1.37:1 for Trump, ranging from 1.5:1 in the lower middle (33%) to 1.25:1 in the “upper middle”.
Income inequality in DC is greater than in any state: top 20% averages $187K, bottom 20% averages $6K (!), the second quintile averages $22K. http://www.dcfpi.org/7-22-04pov.pdf. But that can’t explain why only 7% voted for Trump. Perhaps I should add that 56% are black or Latino, and 38% work for the government (about twice the national average). http://www.gallup.com/poll/141785/Gov-Employment-Ranges-Ohio.aspx. (The Pentagon and CIA are in Virginia.)
However, most legislators don’t actually residue in DC. They reside in their home districts with their families, flying in on Monday and back home on Thursday evening. An increasing number (most famously Paul Ryan) sleep in their office and shower in the House or Senate gym. There is a DC bubble, but it is composed of staffers, lobbyists, donors and campaign advisors. Fund-raising consumes about 30% of their time. Legislators from neither party mingle with the DC residents who overwhelmingly voted for Clinton – nor with Trump supporters in their home districts.
Trump, of course, is different. He has spent his whole life associating with the voters who elected him: at public school when he was growing up, at Wharton, with fellow soldiers in the military during the Vietnam War, with workers constructing his buildings, with ordinary patrons in his casinos, waiting for a plane with fellow citizens at embarrassingly tacky NY airports, with contestants at his beauty pageants, with students at Trump University, with neighbors in Trump Tower or one of his 40 other residences, and especially with the real people appearing on The Apprentice.
Actually, most politicians, especially Trump, Reagan and (Bill) Clinton, connect with voters because they are smooth-talking entertainers or celebrities, who instinctively know what their audience wants to hear. Fortunately, Reagan and Clinton had eight years of experience as governors and a well-developed political philosophy honed by years of discussions with leading thinkers in their party.
Frank November 10, 2016 at 6:42 pm
Trump, of course, is different. He has spent his whole life associating with the voters who elected him:
at public school when he was growing up, at Wharton,with fellow soldiers in the military during the Vietnam War, with workers constructing his buildings, with ordinary patrons in his casinos, waiting for a plane with fellow citizens at embarrassingly tacky NY airports, with contestants at his beauty pageants, with students at Trump University, with neighbors in Trump Tower or one of his 40 other residences, and especially with the real people appearing on The Apprentice.Trump attended private school not public and did not serve in the military during the Vietnam war.
Phil: Did I really need a [/sarc] tag? Trump rides around in a private plane, and doesn’t fly from NY’s “third world” airports. Nor does he hang out with construction workers, patrons at his casinos, or students at Trump University. You could have drawn lines through that too. Elites at Wharton and his neighborhoods probably voted mostly for Clinton. Willis noted above that the Washington establishment isn’t personally familiar the people who elected Trump to the Presidency. I agreed that the establishment lives in a DC bubble, but not a bubble comprised of people who voted 93% liberal. My main point, made in sarcasm, is that Trump also didn’t have a personal connection with his voters before the campaign. However, as a masterful entertainer unconstrained by a well-developed political philosophy or by deep knowledge of the issues or by a sense of decency, he learned what his audiences responded to most strongly and told them what they wanted to hear (IMO). Familiarity had nothing to do with his ability to appeal to the people who voted for him (IMO).
“Trump attended private school not public and did not serve in the military during the Vietnam war.”
And therefore he is for School Choice in the inner cities, and repealing the Iran deal which Wikileaks exposes as a way for the Democrats to start a nuclear war in the Middle East.
“Data aggregated by state tells us nothing about the voting preferences of individuals”
Yeah…I was going to make a similar point based on the exit polling data. That data showed that there was still a trend for lower incomes to vote more heavily for Clinton and middle and higher incomes for Trump. However, admittedly a big story was the extent to which this trend was a lot more muted than it had been in 2012: Clinton lost ground amongst the lower incomes and Trump lost ground amongst the higher incomes, as compared to the Obama-Romney matchup.
If I wanted to be partisan, I could even suggest a conjecture for the divergence between the data on individual families and that aggregated on the state level: Perhaps on the state level, you are reversing cause and effect – The poorer states don’t vote Republican because they are poorer; they are poorer because they vote Republican and hence have state governments run by Republicans. (In reality, I don’t think I really believe this to be the case, at least without further evidence to support it, but it was just too tempting to throw it out there!)
The public display of good sportsmanship was likely wise, and prevented riots, but I don’t imagine it is more than skin deep.
One thing I found most vile about the Clinton’s was the vast gulf between their words and their actions. The would say “help the poor” and bat their eyelashes, but behind the scenes they only “helped themselves”.
Over a billion dollars was raised to help the poor of Haiti after their earthquake. Hardly any reached the people who were suffering. It was funneled through the Clinton’s, because the leaders of Haiti were deemed “too corrupt.” What a gross irony that was.
I think an especially sharp thunderbolt is prepared in heaven for those wealthy people who grab money intended for the poor,
Bravo Willis, I absolutely love the simplicity, Another thing I love about this election is that many Democrats voted for Trump, many if not most of those Democrats voted for Obama twice. Now that they voted for Trump, those Obama voters are now being called racist. That is going to wake a large number of people up to the despicable tactics of the Democrats. Going forward Democrats are likely going to have to win with ideas and results, not fearmongering and bussing the frightful to the polls. BTW, thank God for the electoral college, it allows American to quarantine the cancer to a few bright blue areas. Democrats use the inner cities and their ground game to bus voters to the polls, almost guaranteeing them the ability to win the popular vote. While Democrats are literally corralling and busing their people to the polls, Republicans are working and paying taxes for the benefits the Democrats are promising the people they are bussing to the polls.
The “analysis” is simply a chart without analysis and no link to allow us to see any accompanying analysis. I wouldn’t even use this for my facebook page. Seriously: how can you post this without so much as a link or attribution for whomever generated it?
I respectfully disagree. I WANT gridlock.
As (probably) Jefferson said, “That government governs best which governs least.” When our deliberately-divided government is fighting amongst themselves, they generally leave the rest of us alone. I consider gridlock to be a feature, not a bug in our system of government.
This whole thing boils down to a reaction to globalization. I agree that globalization, as it is currently understood and allowed, pretty much sucks. But, many of the jobs will never come back. Even if the factories come back See, there is this automation thingey. Tough deal there.
In any case, there are so called populists (I’m being charitable, less charitable people call ’em demagogues, or worse things), from both the purported Left and the purported Right, who sell snake oil to the underemployed proles. Proles are great for turning into “domestic armies,” informant networks, what have you. Then, you ID some sort of boogie men, and tell the proles, they are not REAL AMERICANS / ENGLISHMEN / FILL IN BLANK. We have the final solution, we will be great again.
James at 48 November 15, 2016 at 12:50 pm
While some jobs won’t come back, the reason factories stay in e.g. Mexico is cheap labor. And every one of those jobs could come back. And even if it is automated to require little labor, still those jobs can come back, along with all the jobs servicing the robots and the like.
Short answer? We can’t get them all back, but we should fight and claw to get back the ones that we can.
w.
Hi Willis,
Do you have a link to the source of this chart please? I’d like to use it in the coming years and need a solid reference to real data. Six kids all who think Trump is amoral so I need some real data. This chart is really good.
Peter, the state income data is from the census bureau or you can get it from Wikipedia, and the vote totals you can get from any of the mainstream media. From memory I used CNN numbers, there is little difference.
w.
Sidebar to your comment. My mind connects dots strangely at times.
One things the democrats hate is Citizens United. Which merely says that citizens can pool their money to spend on election campaigns. It is now settled law. But where are they going to spend their pooled money? In big cities. Where do they not spend their money? Small towns.
So instead of going after the EC, the liberals should be embracing it as a way to dilute the “evil” money from Citizens United.
But then Hillary had twice the money, ran twice the commercials, had 20 times the fat cat donors, and still lost. Why? Because Citizens United did not do much this go round.
Is this open
Yep.
w.
I’ve added an update to the head post that extends the analysis back to include the 2008 Obama election … interesting changes.
Regards to everyone,
w.
Willis:
Actually it is not interesting at all when you consider that the only workers who consistently received raises during the past 30 years (good times and bad times) were the Federal work force. To the extent now that their pay is about 40% higher than comparable salaries in the private sector.
Phil, I fear that while your explanation is true (there have been some raises in Federal pay in the last eight years) it doesn’t explain the increase. There’s an article on Federal pay raises here, which gives the following data:
Year, Raise (%)
2008, 2.5
2009, 2.9
2010, 1.5
2011, 0
2012, 0
2013, 0
2014, 1
2015, 1
2016, 1
This nets out to a 10% pay raise over eight (well, nine) years, far more than the working poor to be clear, but also far from the actual 25% increase in DC wealth.
I’d ascribe the remainder to lobbyists and politicians feathering their nests, although of course YMMV …
w.
PS—In passing, can I encourage you and others to actually do your own homework before making sweeping claims? I am constantly doing other folks homework … and when as in this case my research shows the other person’s claim to be wrong, I rarely get thanked for doing the data scut work that they should have done before uncapping their electronic pen …