The best critique of What's The Matter With Kansas is not leftist, but
by the empirical political scientist Larry Bartels.
Early version:
<http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/kansas.pdf>.
• Has the white working class abandoned the Democratic Party?
No. White voters in the
bottom third of the income distribution have actually become more
reliably Democratic in
presidential elections over the past half-century, while middle- and
upper-income white voters
have trended Republican. Low-income whites have become less
Democratic in their partisan
identifications, but at a slower rate than more affluent whites –
and that trend is entirely confined
to the South, where Democratic identification was artificially
inflated by the one-party system of
the Jim Crow era.
• Has the white working class become more conservative? No.
The average views of low-
income whites have remained virtually unchanged over the past 30
years. (A pro-choice shift on
abortion in the 1970s and ‘80s has been partially reversed since
the early 1990s.) Their positions
relative to more affluent white voters – generally less liberal on
social issues and less
conservative on economic issues – have also remained virtually
unchanged.
• Do working class “moral values” trump economics? No.
Social issues (including abortion)
are less strongly related to party identification and presidential
votes than economic issues are,
and that is even more true for whites in the bottom third of the
income distribution than for more
affluent whites. Moreover, while social issue preferences have
become more strongly related to
presidential votes among middle- and high-income whites, there is no
evidence of a
corresponding trend among low-income whites.
• Are religious voters distracted from economic issues? No.
The partisan attachments and
presidential votes of frequent church-goers and people who say
religion provides “a great deal”
of guidance in their lives are much more strongly related to their
views about economic issues
than to their views about social issues. For church-goers as for
non-church-goers, partisanship
and voting behavior are primarily shaped by economic issues, not
cultural issues.
Later version:
<http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/kansasqjps06.pdf>.
Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? asserts that the
Republican Party
has forged a new "dominant political coalition" by attracting
working-class white
voters on the basis of "class animus" and "cultural wedge issues
like guns and
abortion." My analysis confirms that white voters without college
degrees have
become significantly less Democratic; however, the contours of that
shift bear little
resemblance to Frank's account. First, the trend is almost entirely
confined to the
South, where Democratic support was artificially inflated by the
one-party system
of the Jim Crow era of legalized racial segregation. (Outside the
South, support
for Democratic presidential candidates among whites without college
degrees has
fallen by a total of one percentage point over the past half-
century.) Second, there
is no evidence that "culture outweighs economics as a matter of
public concern"
among Frank's working-class white voters. The apparent political
significance of
social issues has increased substantially over the past 20 years,
but more among
better-educated white voters than among those without college
degrees. In both
groups, economic issues continue to be most important. Finally,
contrary to Frank's
account, most of his white working-class voters see themselves as
closer to the
Democratic Party on social issues like abortion and gender roles but
closer to the
Republican Party on economic issues.
Bartels' other papers make for rather depressing reading:
<http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/papers.htm>.
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