Rich State, Poor State, and Voting Behavior

Andrew Gelman has some interesting graphs:

Some cool graphs of rich states and poor states, by Andrew Gelman: I'll take advantage of Paul Krugman's recent link to our paper on income and voting by putting up some cool scatterplots that we made recently. It started with our maps of which states Bush and Kerry would've won if only the votes of the poor, middle-income, and rich were counted:

We noticed that the familiar red-blue pattern (rich northeast and west coast supporting the Democrats, rest of the country supporting the Republicans) showed up clearly among rich voters, but not among the poor or middle class.

There are also some interesting scatterplots in Andrew's post. Summarizing the plots:

[F]or each income category, we show Bush's vote share for each state, plotted along with the state's income. For poor voters, there is no systematic difference between rich and poor states. But for middle-income and especially for rich voters, there is a very strong pattern of rich states supporting the Democrats and poor states supporting the Republicans.

Comments

[Miguel]

"We noticed that the familiar red-blue pattern (rich northeast and west coast supporting the Democrats, rest of the country supporting the Republicans) showed up clearly among rich voters, but not among the poor or middle class."

I think that also appear among the midlle class.

says...

People in America move around. But not just randomly.

It has become a commonplace to say that population has been flowing from the Snow Belt to the Sun Belt, from an industrially ailing East and Midwest to an economically vibrant West and South. But the actual picture of recent growth, as measured by the 2000 Census and the census estimates for 2006, is more complicated. Recently I looked at the census estimates for 50 metropolitan areas with more than one million people in 2006, where 54% of Americans live. (I cheated a bit on definitions, adding Durham to Raleigh and combining San Francisco and San Jose.) What I found is that you can separate them into four different categories, with different degrees and different sources of population growth or decline. And I found some interesting surprises.

Start with the Coastal Megalopolises: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago (on the coast of Lake Michigan), Miami, Washington and Boston. Here is a pattern you don't find in other big cities: Americans moving out and immigrants moving in, in very large numbers, with low overall population growth. Los Angeles, defined by the Census Bureau as Los Angeles and Orange Counties, had a domestic outflow of 6% of 2000 population in six years--balanced by an immigrant inflow of 6%. The numbers are the same for these eight metro areas as a whole.

There are some variations. New York had a domestic outflow of 8% and an immigrant inflow of 6%; San Francisco a whopping domestic outflow of 10% (the bursting of the tech bubble hurt) and an immigrant inflow of 7%. Miami and Washington had domestic outflows of only 2%, overshadowed by immigrant inflows of 8% and 5%, respectively.

This is something few would have predicted 20 years ago. Americans are now moving out of, not into, coastal California and South Florida, and in very large numbers they're moving out of our largest metro areas. They're fleeing hip Boston and San Francisco, and after eight decades of moving to Washington they're moving out. The domestic outflow from these metro areas is 3.9 million people, 650,000 a year. High housing costs, high taxes, a distaste in some cases for the burgeoning immigrant populations--these are driving many Americans elsewhere.

The result is that these Coastal Megalopolises are increasingly a two-tiered society, with large affluent populations happily contemplating (at least until recently) their rapidly rising housing values, and a large, mostly immigrant working class working at low wages and struggling to move up the economic ladder. The economic divide in New York and Los Angeles is starting to look like the economic divide in Mexico City and São Paulo.

Democratic politicians like to decry what they describe as a widening economic gap in the nation. But the part of the nation where it is widening most visibly is their home turf, the place where they win their biggest margins (these metro areas voted 61% for John Kerry) and where, in exquisitely decorated Park Avenue apartments and Beverly Hills mansions with immigrant servants passing the hors d'oeuvres, they raise most of their money.
The bad news for them is that the Coastal Megalopolises grew only 4% in 2000-06, while the nation grew 6%. Coastal Megalopolitan states--New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois--are projected to lose five House seats in the 2010 Census, while California, which has gained seats in every census since it was admitted to the Union in 1850, is projected to pick up none.

You see an entirely different picture in the 16 metro areas I call the Interior Boomtowns (none touches the Atlantic or Pacific coasts). Their population has grown 18% in six years. They've had considerable immigrant inflow, 4%, but with the exceptions of Dallas and Houston, this immigrant inflow has been dwarfed by a much larger domestic inflow--three million to 1.5 million overall.

Domestic inflow has been a whopping 19% in Las Vegas, 15% in the Inland Empire (California's Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, where much of the outflow from Los Angeles has gone), 13% in Orlando and Charlotte, 12% in Phoenix, 10% in Tampa, 9% in Jacksonville. Domestic inflow was over 200,000 in the Inland Empire, Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Orlando. These are economic dynamos that are driving much of America's growth. There's much less economic polarization here than in the Coastal Megalopolises, and a higher percentage of traditional families: Natural increase (the excess of births over deaths) in the Interior Boomtowns is 6%, well above the 4% in the Coastal Megalopolises.

The nation's center of gravity is shifting: Dallas is now larger than San Francisco, Houston is now larger than Detroit, Atlanta is now larger than Boston, Charlotte is now larger than Milwaukee. State capitals that were just medium-sized cities dominated by government employees in the 1950s--Sacramento, Austin, Raleigh, Nashville, Richmond--are now booming centers of high-tech and other growing private-sector businesses. San Antonio has more domestic than immigrant inflow even though the border is only three hours' drive away. The Interior Boomtowns generated 38% of the nation's population growth in 2000-06.

This is another political world from the Coastal Megalopolises: the Interior Boomtowns voted 56% for George W. Bush in 2004. Texas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Nevada--states dominated by Interior Boomtowns--are projected to pick up 10 House seats in the 2010 Census.
What about the old Rust Belt, which suffered so in the 1980s? The six metro areas here--Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Rochester--have lost population since 2000. Their domestic outflow of 4% has been only partially offset by an immigrant inflow of 1%. If the outflow seems smaller than in the 1980s, it's because so many young people have already left. Natural increase is only 2%, lower than in Orlando or Jacksonville in supposedly elderly Florida. Their economies are ailing, more of a drag on, than an engine for, the nation. They're not the source of dynamism they were 80 or 100 years ago. They continue to vote Democratic, but their 54% for John Kerry was much lower than the Coastal Megalopolis's 61%. Their states are projected to lose six House seats in the 2010 Census.

The fourth category is what I call the Static Cities. These are 18 metropolitan areas with immigrant inflow between zero and 4%, with domestic inflow up to 3% and domestic outflow no higher than 1%. They seem to be holding their own economically, but are not surging ahead and some are in danger of falling back. Philadelphia makes the list, and so do Baltimore, Hartford and Providence in the East.

Surprisingly, some Western cities that boomed in the 1990s are in this category too: Seattle (the tech bust again), Denver, Portland. In the Midwest, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Columbus and Indianapolis are doing better than their Rust Belt neighbors and make the list. In the South, Norfolk, Memphis, Louisville, Oklahoma City and Birmingham are lagging enough behind the Interior Boomtowns to do so. Overall the Static Cities had a domestic inflow of just 18,000 people (.048%) and an immigrant inflow of 2%. Politically, they're a mixed bag, a bit more Democratic than the nation as a whole: 52% for Kerry, 47% for Bush.

I have left two atypical metro areas out, because they stand alone. One is New Orleans, with a 25% domestic outflow; it was already losing population and attracting almost no immigrants before Katrina. The other is Salt Lake City, which demographically looks a lot like the America of the 1950s. In 2000-2006 its population grew a robust 10%. But it had a domestic outflow of 4% (young Mormons going off on their missions?), balanced by an immigrant inflow of 4%. The chief driver of population growth there is kids: Salt Lake City's natural increase was 9%, the largest of any of our metro areas, hugely greater than San Francisco's 3% or Pittsburgh's minus 1%. Politically, New Orleans was split down the middle in 2004, with Bush leading 50% to 49%, while Salt Lake City, the least Republican part of Utah, was still 60% for Bush.

What of the rest of the nation? You can find a few smaller metro areas that look like the Coastal Megalopolises (Santa Barbara, university towns like Iowa City), many that resemble the Interior Boomtowns (Fort Myers, Tucson) and the Rust Belt (Canton, Muncie). You can find rural counties that are losing population (as are most counties in North Dakota) and, even amid them, towns that have solid growth (Fargo, Bismarck).

But overall the nation beyond these 49 metro areas looks like the Static Cities: 1% domestic inflow, 1% immigrant inflow, 4% population growth. But politically it is more Republican, taking in as it does large swathes of the South, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, and in line with the historical record of non-metropolitan areas being less Democratic than metro areas: 56% for Bush, 42% for Kerry.

Twenty years ago political analysts grasped the implications of the vast movement from Rust Belt to Sun Belt, a tilting of the table on balance toward Republicans; but with California leaning heavily to Democrats, that paradigm seems obsolete. What's now in store is a shifting of political weight from a small Rust Belt which leans Democratic and from the much larger Coastal Megalopolises, where both secular top earners and immigrant low earners vote heavily Democratic, toward the Interior Megalopolises, where most voters are private-sector religious Republicans but where significant immigrant populations lean to the Democrats. House seats and electoral votes will shift from New York, New Jersey and Illinois to Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada; within California, House seats will shift from the Democratic coast to the Republican Inland Empire and Central Valley.
Demography is destiny. When I was in kindergarten in 1950, Detroit was the nation's fifth largest metro area, with 3,170,000 people. Now it ranks 11th and is soon to be overtaken by Phoenix, which had 331,000 people in 1950. In the close 1960 election, in which electoral votes were based on the 1950 Census, Michigan cast 20 votes for John Kennedy and Arizona cast four votes for Richard Nixon; New York cast 45 votes for Kennedy and Florida cast 10 votes for Nixon. In 2012, Michigan will likely have 16 electoral votes and Arizona 12; New York will have 29 votes and Florida 29. That's the kind of political change demographics makes over the years.

[anne]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010045

May 8, 2007

The Realignment of America: The native-born are leaving "hip" cities for the heartland.
BY MICHAEL BARONE

[The above comment was printed with no attribution, but was taken (there is another word that might be used for taken) from the Wall Street Journal.]

[save_the_rustbelt]

People vote on multiple issues, the capture of the Democrat party by the pro-abortion (or pro-choice if you like) removed many citizens from voting for Dems, even if their economic interests aligned more closely with the Dems.

[Meh]

I'm not sure what the WSJ tells us, per se.

The big coastal cities are where the really rich people live and of a piece with the national inequality trend lines, they are becoming like Mexico City, a layer of aristos over a layer of the poor.

There's a bunch of interior cities that are growing, but, here's where I start to part with the WSJ:

a) Most of those cities do not have that much "high-tech industry" going on, or at least not enough to really explain the growth. So there is more at work...

b) The trend is for this immigration to swing the cities blue, but whether that makes a difference in a Presidential election (aggregate state counts) I am unsure.

[robertdfeinman]

One of the troubles with the blue/red maps is that they don't reflect population (or electoral votes), but rather land area.

A more useful way to display the data would be to use some measure that reflections the population of each state instead. There have been such attempts which typically distorted the size of the states to this end, but they are hard to understand.

If population was used instead the big red blocks in the mountain states and in southwest would not seem so imposing.

[Callahan]

Need another graph for the barely UNPOOR. Betting this would be quite a large one which would include myself.

[btgraff]

it would be interesting to do this down at a county level, and not just in terms of states.

regrding the WSJ article posted above, there was an interesting article in the October 21 NY Times calle d"The Future is drying up... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

most of those growing urban areas are in areas where water shortgages have already occurred, or will get owrse with global warming - ironically, the rust belt is much more able to accommodate growth... though even the great lakes are at low levels because of changes in rainfall in recent years.

there is much talk about shipping canadian water to the southern US - which is bad on a variety of levels - in the end, people will have to move where the water is - whereas because of air conditioning, for th elast 50 years people have moved to where the sun was.

[TigerPaw]

The concept of shipping bulk water to the US is a red alert in Canada politically. Anyone that thinks it will happen in any foreseeable future is smoking something.

[anne]

Michael Barone's Wall Street Journal article is a mix of data combined with the most questionable interpretation which makes me woner about the data. I do not think Barone's article worth a fig and only gave the reference because of the post that was made with no reference.

"High housing costs, high taxes, a distaste in some cases for the burgeoning immigrant populations--these are driving many Americans elsewhere."

Mere supposition, likely distorted at best, more likely mere prejudice.

[anne]

The immigrant fiends have decades of such writings as by professional rightist and, as far as I can tell, prejudiced Michael Barone, none of which in my reading are worth a fig. I regret not making my opinion clear.

[anne]

"The result is that these Coastal Megalopolises are increasingly a two-tiered society, with large affluent populations happily contemplating (at least until recently) their rapidly rising housing values, and a large, mostly immigrant working class working at low wages and struggling to move up the economic ladder. The economic divide in New York and Los Angeles is starting to look like the economic divide in Mexico City and São Paulo."

Rubbish; designed to foster prejudice.

[Peter Schaeffer]

Anne,

You need to do some research before you post. Michael Barone is a prominent advocate of mass immigration. He wrote a well known book, "The New Americans", on the subject.

Calling Barone anti-immigrant is about as well informed as calling Krugman right-wing or Bush anti-war.

[Peter Schaeffer]

TigerPaw,

You are quite correct about the politics of shipping water to the United States. However, I question the logic. Canada ships oil and natural gas to the US. Both will be sorely missed when they are gone.

Meanwhile it will keep raining in Canada no matter what. It's worth noting that Canada hasn't been shy about interbasin water transfers in Canada. The Long Lac and Ogoki projects were completed decades ago. Both move water into Lake Superior from Hudsons Bay.

[TigerPaw]

Yes, Alberta seems intent on emptying the ground as fast as possible to make sure there's lots of gas for Hummers etc. in the US. The oil sands are also being dug up and a toxic mess is being made in the attempt to create even more oil for shipment south.

Not everyone here agrees with this but it is obviously current policy. I simply wanted to let the likely mostly US readers know that expecting Canada to send water south too is not necessarily an instant given and it's currently impossible politically. Though with the right-wing in charge for now here, anything is possible.

[Peter Schaeffer]

TigerPaw,

I follow Canadian water politics closely enough to recognize the improbability of water exports for decades to come, if ever.

However, there is another possibility that Canada needs to consider. The United States could start to remove from the Great Lakes the water that currently flows into the lakes from the US portion of the overall Great Lakes drainage basin.

I don't see this as likely for a very long time to come (for economic reasons). However, this is water that the US could reasonably lay claim to.

[Peter Schaeffer]

TigerPaw,

By remove, I mean ship to the Southwest. Closer in uses (say Columbus, Ohio) are more likely and possibly sooner.

[TigerPaw]

I don't know if it's hit the news in the US or not, but gas production has been dropping here from what I've been reading for at least a year or so. Moreover they're using buckets of it to melt the tar sands now. I read a few days ago that they use something like 3-4 days worth of what it'd take to heat a few homes to produce one barrel of oil. Sounds an awful lot to me like the peak has already been hit. Alberta is also running dry in places as they're pumping water into the ground they can't afford to loose to force oil up. With gas production dropping, I've even heard that some are proposing to import liquified Russian gas via the west coast. A new bright idea in the last month or two is to put nuclear reactors into Alberta to melt the tar sands to send oil south. The mind boggles.

And I agree, if the US wants water they'll go after the Great Lakes first since they don't have to ask for that (though places like Michigan might not be too happy about it). Only thing is that sending that water to the dry west would be a long haul. Out west the bright ideas in the past we've had directed at us have tended to be more of the "redirect rivers south" variety. Somehow sending rivers south so that they can have lakes and golf courses in the middle of the Nevada/Arizona desert doesn't seem very logical to me. :)