If more poor people voted, would they really be better off?
By Angela Richidi
Last week, Bernie Sanders was asked why he wasn’t doing better in states with high income inequality. He said it was because poor people do not vote. And he’s somewhat correct. According to US Census data (Table 7), 51.3% of likely eligible voters with family incomes below $30,000 voted in the 2012 election. For those with family income of $150,000 or more, over 80% voted.
Bernie Sanders’ response implied that poor people would vote for him, and it’s true that they tend to vote Democratic. President Obama beat Mitt Romney by 30 percentage points in 2012 among voters with family incomes below $30,000. Some of this gap may be due to other things — like lower levels of education and higher shares of non-whites who also disproportionately vote Democratic — but it highlights a belief that poor people vote for Democrats because their policies are better for them.
But a new article by Aaron Renn in City Journal suggests that progressive policies in large US cities are bad for low- and middle-income people. And he argues that they are voting with their feet. Renn focuses on Black Americans, but his argument applies to low- and middle-income Americans of any race. He writes:
Though results vary to some extent, the broad trend is clear: the most progressive-minded cities are either seeing a significant exodus of blacks or, never having had substantial black populations, are failing to attract them. These same cities, home to some of the loudest voices alleging conservative insensitivity to blacks, are failing to provide economic environments where blacks can prosper.
Renn’s main argument focuses on the lack of affordable housing in many of these progressive-leaning cities, with housing prices driven up by public policy. He argues:
These figures might not be important if they merely reflected a choice by blacks to move to more auspicious locations, but the evidence suggests that specific public policies in these cities have effectively excluded and even driven out blacks. Primary among them are restrictive planning regulations that make it hard to expand the supply of housing. In a market with rising demand and static supply, prices go up. As a rule, a household should spend no more than three times its annual income on a home. But in West Coast markets, housing-price levels far exceed that benchmark.
Bernie Sanders might believe that he could be doing better in the primary if more poor people voted, but that doesn’t mean that they would necessarily be better off because of his policies.
Read at: https://www.aei.org/publication/if-more-poor-people-voted-would-they-really-be-better-off/
