In May, Mitt Romney told an audience of big donors in
Florida that 47% of Americans would vote for President Obama because they pay
no income tax, are dependent on government, believe they are victims, and feel “entitled
to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.” Romney said these people
are hopeless: “I’ll never convince them they should take personal
responsibility and care for their lives.” When a video of this speech was made
public in September, Romney stood by his remarks. After he lost the election,
he repeated this claim by attributing his defeat to the big “gifts” that
Democrats had given and promised to “the African-American community, the
Hispanic community and young people.”
A number of other
unhappy Republicans made similar claims after the election. At the Republican
governors conference two weeks ago, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal vehemently
disagreed: “I absolutely reject that notion.”
Since Romney’s 47% remarks became public, many writers
have demonstrated how wrong those claims were. Many of the 47% who pay no
federal income tax do pay state income tax. Many others pay other forms of
taxes, such as property tax and payroll tax. A significant portion of the 47%
are retirees, who are receiving Social Security on which they pay no income
taxes, but which represents their own prior payments when they were working.
Of course, the idea that anyone who currently pays no
federal income tax is therefore irresponsible, hopelessly dependent on
government, and feels entitled to be supported by other Americans is a
remarkable insult to millions of Americans who happen to have low incomes.
But what about the claim that they all voted for Obama?
That’s worth investigating.
Romney was correct that poorer voters broke against him.
The Fox News exit polls showed that Obama won 63% of voters with family incomes under
$30,000, and 57% with family incomes between $30,000 and $50,000.
But among those who pay no federal income taxes because
they are recipients of Social Security, Romney did quite well. In the age group
over 65, who comprised 16% of the electorate, Romney won by a margin of 56% to
44%.
A closer look at county-level data reveals a much more complex pattern. If we consider all the benefit
dollars that the federal government hands out, it turns out that Mitt Romney’s
electoral theory is far from the truth. Romney overwhelmingly won many of the
counties whose residents receive the greatest share of government benefits like
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and income support, thus the poorest
sections of the country. A few examples are instructive. In McDowell County,
West Virginia, 48% of all income comes from government benefits, to the tune of
over $12,000 per person (these data are from 2009). Romney won 64% of their
votes. Residents of Owsley County, Kentucky, receive 53% of their income from
government benefits, over $13,800 each; Romney won the county 81% to 19%. In
Ripley County, Missouri, and Scott County, Tennessee, over 40% of income is in
federal benefits, and Romney won more than 70% of their votes.
Mitt Romney did very well in some other sections of the
country where incomes are very low and government payments are very high, such
as the northern part of lower Michigan and southern Oregon. This certainly
doesn’t fit with Romney’s 47% claims from May.
Why did these very poor regions vote Republican? The
answer is simple: they are overwhelmingly white. McDowell County, which gave
Romney the fewest votes among those I mentioned above, is 89% non-Hispanic
white. Owsley, Ripley and Scott counties are at least 96% non-Hispanic white
and gave over 70% of their votes to Romney.
When Mitt Romney insulted poor people who receive
government payments, he was speaking of many of his own voters. But after the
election, Romney was much clearer about which voters he meant to insult by
saying that government payments had bought their votes. His comments two weeks
ago singled out blacks and Hispanics as having been given “big gifts”. He didn’t
mention that the poor whites who voted for him receive identical gifts.
So we end up with the same racial profiling that
conservatives have been using to win votes since Richard Nixon’s southern
strategy. The euphemisms change, but the intent is the same. Tell whites that
the Democrats are pandering to minorities, that their hard-earned dollars are
being given away to undeserving moochers of other races, that real Americans
need to take back our country from the colored masses who threaten us.
This seems to work only in states with significant
minority populations. Charles Blow, who writes for the New York Times, pointed out recently that Obama won the white vote in states where the minority
populations are small, such as Iowa, Maine and New Hampshire. In Mississippi,
where the black population is the largest (36%), he won only 10% of whites.
America is still a long way from being a post-racial
nation.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
Published in the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, November 27, 2012
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