President Obama’s push to end income inequality is apparently doing little to get more poor Americans to vote Democratic, according to an unusual new Pew Research Center report.
In fact, the survey found that the Democratic-leaning poor just don’t vote — or even register to vote.
The analysis, said Pew, found “that those who are financially insecure largely opt out of the political system altogether, and that opting out disproportionately affects Democratic support.”
What Pew did was look at the political attitudes and engagement of people ranging from “most financially secure” to “least financially secure.”
They found that 94 percent of the “financially secure” Americans were registered to vote, compared to 54 percent of “less financially secure.” And of the 94 percent of financially secure voters, about 63 percent were expected to vote, compared to just 20 percent of the less well off.
That impacts the vote. Republicans running for Congress, for example, had the support of 49 percent of the financially secure voters and 17 percent of the least financially secure.
But, Pew said, “support for Democratic candidates did not correspondingly increase with financial insecurity: Instead, at higher levels of financial insecurity, greater percentages indicated that they had no preference or preferred another candidate.”
As a result, “in 2014, the Democratic Party left far more potential votes ‘on the table’ than did the Republicans. For example, among all of those in the least financially secure category, more than twice as many favored the Democratic candidate over the Republican (42 percent to 17 percent). But just 12 percent of this group favored the Democrat and were likely voters; fully 30 percent supported Democrats but were unlikely to vote,” Pew said.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
