It is clear that self-serving economic considerations are one factor in how people choose for whom they will vote.
All other things equal, farmers tend to vote for candidates who support farm subsidies and against ones who would cut them. Owners and employees of defense contractors tend to vote for candidates favoring higher defense spending. Teachers and civil servants vote for ones supporting higher public employee pay, and so forth.
Retirees do campaign hard for greater transfers, such as the Medicare drug benefit they secured in 2003.
However, as in economics, the “all other things being equal” caveat is an important one. Citizens take voting very seriously and most weigh a range of issues when deciding to vote. Direct economic self-interest often takes a back seat to other priorities in ways that are hard to predict.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a smart man and must understand this. That is why his remarks last week that 47 percent Americans are dependent on government and won’t take responsibility for themselves — and that this group naturally will vote for incumbent President Barack Obama — are bizarre.
The 47 percent figure evidently is taken from the proportion of U.S. households that did not pay any federal income tax in 2010. It is not the sum of people who derive an economic benefit from some explicit or implicit government income transfer program; that number would be higher.
So the assertion is interesting. Does the fact that one does not owe federal income taxes in any given year: 1.) Make one dependent on government and 2.) Make one more likely to vote for a Democrat than a Republican?
I’ve addressed the “47 percent of Americans don’t pay any taxes” assertion in previous columns. But in summary, the 47 percent of households is a smaller percentage of citizens since a high proportion of non-payers are single-person households. Most of the people in this category are either retirees, people in post-secondary education or people in their 20s working for low wages. A large majority of Americans fall into this group for at least part of their lives and only a very small fraction are in it for their entire lives.
Assume however, that Romney is correct and that not owing any federal income tax in a particular year makes you a natural Obama voter. Also assume the converse, that paying substantial amounts of federal income tax should make you want to vote for Romney. Then consider some groups whose voting behavior runs counter to these assumptions.
Start with people on Social Security living in non-urban areas. They tend to have somewhat lower earnings than their counterparts in urban areas as a whole and sharply lower ones than those in suburbia. So a relatively high proportion falls into the 47 percent who don’t owe federal income taxes. Yet polling shows that non-urban senior citizens trend very sharply in favor of Republicans.
Education levels long have been related to voting behavior. Yet the relationship between education and voting doesn’t match with taxpaying.
People with education levels past 12 years, those with master’s, doctorates or professional degrees like law and medicine, have incomes that are well above the national average. Most are comfortably in the top 20 percent of income, though a few may make the top 5 percent.
Furthermore, this group is economically secure. They tend to have good health insurance coverage and they have the lowest probability of being unemployed. They tend to have access to better retirement plans than the general populace.
This group also pays a lot in income tax, often a greater proportion than many with even higher incomes, since the graduate-degree cohort still depends largely on “earned income” rather than on more favorably taxed dividends and capital gains.
They thus are far from the 47 percent who pay no taxes. Indeed, very few will lapse back into that group in retirement. No one would describe them as being unwilling to take responsibility for their lives. And yet this group trends highly Democratic in most elections. Take out the fraction whose post-graduate degree is in business, and the disparity is even higher.
Yes, some in this group do work for government. But voting by those purely in the private sector still trends strongly Democratic, despite the fact that they pay considerable federal income taxes and get little from income transfer programs.
Finally, let’s consider married couples under 30 with 12 or fewer years of education and with children. Most in this group benefit from the Earned Income Tax Credit. For many it means that they don’t owe any federal income tax at all, thus falling into the “lucky-ducky” 47 percent. (The EITC is the tax program that has the greatest effect on moving people under 65 out of taxpaying status.) Yet Romney reportedly is doing quite well among this group. Why?
The answer again is that voters in each of these groups, as in all others, take into account many other factors, including personal values and perceptions, in their voting decisions. The question of how much they themselves pay in taxes or get in benefits, either in the election year in question or over their entire lifetimes, often is well down their list of priorities in settling on a candidate.
There are many millions who will vote for Romney who fall into the 47 percent or so who don’t pay income tax in a given year. One wonders why he is not more respectful of them.