Affordable Family Formation

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Which is why I think this trend will skew the party back towards the NE Republicans.

Moderate Nebraskan Republicans...

[GePap]

From this study, we can recreate Jane Republican and Jill Democrat:

Jane:

Jane was one of three children of a small business owner who grew up in a second ring suburban house. Went to church every week, and attended the local high school. Soon after coming out of high school she married her high school sweatheart. She got a job with the parents, he at another small business. She had to leave work soon after cause she got pregnant. They saved a little money for a couple of years, then after some borrowing and cheap credit they got a home in an outer suburb for themselves and their now two children. They lived there for a couple of years, but when their third was on the way, they decided he would seek better opportunities out west, and so they moved to a slightly bigger but still cheap home in a far out suburb.

Jill:

Jill was the single daughter of two civil servants who grew up in an apartment. She attended the local high school and was part of various local organizations. After high school she went to the local university and got her bachelors, and decided to follow a masters degree. After a few more years she graduated and got a job with a company. She lived in an apartment and eventually met someone. They married and moved to his slightly bigger apartment. After about four years they had their child.

[GePap]

Thomas' Frank Book about "What's wrong with Kansas", and David Brook's commentary (interesting mix) have led me to develop this view.

First the republicans decided to wage class warfare, and lets not kid ourselves, you endlessly hear people like Hannity and Limbaugh talk about the "Liberal Elite". Elite is class warfare talk people, plain and obvious.

So, you have a white working class that has seen their wages rise far more slowly than those who have college degrees, if their wages have risen at all. And while the cost of many staples has gone down, education and healthcare costs have only gone up, so overall, things are no better, while those whose earnings have continued to rise do find it easier. If you look at election results, these college educated middle class individuals tend to vote democrat (this stops once you get sufficiently high enough in income). So Democrats came to be associated with the "Elite". Well, the poor working whites are trying to figure out why they are falling behind comparatively to those college educated people, and why college is getting so expensive so it is difficult to simply catch up by having the kids go there.

Republicans have come up with the great scapegoat: "The Liberal Elite". If only taxes were smaller, if they stopped taking your money to give it away to those that don't work, if they only stopped giving preferance to minorities, if they only stopped letting so many new people in, then you would be better off! And to top that off, not only do those perfidious Liberal Elites undermine you economically, but they seek to undermine your whole belief system as well, totally seeking to destroy your way of life!!!

This is the kind of talk republicans use.

Sadly, what are democrats to say? That the reason this is so is because your way of life is becoming in many ways economically obselete? You can't really compete internationally: labor is captive, and cheaper elsewhere, and the real money is now in information technology, so the way of life you seek might be a mirrage in the modern world economy? BUt we won't cut ourselves off that system, and since we can't save what you seek to save, our alternative is helping you make it, even if this might go against your self image as a rugged independent individual?

And the perversity is that the people vote republican, and get the economic policies that only make thier plight worse, while never accepting that perhaps they need help, and thus turning it away....

[DanS]

Here's the real score. The GOP is the party of middle class families. Families tend to proliferate more in the suburbs and rural areas than in the cities. That's where the blog entry Drake linked to is right on the money.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/27/AR2005052701259.html

The Democrats' Class Struggle

By Dan Balz
Saturday, May 28, 2005; Page A05

This is the kind of headline Democrats have come to expect from their opponents: "Middle Class Voters Reject Democrats at the Ballot Box." But this time, the charge comes from inside the party, in a new report issued by the centrist group known as Third Way.

The study represents a slap in the face at Democrats who pride themselves on being the party of working families and a challenge to party leaders as they prepare for next year's midterm elections and the 2008 presidential race.

"Rather than being the party of the middle class, Democrats face a crisis with middle-income voters," the study argues.

"The 45% of voters who make up the middle class -- those with household incomes between $30,000 and $75,000 -- delivered healthy victories to George Bush and House Republicans in 2004."

The study is based on Third Way's analysis of 2004 exit polls. Among the five principal findings are that white middle-income voters supported President Bush by 22 percentage points. The study concluded that the "economic tipping point -- the income level above which white voters were more likely to vote Republican than Democrat -- was $23,700."

Black voters supported the presidential candidacy of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and House Democrats by significant margins regardless of their income levels, but white middle-class voters tended to vote more like wealthy voters. "Democrats were not competitive at all among the white middle class," according to the study.

The report also contained alarming news for Democrats about Hispanic voters. The more Hispanics move into the middle class, the less they vote Democratic.

Based on the analysis of exit polls, Kerry's margin over Bush among Hispanics with household incomes below $30,000 was 21 percentage points, but among those with incomes between $30,000 and $75,000, it was 10 points.

"Democrats talk and legislate a great deal about issues that they believe are of concern to the middle class, such as better schools, affordable health care and job security," the report concludes. "This has not translated into middle-class votes."

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Well it isn't just the immigration angle. The cost of housing doesn't seem to work for me either. In New Jersey, I lived in a pretty high cost housing area (on the shore, every house with big yards, etc) which was solidly Republican.

That's because the people in the high-cost housing area have nevertheless managed to purchase a house. The point is, were the housing somewhat lower-cost there would be more of these people.

[GePap]

And what about people with incomes above $75,000?

Bush won by 3% points.

If 45% of voters make between $30,000 and $75,000 and are called "Middle", then one would expect a similar number making less that 30,000 and more than 75,000. So say, 30% bellow and 25% above?

So for the Democrats to have lost by 3% points, they must have picked up the mayority of those bellow AND above.

ie. the Poor and the College educated making more than $75,000, up to a certain very high level were people are in the 2% top of incomes and such, say above $120,000.

Hey, so my annalysis is looking pretty good.

[DanS]

And what about people with incomes above $75,000?

Bush won by 3% points.

There's the liberal elite. The prosecution rests.

[GePap]

Originally posted by DanS


There's the liberal elite. The prosecution rests.

Exept that the "Elites" are actually in that Top 2%, the RICH (as opposed to upper middle class), whom are solidly republicans, and who's ranks, unlike those of the upper middle class that are reachable, are generally closed to most people not born into that class in the first place.

[mrmitchell]

Drake it's an interesting article. But I've said it once and I'll say it again: The US has too many unique aspects to make a generalization like proposed possible.

No one wants to live in Nashville and Provo. San Francisco and New York, I wouldn't turn down. Sure they may be more expensive to live in but that's the cost of being happy with your city right?

Under "the Mortgage gap" (something is screwing up and I can't copy/paste this), the author correctly points out the states with the low cost of living and their Presidential voting pattern for 2004 - but the only states out of that list that I can think of anyone would really want to move to are Georgia, Missouri, and Texas. The rest of them are cheap because no one wants to live there. Yes. Even Arkansas. I'll put pride in my state aside to say, no one is in a rush to get here.

Arkansas (homestate of Bill Clinton but now solidly Republican

It takes someone out of state to paint such a blatant mischaracterization. I'm represented by a Democrat at every level of government except Governor and President (and Gov will probably change come 2006.)

For #3 Marriage Gap, why does he only take into account statistics involving white women? You can't ignore 20% of the entire population.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
That's because the people in the high-cost housing area have nevertheless managed to purchase a house. The point is, were the housing somewhat lower-cost there would be more of these people.

No... a lot of people from the area have come from outside the area because of good public schools, and the fact that it is on the beach. The article says that since it is a high cost housing area, they should be Democrat.

And your speculation that if it was lower cost housing there would be more Republicans in the area makes no sense. The area is represented by a Republican in the House, Republicans in the State Assembly and the State Senate, for at LEAST 20 years (probably more than that).

And this isn't the 1920s, people can move to lower cost housing areas very easily. Saying they 'nevertheless' managed to purchase a house in a high cost housing area seems to suggest they have no chance of moving!

[Kuciwalker]

No... a lot of people from the area have come from outside the area because of good public schools, and the fact that it is on the beach. The article says that since it is a high cost housing area, they should be Democrat.

No, it doesn't. The article says that all people with homes (and mortages) are more likely to be Republicans, and that high house prices are bad for the Republicans because it decreases the number of homeowners, not because the homeowners would not be Democrats.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

No... a lot of people from the area have come from outside the area because of good public schools, and the fact that it is on the beach. The article says that since it is a high cost housing area, they should be Democrat.

No, it doesn't. The article says that all people with homes (and mortages) are more likely to be Republicans, and that high house prices are bad for the Republicans because it decreases the number of homeowners, not because the homeowners would not be Democrats.

It doesn't seem like it from the article. As he says:

"the cost of forming a family also affects how many families are formed overall."

and:

"Places that are terribly costly in which to raise children, such as Manhattan and San Francisco, unsurprisingly possess less family-friendly cultures than more reasonably priced locales, such as Nashville and Provo."

He's talking about high housing costs making it more expensive to raise kids and therefore with delayed marriage and kids, they are less Republican, because his arguing, in the end, is that families go Republican.

(San Fran and Nashville have similar housing/apartment ratios, I'd bet)

also:

"The most expensive housing is now found in—guess!—California!!!

California was once the bastion of Phillips-coalition Republicanism, but, although GOP Presidential candidates carried California nine out of ten times from 1952 through 1988, they haven’t come close since."

Does California have more appartment/houses ratio than any other state? Does California have less homeowners as a percentage? That doesn't jive.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Is it possible that this analysis puts the cart before the horse? I still own a home in a very, very blue section of the country -- Allegheny County, Pennsylvania -- where housing is still very affordable (in 1998, we paid $100k for a 5-bedroom house built in 1920, in immaculate condition, with a yard, a 3-car garage, and 4 fireplaces). So why is doesn't the GOP even bother contesting our congressional seat in most elections? Well, because Allegheny County is, largely, Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh is a city, and cities are blue.

We've talked about this before. I don't think the crucial difference is who does or doesn't own a house, or worship a Sky-God, or whatever. I think it's who does or doesn't live their lives in a diverse environment. Suburbs tend to be homogeneous; people who move to the burbs have far less chance to interact, socially, as equals, with people different from themselves. Cities are just the opposite. The GOP can thus comfortably become the party that demonizes "them" (e.g., "We are America. Those other people are not America." -- Phil Gramm, in his prime time address to the GOP at their 1992 convention; "those other people" were gays, minorities, environmentalists, and other parts of the Democrat base).

I'm not surprised at all that this guy's rant is really about immigration. His immigration stand is the logical extention of both GOP xenophobia and suburban thinking -- Peruvian are welcome to run a roasted chicken stand for the convenience of suburbia's too-busy-too-cook two-income yard-dweller's, but then they really need to go away, please.

[:) Smiley]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Does California have more appartment/houses ratio than any other state? Does California have less homeowners as a percentage? That doesn't jive.

It does, though it's not as severe as one would get from simply looking at housing prices.

What does happen is CA residents spend a greater percentage of their income on housing. This is especially true in the lower income bracket.

[Shi Huangdi]

[quote]Is it possible that this analysis puts the cart before the horse? I still own a home in a very, very blue section of the country -- Allegheny County, Pennsylvania[/quoite]

Yes, but the GOP is making significant gains in Western PA, including Allegheny County.

The housing in red states is affordable because no one wants to live there. The housing in blue states is more expensive because everyone wants to live there. Blues states are more liveable because of blue politics.

Actually, the fastest growing counties where people are moving to are mostly Republican:

GOP Plants Flag on New Voting Frontier
Bush's huge victory in the fast-growing areas beyond the suburbs alters the political map.
By Ronald Brownstein and Richard Rainey
Times Staff Writers

November 22, 2004

WASHINGTON — The center of the Republican presidential coalition is moving toward the distant edges of suburbia.

In this month's election, President Bush carried 97 of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties, most of them "exurban" communities that are rapidly transforming farmland into subdivisions and shopping malls on the periphery of major metropolitan areas.

Together, these fast-growing communities provided Bush a punishing 1.72 million vote advantage over Democrat John F. Kerry, according to a Times analysis of election results. That was almost half the president's total margin of victory.

"These exurban counties are the new Republican areas, and they will become increasingly important to Republican candidates," said Terry Nelson, the political director for Bush's reelection campaign. "This is where a lot of our vote is."

These growing areas, filled largely with younger families fleeing urban centers in search of affordable homes, are providing the GOP a foothold in blue Democratic-leaning states and solidifying the party's control over red Republican-leaning states.

They also represent a compounding asset whose value for the Republican Party has increased with each election: Bush's edge in these 100 counties was almost four times greater than the advantage they provided Bob Dole, the Republican presidential nominee eight years ago.

In states like Ohio, Minnesota and Virginia, Republican strength in these outer suburbs is offsetting Democratic gains over the last decade in more established — and often more affluent — inner-tier suburbs. As Democrats analyze a demoralizing defeat in this month's presidential election, one key question they face is whether they can reduce the expanding Republican advantage on the new frontier between suburbs and countryside.

"When any party is losing a growing group of voters, that's a problem — and this is a group where support for Democrats is diminishing as the size of the group grows," said Mark Mellman, Kerry's campaign pollster.

The Times analyzed the 100 counties that the Census Bureau identified as the fastest growing between April 2000 and July 2003, the latest date for which figures were available. Stretched across 30 states, these counties grew cumulatively over that period by more than 16%, reaching a total population of 15.9 million.

These are places defined more by aspiration than accumulation, filled more with families starting out than with those that have already reached their earnings peak.

They include Union County, N.C., 25 miles southeast of Charlotte, where poultry farms are being converted into new developments so quickly that nearly one-seventh of the population is employed in construction. In Douglas County, Colo., about 20 miles south of Denver, so many young families have relocated that the budget for the local Little League is estimated at $500,000 a year.

Delaware County, Ohio's fastest-growing area, is absorbing a torrent of families leaving apartments and townhouses in Columbus for big kitchens and their first backyards. New homes are sprouting on land that grew soybeans and wheat not long ago.

"The fastest-growing segment of our population is 2 and under," Delaware County GOP leader Teri Morgan said.

In this month's election, Bush romped across this terrain, the Times analysis showed. Of these 100 fast-growth counties, Kerry carried three: Clark County, Nev., which includes heavily unionized Las Vegas; Chatham, N.C., near Chapel Hill, where Kerry is holding a five-vote lead pending a recount; and tiny Nantucket, Mass., which made the fast-list only because it increased its population of 9,520 by about one-eighth.

In almost all the other fast-growing counties, Bush not only beat Kerry, he beat him badly.

In a handful of these counties, officials are still finalizing their vote tallies. But based on virtually complete totals for the 100 counties, Bush took 70% or more of the vote in 40 of them, and 60% or more in 70 of them. In all, Bush won 63% of the votes cast in these 100 counties.

That broad appeal, combined with the rapid population growth, allowed Bush to generate much greater advantages from these counties than he did four years ago. In 2000, Bush won 94 of the counties, but they provided him a smaller cumulative advantage of 1.06 million votes.

This year, Bush increased that cumulative lead by more than 60%. "We were overwhelmed by the lines in the voting places," said Tom Grossman, co-chairman of the Republican Party in Warren County, Ohio, one of those on the list. "We had lines lasting until 10:30 that night. It was a staggering number of people."

The change is even more dramatic when compared to 1996. In that campaign, Bob Dole won 74 of what today are the 100 fastest-growing counties. His margin of victory over President Clinton in the 100 counties was 450,000 votes, compared to Bush's significantly larger margin this year of more than 1.7 million votes.

The enormous gains in just eight years underscore the potential value of these communities to the GOP. Almost all demographers believe these "edge" counties will continue to grow rapidly, which means they will pose a growing threat to Democrats if the party cannot improve its standing there.

"There's no sign whatsoever that the popularity of these places is decreasing," said demographer John D. Kasarda, director of the Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina.

No one knows exactly how much the Republican advantage in these counties reflects a relocation of GOP-leaning voters from communities closer to urban centers, say analysts like Mellman and Robert E. Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria.

The decision to move away from more racially diverse counties closer to the urban center and toward fast-growing areas on the periphery "may indicate a political attitude that was already in transition," Lang notes.

But many agree that in these high-growth communities, as in much of the South, identification with the GOP has become a kind of cultural and social statement that also carries along voters who might be more open to Democrats in a less conservative environment.

"It's possible that the nature of these places changes people," said Mellman, the Kerry pollster. "If you are in, say, Montgomery County [Maryland], you are talking to other Democrats, your friends and family. Then all of a sudden you move to Loudon County, Va., and your social networks are dominated by Republicans."

The Bush campaign believes these counties created new Republican votes in another respect: by concentrating large numbers of sympathetic residents that the party could target for voter registration and turnout efforts. The campaign placed these high-growth exurban counties at the top of its priority list for such organizational efforts.

"We focused very heavily on these exurban areas," said Ken Mehlman, the campaign manager for Bush who has been tapped to head the Republican National Committee. "While in some cases you are seeing people who have moved and were already Republicans, in other cases you are seeing a lot of people who are new voters and represent an addition."

Most analysts agree that the basic sociology of these counties provides the GOP an advantage. The high-growth counties are not especially affluent. The median income is above the national average in 71 of them, but in only about one-fifth are incomes even 50% above the national average. In only 40 of them is the percentage of college graduates higher than the national average.

Instead, they are filled with young families, most of them white, many of modest means, willing to trade time for space — accepting longer commutes into urban areas so they can afford homes.

"If there is an Ozzie and Harriet-ville in America today, these are the places where it is," said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

That basic demography ensures a leg up for Republicans, who typically run well with married parents. "I think people are never as conservative as they are when they have kids," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.), the former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Adding to the GOP advantage, many of those who relocate to these high-growth counties tend to be more socially conservative and eager to distance their children from urban cultural influences — and, in some cases, from the heavy concentration of minorities and new immigrants in urban areas.

Republican messages about lower taxes also find a receptive audience in these edge communities, and some analysts believe Democrats are faced with the perception that they disapprove — at some intrinsic level — of families who abandon the urban centers and flock to developments that pave the distant countryside.

"I think their conservatism is born out of a feeling that Bush looks like a regular guy, and the Democrats are all snots and they are not addressing my concerns," said analyst Lang.

Democrats don't necessarily need to win these places in order to win the competitive states. Their problem is more the size of the margins that Bush amassed. His advantages in these high-growth edge counties helped him blunt the most important Democratic advance of the 1990s — the party's breakthrough into metropolitan suburbs.

Under Clinton, the Democrats broke the GOP hold on the more mature inner-tier suburbs (in places other than the South). These were places like Montgomery and Delaware counties near Philadelphia; Oakland County outside Detroit; affluent New York City-area suburbs of New Jersey and Connecticut; and Montgomery and Franklin counties surrounding Dayton and Columbus, Ohio.

Clinton and then Al Gore in 2000 won these places with a fiscally moderate, socially liberal message.

This year, Kerry held almost all of these counties and even expanded the Democratic advantage in some areas. For instance, he became the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to win Virginia's affluent Fairfax County.

Politically and socially, these inner-tier suburbs have become "an extension of the cities" they surround, said Lang. Increasing concentrations of ethnic minorities, generally liberal attitudes on social questions like gun control and abortion, a greater presence of singles in high-rise and condominium developments and a receptivity to arguments for environmental protection and planned growth have all made them increasingly valuable terrain for Democrats.

Analysts in both parties also don't rule out the possibility that the Democratic hold on the inner suburbs is solidifying because many conservative whites that used to live there have left for the fast-growing outer suburbs. In Virginia, said Congressman Davis, "I go out to [exurban] Prince William County and people say, 'I remember when you used to be my supervisor in Fairfax.' "

The problem for Democrats is that in almost all metropolitan areas the distant Republican strongholds are growing much faster than either the cities or the inner suburbs.

Big Democratic-leaning suburbs like Oakland County in Michigan, Montgomery and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania and Fairfax in Virginia all grew by about 3% or less from 2000 through 2003, according to the Census Bureau. Big urban counties like Wayne (Detroit), Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Philadelphia all lost population over that period.

But all of the 100 counties that the Census Bureau listed as fastest-growing increased their population by at least 12% during that same time. With each election, they are producing more votes to offset Democratic advantages in the cities and inner suburbs.

Bush's popularity in the high-growth counties propelled his victory in Florida, brought him close to winning in Minnesota and largely thwarted Kerry's hopes of competing in Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia, despite solid Democratic performances in more urban areas.

In Ohio, the two counties on the top 100 list — Warren, north of Cincinnati, and Delaware, north of Columbus — provided Bush a combined margin of nearly 67,000 votes, helping him overcome unprecedented Democratic turnout in Cleveland and the rest of Cuyahoga County.

Davis said that in the last congressional redistricting, the GOP consistently sought to strengthen its legislators by moving their districts further away from the inner suburbs toward more exurban areas. "If you get down to it, we're not carrying many inner suburban districts," he said. "We gave up those districts to move our guys further out."

These edge counties were an equal priority for the Bush campaign, which targeted them with intense attention from its get-out-the-vote operation and, in several cases, with appearances by Bush. "Previous chairmen would disagree with me, but this is the best organized we've ever been," said John Snyder, the GOP chairman in Union County, N.C., where Bush won 70% of the vote.

For Republicans, these fast-growing counties offer another dividend. Just over four-fifths of them are in red states that Bush won twice, with Georgia (20 high-growth counties), Texas (12 counties) and Florida (9 counties) leading the list. That growth helped the red states gain seven more electoral college votes after the 2000 census — and seems certain to power further gains during the next reapportionment in 2010.

Democrats haven't focused nearly as much on these areas. Mellman, the Kerry pollster, said that "nobody has been willing to spend the time and money to figure out why" the party is running so poorly there.

Left-leaning analysts Ruy Teixeira and John B. Judis, in their 2002 book "The Emerging Democratic Majority," argued that the fast-growth exurbs aren't as much of a threat to Democrats as commonly believed, because most of them are still much smaller than the urban centers. They also predicted that as these edge communities fill in, their increasingly metropolitan character will make them more receptive to Democrats.

But Bush's enormous margins in the fast-growth counties suggest that, if anything, these places are growing even more solidly Republican.

And in some of the most hotly contested states — Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Colorado — that trend could leave the Democrats trying to squeeze out even more votes from static or shrinking urban centers and inner-tier suburbs, while Republicans are dominating the counties exploding in population several exits down the interstate.

Even in several states Kerry won, Democratic blue was concentrated in urban areas, with Republican red covering almost everything else.

"The Democrats just need to look at the map: Their constituency is very concentrated," said demographer Kasarda. "It's a wake-up call."