TWO TOWN HALLS
Imagine a party meeting where one hundred people are present. Scanning the room, you find two individuals of African origin, plus ten with Hispanic or Asian antecedents. All the remaining eighty-eight are white. It would be a typical Republican gathering, derived from CNN polls during the 2018 midterm election. As it happened, there was a similar distribution at the GOP’s 2016 convention.
This chapter will use this trope to portray the social makeup of the two parties. So let’s go across town to a Democratic meeting. There we find that only sixty of the one hundred claim European ancestries. Another nineteen are black, fourteen are Hispanic, and seven have other origins. This puts their white-to-other ratio at a relatively close 3:2, compared with the Republicans’ more pronounced 1:7.
We can presume that both parties, on the whole, like their current compositions. Insofar as that is so, white Republicans feel most comfortable with people of their lineage, and would prefer that others remain at the margins. True, two of their presidential aspirants have Cuban parents. Still, their policies and platforms cannot be distinguished from those of white co-partisans.
White Democrats like being in a varied party. They were particularly pleased to have Barack Obama as their president. Indeed, they look forward to the nation having more racial diversity, as would occur with expanded immigration. As will be considered in a later chapter, being identified as white carries less weight with Democrats than is the case with Republicans.
A Republican assemblage would have fifty-five men and forty-five women, a visible but not an egregious disproportion. Most of the women are married, almost wholly to Republican husbands. As it happens, the Democrats’ ratio is fifty-eight women to forty-two men, a sixteen-point gulf. It’s hard to think of another general association where women so outnumber men. Democratic men are aware that they stand less chance when impending candidacies open up. Still, they prefer a cosexual party, even if they have a more muted role.
Suppose that the parties decided to have events for only their unmarried members. From a Republican one-hundred-person pool, the singles contingent would number thirty-four, with eighteen men and sixteen women, a fairly even match. The Democratic scene is quite different. Out of its pool of one hundred people, fully forty-seven would be unmarried, not far from half. Moreover, that group would have eighteen men and twenty-nine women, close to a 40–60 ratio. If the Democrats are much more a women’s party, single women lift the equation even higher. One issue come to the fore. Single women are more likely to think about the availability of abortion, especially with longer spans before marriage, if it occurs at all. This doubtless veers them toward the Democratic side. Indeed, married women haven’t forgotten their single days, plus a possibility that they might be on their own again.
| PARTY PROFILES: 2018 | ||
| Democrats | Republicans | |
| Gender | ||
| 42% | Men | 55% |
| 58% | Women | 45% |
| Income | ||
| 29% | Over $100,000 | 38% |
| 28% | $50,000–$100,00 | 30% |
| 43% | Under $50,000 | 32% |
| $71,176 | Median | $82,857 |
| Education | ||
| 21% | Advanced Degree | 13% |
| 25% | Bachelor’s | 23% |
| 54% | Non-BA | 64% |
| Race | ||
| 54% | White | 88% |
| 18% | Black | 2% |
| 14% | Hispanic | 7% |
| 9% | Other | 3% |
| Age | ||
| 24% | 65 & Older | 29% |
| 36% | 45–64 | 43% |
| 24% | 30–44 | 19% |
| 16% | Under 30 | 9% |
| 50 | Median | 55 |
The parties diverge in their income distributions, but not markedly. While the Democrats have a more pronounced bottom tier, the Republicans are closer to a pillar or column. There is a 16 percent gap in the parties’ median incomes, which can be seen as substantial or modest. What does emerge is that both parties are amalgams of classes, combining households that are quite comfortable with some on more tenuous margins. That noted, other figures on the table suggest why the parties’ coalitions vary as much as they do.
One reason for the Democrats’ lower median and larger bottom tier is that its supporters tend to be younger. Another is that a third of its adherents are Hispanic or black, who face fewer opportunities for higher-paid occupations. The Republicans present quite another picture. To start, their black and brown quotients are relatively low. Given that whites comprise 88 percent of the party, they must fill up much of its bottom income echelon. Simply stated, the Republicans now house more of the poorer white population than the Democrats. One factor was that making a bid for former Confederate states also gave them the poorest region in the country. (For the statistically inclined, states with high Republican turnouts correlate strongly with low median incomes.)
The parties’ higher tiers are also diverse, although not as much as might first appear. The CNN table records that 29 percent of Democrats and 38 percent of Republicans have incomes of at least $100,000. That is correct. But what it doesn’t factor in is that 2018 had 9,852,442 more Democrats casting ballots. With that clarified, the counts are 17,492,684 to 19,117,536, not a gaping divide.
So on measures of income, the parties seem quite similar. True, more Republicans are in the top tier, which is not surprising, given the party’s focus on wealth and profits. Still, as the table shows, they form a graduated 38-30-32 column, rather than a rich-poor pyramid.
We know why affluent Republicans prefer their party. It is committed to reducing their taxes, so they will have more money for their own acquisitions and enjoyments. (The 2017 Tax Cuts Law affirmed that promise.) Moreover, they resent seeing their earnings passed to people they regard as less energetic than themselves.
Less easily explained are Democrats who live comfortably. Just on taxes, they support higher levies on themselves, to assist other citizens and social purposes. Seemingly, they are less drawn to the aforementioned acquisitions and enjoyments. And they appear to favor a less-stratified society, even to the extent that they will move down a notch or two. It’s for another book to decipher possible interplays of guilt, compassion, and conscience. What’s notable is that this stratum has grown too large to be dismissed as a small elite of intellectuals and entertainers. It is now carrying precincts in Kansas and Kentucky, making such states fair game for Democrats.
That Republicans are older is commonly known, and it helps to explain their higher incomes. What has kept the party going is that these stalwarts are steadier voters. They also remember when citizens of their stock were more numerous, not to say respected. Plus they have more free time to go to the polls. As can be seen, the Democrats do markedly better among citizens under the age of thirty. While most have political views, far fewer have gotten the voting habit. When one young citizen was told his state allowed him to vote by mail, he asked how to obtain a postage stamp. If Democrats increased their youthful voting by just a few percentage points, they could readily take command of the Senate. Republicans are well aware of this. Hence states they control have been taking steps to keep students from voting. For example, gun owners’ photo identification cards are accepted, but those issued by public colleges are not.
On education, the most visible differences are at the high and low ends. A substantial twenty-one of one hundred Democrats have advanced degrees, versus thirteen for Republicans. But it’s unlikely that most of these Democrats are physicians or attorneys, let alone MBAs. They’re more apt to be in fields like teaching, social work, and public service, with relatively modest earnings.
A decade and a half ago, when John Kerry sought to unseat George Bush, college graduates were divided evenly between the two parties. By 2018, however, only 40 percent of bachelors’ degree holders were voting for Republicans, leaving 60 percent supporting Democrats.
This migration of college graduates away from Republican ranks suggests that they have been estranged by the party’s coarse demeanor and arrogant postures. They don’t want to deny Darwin, claim that the climate isn’t changing, or extol the death penalty. These and other GOP stances run counter to the tenor of most higher education.
True, not all graduates are intellectuals. Indeed, much of the Republican leadership has suitable credentials. The president enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. (Even so, he had his lawyer threaten calamitous suits if it released his grades.) The party’s current core on the Supreme Court—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—all attended Ivy League law schools. Ted Cruz, who placed second in the primaries, went to Princeton. The incumbent attorney general is a Columbia alumnus, and the treasury secretary has a degree from Yale. All have agreed to provide a patrician veneer for a rambunctious administration.