Clipmarks | Larry bartels Clips

Study: Politically aware conservatives disconnected from reality

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:18:41 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Post from Matthew Yglesias's blog, who found this at The Monkey Cage.

Clip Source: matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com

Here's a fascinating result via Henry Farrell and Larry Bartels' book, Unequal Democracy. As you can see, among people with low levels of political information (as measured by knowing things like which party had more members in the House or which party was more conservative) liberals and conservatives alike are aware that inequality between rich and poor has grown in recent decades.

When you shift from low-information liberals to high information liberals, the proportion of liberals getting the inequality facts right goes up. But when you shift from low-information conservatives to high information conservatives, you see evidence not of growing awareness of the facts but of growing familiarity with conservative talking points and thus a decreasing proclivity to answer the question correctly. And I seriously doubt things would turn out any differently if you found a question where the shoe was on the other foot.

Tags: conservatives, liberals

3 Facts that could change the outcome of this Election...

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:38:45 GMT

clipped by: TJColatrella

Clip Source: journals.democraticunderground.com

1)-Over 70% of our National Debt was created by just 3 Republican presidents.

2)-According to new research from Larry Bartels out of Princeton, real middle class wage growth is double when a Democrat is president compared to when a Republican is president.

3)-90% of Americans would pay less taxes under Obama's proposed tax plan compared to McCain's.

Tags: democrats, obama, mccain, republicans, economics, taxes, national debt, voting

3 Facts That Could Change This Election

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:50:52 GMT

clipped by: Yassin_M
clipper's remarks: Share Them With Enough People
If you want to learn more about the National Debt, check out these links:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock /
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
http://zfacts.com/p/447.html (A running clock with the cost of the war)
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/business...
Real incomes of working-poor families..grew six times as fast when Democrats held the White House. Only the incomes of affluent families were relatively impervious to partisan politics, growing robustly under Democrats and Republicans alike...": http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27wwln-ideal...

Here is a short summary of this research: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008...

And here is a good, short audio interview with Larry Bartels: http://youngturks.wmod.llnwd.net/a591/o1/4-25-08Bartels...
This is according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Institute as reported by CNN: http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/can

Clip Source: www.democraticunderground.com

1)-Over 70% of our National Debt was created by just 3 Republican presidents.

Go ahead, get out your calculator and add up debt by president/party. Apparently the party that claims fiscally responsibility thinks it's ok to borrow massive amounts of money from foreign countries like China. Consider that we spend hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments on this debt each year. That means more and more of your hard earned money is going to make interest only payments on what is basically a Giant National Credit Card. Not to mention the fact our debt/deficits are largely behind the weakness of our dollar, which in turns makes gas more expensive and creates other serious problems.

2)-According to new research from Larry Bartels out of Princeton, real middle class wage growth is double when a Democrat is president compared to when a Republican is president.

3)-90% of Americans would pay less taxes under Obama's proposed tax plan compared to McCain's.

Obama's bitter comment: wrong on every count

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 03:47:46 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: What Obama did was just parrot the conventional wisdom about small-town, working-class Americans. As political scientist Larry Bartels points out, the CW is wrong.

Mr. Obama’s comments are supposed to be significant because of the popular perception that rural, working-class voters have abandoned the Democratic Party in recent decades and that the only way for Democrats to win them back is to cater to their cultural concerns. The reality is that John Kerry received a slender plurality of their votes in 2004, while John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, in the close elections of 1960 and 1968, lost them narrowly.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Mr. Obama explained that the people he had in mind “don’t vote on economic issues, because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them.” He added: “So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington.”

This is a remarkably detailed and vivid account of the political sociology of the American electorate. What is even more remarkable is that it is wrong on virtually every count.

Small-town, working-class people are more likely than their cosmopolitan counterparts, not less, to say they trust the government to do what’s right.

Do small-town, working-class voters cast ballots on the basis of social issues? Yes, but less than other voters do.

Small-town, working-class voters were also less likely to connect religion and politics.

Tags: barack obama, larry bartels, politics, political-science

Study: Party control of Presidency Affects Income Inequality

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 18:14:55 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

Democratic presidents have produced slightly more income growth for poor families than for rich families, resulting in a modest decrease in overall inequality. Republican presidents have produced a great deal more income growth for rich families than for poor families, resulting in a substantial increase in inequality.

Clip Source: 64.233.167.104

Partisan Politics and the U.S. Income Distribution

Larry M. Bartels

Department of Politics and

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,

Princeton University

bartels@princeton.edu

Revised: February 2004

Census Bureau data reveal large, consistent differences in patterns of real pre-tax income growth

under Democratic and Republican presidents in the post-war U.S. Democratic presidents have

produced slightly more income growth for poor families than for rich families, resulting in a

modest decrease in overall inequality. Republican presidents have produced a great deal more

income growth for rich families than for poor families, resulting in a substantial increase in

inequality. On average, families at the 95th percentile of the income distribution have

experienced identical income growth under Democratic and Republican presidents, while those

at the 20th percentile have experienced more than four times as much income growth under

Democrats as they have under Republicans. These differences are attributable to partisan

differences in unemployment (which has been 30 percent lower under Democratic presidents, on

average) and GDP growth (which has been 30 percent higher under Democratic presidents, on

average); both unemployment and GDP growth have much stronger effects on income growth at

the bottom of the income distribution than at the top. Similar partisan differences appear in the

distribution of post-tax income growth of households since 1980, despite the fact that the

corresponding pre-tax income growth data for that period show little evidence of partisan

differences.

Tags: political-science, inequality, democrats, republicans, income, larry bartels