Who're You Calling the 'Party of the Rich'?

Who're You Calling the 'Party of the Rich'?
By J.T. Young on 4.5.11 @ 6:06AM




If Republicans are "the party of the rich," how come "the rich" elect Democrats? While the first half of the question is conventional wisdom, the second half is congressional fact. At the risk of letting facts get in the way of a good story, here they insist on showing exactly the opposite of what most people think.

According to calculations of states' average incomes, those states with the highest average overwhelmingly elect Democrats to Congress. This iconoclastic insight was underscored by a recent USA Today ranking of the states by their population's average income.

The top five states in the ranking were: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, and New York. Together these five states have 8 Democratic senators (and 1 Independent and 1 Republican) and 48 Democratic House members (and 16 Republicans).

The starkness of the contrast is evidenced by Congress's current configuration. The Senate has just a 53-47 Democratic majority, while the House has a 241-192 Republican majority.

Not only does the theory that the rich elect Republicans ring false, just the opposite prevails. The bottom five states in the listing were Mississippi, Idaho, Utah, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Together these five states have 7 Republican senators (and 3 Democrats) and 12 Republican House members (and 4 Democrats).

So, the highest per capita income states had an 80% Democratic Senate ratio and 75% Democratic House ratio; while, the states with the lowest per capita income had a 70% Republican Senate ratio and a 75% Republican House ratio.

Facts, it is said, are stubborn things. But they are nothing compared to "conventional wisdom." In this case it mulishly maintains "conventional" at the expense of "wisdom." Conventional wisdom is not simply wrong in its oversimplification, it is "loud wrong."