Polls and Elections: There Is Nothing Wrong with Kansas: The Effect of Race and Economics on Voting Correctly in U.S. Presidential Elections

Abstract

Are poor whites less likely to vote correctly when they vote for Republican presidential candidates? The rationality of poor white voters is perennially debated in American politics. To date, scholars and journalists have weighed in on this debate without using any objective measure of voter preferences, nor has anyone tested the extent to which those preferences match voters’ behavior in the ballot booth. To adjudicate this debate, we use Lau and Redlawsk's voting correctly data from 1972 to 2008 to test the popular hypothesis that poor white voters, specifically, vote against their interests by voting for Republican presidential candidates. A series of probit estimations demonstrate that, while poor whites are less likely to vote correctly than those who are not poor whites, there is no relationship between poor whites and voting correctly for Republican or Democratic candidates independently. This suggests that the longstanding debate about poor white voting for Republican candidates is much ado about little and obscures the larger debate about all voters being able to vote in line with their preferences more generally.