ABSTRACT

In order to accurately describe and explain the changes that have taken place in the relationship between social class and voting behavior, we need a good measure of social class. Political analysists have used occupation, education, income, and class identification as measures of social class. Most Americans consider the working class to consist of blue-collar workers plus poorly paid white-collar workers. Middle-class people are those in better-paying and more professional white-collar occupations. Unfortunately, adequate occupational data are rarely collected in surveys these days. Many analysts now use education to measure social class, classifying those with a college degree as middle-class and those without a degree as working-class. While widely used, education does not seem to be the best measure of social class. This study argues that household income is a superior measure, if it is adjusted for marital status and if we consider that social class is difficult to measure for very young voters. Class differences in voting are expected because working-class and middle-class voters tend to have different economic interests. The Democratic and Republican parties have differed in their economic policies for decades, with the Democrats favoring policies that tend to favor working-class interests.