Who Votes for Which Party?

2008-10-11 16:13:55 (GMT) (WiredPRNews.com - Top Stories)

Voting follows certain tried and true generalizations.

Fort Worth, TX (WiredPRNews.com)—Certain groups can be consistently relied on to vote for Republicans or Democrats.

For instance, small business owners and middle to upper-middle class income earners tend to vote Republican. They, in general, favor less government taxation and greater individual responsibility.

Democrats, however, have consistently captured the overwhelming majority of low-income voters with promises of government aid. They have also fired up their ranks by making class warfare arguments that allege that the rich have stolen their fortunes by exploiting low-income workers.

Political pundits often peg certain ethnic groups as voting for one party or the other. To a large degree, this has been accurate with 90% of blacks, according to research, consistently voting for Democrats. Hispanics tend to vote for Democrats by a large margin as well.

On the Republican side, many of the GOP voters are white and middle to upper income. However, the generalizations tend to blur as incomes rise and views change. Examples of this are Hispanic and black Republicans, like Florida Senator Mel Martinez and former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele.

The 2000 and 2004 elections offered an interesting twist on how Hispanics voted. While voters in this group usually vote for Democrats by a large margin, Hispanic voters turned out in larger than normal numbers for Republican George Bush in both elections.

However, according to an October 10, 2008 Associated Press article by Kathleen Hennessey, which appeared on Yahoo.com’s news page, Arizona Senator John McCain is losing ground among Hispanic voters. Hispanics in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, according to the article, are dramatically favoring Democrat Barack Obama.

While Senator McCain co-sponsored legislation in 2007 that would have amounted to amnesty for 12 to 20 million illegal aliens—many of whom were from Latin American nations—the low-income Hispanic voters referenced in the article are simply going back to the party that they usually support – the Democrats.

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Jason Meeks · Filed Under Top Stories