The Advantage of Wealth: How partisan success is affected by rising income inequality in the United States

Carpenter, Aaron, "The Advantage of Wealth: How partisan success is affected by rising income inequality in the United States" Abstract: After the end of the Second World War, the United States when through a period of great growth. As the economy grew, income inequality also grew within the country. Parallel to this, as income inequality increased, Republicans began to break the stronghold of Democratic congressional control. This begs the question, what happens to politics as income inequality increases in the United States? Can Republican success be explained by increased inequality? In order to answer this question, I theorize that income inequality increases the power of the Republican core support base, while it mitigates the power of the Democratic support base leading to better election results for Republicans. To test to see if income inequality actually increases the success of Republican candidates, I look at congressional districts from the years of 2006-2010 to see if Republicans do better in one election to the next in districts with high-income inequality. I find that Republicans do, in fact, do better in places with high income inequality but only about seven percent better, which is not a substantial amount. I conclude that income inequality might be a small explication to Republican success. Since the end of World War II, the United States has experienced phenomenal economic growth. However, it seems the wealth of such growth has not been shared equally across classes. According to McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal (2006), a household within the 95th percentile of the income distribution had six times the income to someone 2 in the 25th percentile in 1967. In 2003, however, this number swelled to around eight times that amount (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006). With rising income disparity, it is important to ask, how will increased income inequality affect politics or political institutions within the United States? When looking at American politics after World War II, another interesting phenomenon occurs almost parallel to the rising inequality within America. Since World War II, Democrats have had a stark advantage in winning seats in Congress. From 1945 (79th Congress) until today (114th Congress), Republicans have held control of both the show that the Gini index of family income within the United States has been rising since around 1969. Before 1969, the index shows much more variation. Democrats held a majority in Congress, uninterrupted from the 84th Congress all the way …