Myths About How People Vote

Myth- Labor unions always vote for Democrats?

There is significant truth to that, but it is a partial myth. The organization itself, the labour union leadership, tends to heavily favour democratic candidates, or the Democratic Party. Both with money, with support from volunteers, and in terms of endorsements. However, there tends to be a somewhat of a divide, between the leadership, and the membership in a labour union. a lot of union workers are blue collar, a lot of union workers tend to be socially conservative, tend to be conservative on issues such as affirmative action, on immigration, on war, those sorts of things. They tend to be very patriotic. These are issues that the Republican Party captures, or prioritizes better than the Democratic Party.

Myth- Poor people always vote for Democrats?

When we're talking about very low income, below the poverty line, that tends to be heavily Democratic constituency. However, we're talking about lower middle class, that tends to be more even though the Democrats edge Republicans out in that constituency to a certain extent. However, when you break it up in terms of race or religion the republicans actually win most of the lower middle class or lower income whites these days. Democrats are heavily favored by lower income minorities.

Myth- Minorities always vote for Democrats?

Yes, minority groups, ethnic minorities do tend to vote statistically more often for the Democratic Party. However there's lots of qualifications that go into that. We see that Hispanics tend to favor things like minimum wage and have a different view on immigration policies and stuff like that. But they also can be very devoutly religious in terms of Catholic and increasingly Evangelical or Pentecostal. Which means that on issues such as abortion, the role of women in society, issues of the roles of churches and other things that they have a connection to the Republican Party. George W. Bush was able to affectively capture that connection and increase the Republican Party share of the Hispanic vote in both 2000 and 2004.

Myth- Soldiers always vote Republican?

You could see there are certain people who are in a military who just want to get out. They just want to get out, and they went in for the GI bill or some other thing. Now they're in a war and can't get out as long as the war is going on. They might vote for somebody who's going to end the situation and let them out. Which be tend to be more Democrat in terms of the Iraq war, down to be a Vietnam War, obviously Lyndon Baines Johnson who was a Democrat. He was keeping that war going. But, there's other military men and women who are there, they know there're not going to be getting out of the situation. A lot of times their voting for the person who's going to inspire them that what they're doing has purpose, has meaning. That's going to convince you that this is more than neolistic exercise and futility so to speak.