Why I don't like the term "white privilege"

[El_Johns]

116. Not the case.

On the other hand, from 1976 through 2004 there is a strong and fairly consistent income gradient evident in the presidential voting behavior of white Americans. Averaging over the eight presidential elections of this period, whites in the bottom third of the income distribution cast 51% of their votes for Democrats, as compared with 44% of middle-income whites and 37% of upper-income whites. The gap in Democratic support between upper-income whites and lower-income whites thus increased from 4% in the earlier period to 14% after 1976. The 2004 election was, as it happens, quite consistent with the pattern since 1976: John Kerry received 50% of the two-party vote among whites in the lower third of the income distribution and 39% among those in the upper third of the income distribution - a difference of 11%.


It should be clear from these comparisons that economic status has become more important, not less important, in structuring the presidential voting behavior of white Americans over the course of the past half-century. Moreover, the general trend in support for Democratic presidential candidates among whites in the bottom third of the income distribution has been upward, not downward. Nor is this merely an artifact of anemic working-class support for Adlai Stevenson running against Dwight Eisenhower in the first two elections of this sequence; Al Gore and John Kerry did better among low-income whites in the close elections of 2000 and 2004 than John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey did in the close elections of 1960 and 1968. Thus, while it is generally true that Democratic presidential candidates have lost support among white voters over the past half-century, those losses have been entirely (and roughly equally) concentrated in the middle- and upper-income groups, and have been partially offset by increasing support for Democratic candidates among low-income white voters.


http://www.mydd.com/2005/10/13/republican-economic-policies-are-shifting-working-class-voters-to-democrats