[tokai]

Doesn't this just reflect the class of the average voter of the two parties, ie. measuring the different socio-economic realities? Seems a bit over the top to hitch it all on ‘political environment’. I'm no expert but it feels like these MDs should have gotten a social scientist or two to co-author.

[nr2x]

It’s access to care after 2008, democratic areas expanded it, republicans didn’t.

[tokai]

Sorry I forgot to specify that I commented on the paper mentioned in the start of the second paragraph. That study only looks at voting patterns and mortality.

I'm sympathetic to Warraich's position, but its weak that he combines the conclusions of the voter patterns and access-to-care study in an opinion article and not in a peer reviewed paper. Hopefully one is in preparation.

[wolverine876]

Here's the paper:

https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj-2021-069308

[tzs]

I don't know about this particular study, but others I have seen looked at things at county levels, where they could find counties that differed on voting but were otherwise similar, and found that health outcomes were indeed significantly influenced by party.

[belltaco]

Not really:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016...

>In fact, Silver parsed the data to discover the average Trump voter makes $72,000 per year — a middle-class income solidly above the typical American.

>As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data.

>That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.

[lkxijlewlf]

Off topic, but good grief:

>> But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000

That's household.

And the Fed wants LOWER wages. What is wrong with people!? Pay more!

[Siddarth1977]

I'm curious how old you are and where you grew up.

In the 90s I would have considered $56,000 per year as rich. In the 2000s it would have been upper-middle class, or "senior white collar professional". In the 2010s probably down to "office job" or "good blue-collar job".

There's something funny about seeing people point to a salary that I grew up thinking was a best-case scenario dream as being insufficient. Maybe if our policies focused more on quality of life rather than nominal wages, we could help people instead of just having decades of inflation.

[dragonwriter]

> In the 90s I would have considered $56,000 per year as rich.

If you look at historical income, $56k in 1995 is roughly where $100k is now, in terms of where it put you in the income distribution.

> In the 2000s it would have been upper-middle class, or "senior white collar professional"

In 2005, it's like a little under $85k today, again, by where it puts you on the income distribution, not buying power.

I think that the farther back you go, the more you are overstating what $56k was.

[lkxijlewlf]

I'm in my 50s.

Stop blaming the working class when the rich keep taking a larger portion of the pie. Just stop.

[Siddarth1977]

I'm not sure why you're attacking me with this random, unrelated statement. I didn't "blame the working class" in any way, and re-reading my comment I can't come up with any interpretation of my statement that could be read as such.

Are you trying to suggest that the working class is the root cause of inflation, and that by me pointing out inflation it was an attack on that group? I genuinely can't figure out why you're angry here. Is this trolling? I'm confused.

[lkxijlewlf]

I guess I misunderstood your comment. I apologize for that.

[orwin]

Shouldn't the median republican voter have an higher income (and way higher capital) than the median democrat voter?

I agree that if you go only at the top decile, the median democrat voter could make a bit more than the median republican voter (idk really), but if you take the whole population? I remember 2016 Sanders campaign funding.

Also, i went to West Virginia, an know the people there, happen to meet the local democrat (pro blue water, proponent of the redneck movement, basically a communist compared to the average american) and saw his electorate. I mean, they do live the good life, they eat venison and a lot of homegrown vegetables, they ride horses and sell lilies (no joke), brew their (mostly) bad beer and throw day-long parties on sunday where you jam from one PM to eleven (i improved more in two weeks there than in the last five year). But their income? i'd be surprised if they aren't in the last decile (or almost there).

[smt88]

> Shouldn't the median republican voter have an higher income (and way higher capital) than the median democrat voter?

It's not really this simple anymore.

Americans are sorting into the party of college grads (Democrats) and the party of non-college-grads (Republicans). This doesn't translate as neatly to income as you might think, but it's definitely a factor.

> they eat venison and a lot of homegrown vegetables, they ride horses and sell lilies (no joke), brew their (mostly) bad beer and throw day-long parties on sunday

This is not typical of any large group of voters, including in West Virginia. As someone who grew up there, I can tell you that most people buy food from Walmart. They don't grow it. There is certainly eating of venison, but frozen pizza is certainly more popular. Horses (and the riding of them) is uncommon.

[Siddarth1977]

Despite being oft-repeated, that educational claim isn't really true.

In 2016, Trump beat Hillary in white college-educated women, despite all the claims about gender and education popular in certain sections of media.

I think one big problem with discussion about American politics today is that we all pretend like "Republican" and "Democrat" are in any way logically consistent groups representing two opinions. The truth is, they're both completely absurd coalitions of diverse groups, bound up out of necessity by America having a two-party system.

Instead of trying to split people into two groups along whatever line - education, income, urbanization, race, religion, we should just accept that the parties are a hodgepodge of many different groups. For instance, the Democrats have as a coalition both Black voters and LGBT voters, despite the fact that Black Americans have been far less progressive on LGBT issues than White Americans. Republicans have as a coalition both "small government" fiscal conservatives and Christian social conservatives, despite these groups often having polar opposite policy goals.

[kcplate]

> Despite being oft-repeated, that educational claim isn't really true.

I agree with this, it’s been my experience that most of the most intelligent and highly educated people I know are solidly GOP…except those who work in higher education. Although…some of them in higher education I know vote GOP, but claim they don’t, or don’t disclose it publicly.