Guest post by Joe Hoft
In 2014, we reported that contrary to what the media was reporting at the time, the Democrat Party and not the Republican Party was the party of the rich. We also found that Democrats were the party of the poorest inner city districts in the US.
This year’s mid-term results show that the Democrats have increased their hold with the uber-rich in America and their hold over the super poor as well.
We performed a study in 2014 of the makeup of the House of Representatives collecting the 2012 US census data housed at the government census site. We also obtained a list of Congressional Representatives and their party affiliation from the US Congressional website for the 113th Congress voted into office starting in 2012 and combined these files into one massive spreadsheet to obtain relationships. What we found then was truly shocking.
First of all, it is clear from the US Census data that Democrats were the party of rich. 14 of the top 20 richest districts in America were Democratic districts.
In addition to this, our work showed that 36 of the 39 poorest districts in America were Democratic districts.
The data from 2012 showed that the working class districts were represented by Republicans by almost a two-to-one ratio. If you excluded the 20 richest districts and the bottom 39 poorest districts there were 225 Republican working class districts and only 152 Democrat working class districts.
The 2018 Mid-terms show Democrats have an even stronger hold over the super rich and the super poor!
According to Firstthings.com Democrats now have an even stronger hold on the rich in America after the mid-term elections of 2018 [emphasis added] –
Imagine all 435 House districts lined up from richest to poorest according to their 2017 median household income (the latest available data from the Census Bureau), Silicon Valley (CA-18) at one end and South Bronx (NY-15) at the other. Before the 2018 midterms, the richest 15 percent of districts was fairly evenly split between Democrats (38) and Republicans (28), but no more. Sixteen of the thirty-seven seats (so far) flipped by the Democrats are in this strata. In the new 116th Congress, these wealthiest sixty-six districts will be represented by fifty-four Democrats and just ten Republicans (with two races yet to be decided). Starting January 3, 2019, twenty (twenty-one if Katie Porter’s lead in CA-45 holds) of the twenty-two richest districts will be represented by Democrats. This year the richest House districts in eleven (and possibly twelve) different states flipped from Republican to Democrat (CO-6, GA-6, IL-6, IA-3, KS-3, MI-11, MN-3, NJ-7, PA-5, SC-1, VA-10; UT-4 is still not called). Going further, in five states (six if Carolyn Bourdeaux wins GA-7) the top two richest districts flipped. These sixteen districts plus five others from the wealthiest 15 percent that weren’t tops in their states contributed well over half the Democrats’ new seats. Without them the House would never have turned blue.
The Democrats however, are also the party of the super poor with their black caucus members representing some of the poorest districts in the country –
The upshot of the 2018 midterms is that the Democratic Party now overwhelmingly represents America’s rich. At the same time, Democrats continue to represent the poorest Americans, at least those who are not white. Managing this contradiction is ever more the [Democrat] party’s great challenge.
