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In the Post-industrial Era, there has been an apparent weakening of the relationship between class and voting in the U.S., with lower class voters becoming less likely to support the Democratic Party. We argue that this reflects that lower class status predicts liberal economic attitudes, but conservative views on cultural and racial issues, while the parties are consistently liberal or conservative, creating conflicts for many voters. How do voters settle such internal conflicts? We argue that the salience that voters attach to these different types of issues determines how policy attitudes, and indirectly class, shapes voting. Using ANES and GSS data since the 1970s, we find that class consistently predicts economic and cultural/minority policy attitudes, and that lower class voters who place more salience on economic issues, and upper class voters for whom cultural issues are more salient, are more likely to support the Democratic Party in presidential elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to other Western democracies, in the United States fewer people subjectively identify as working class historically and many working-class individuals think of themselves as middle class. This likely has important political implications. We argue, however, that union membership can strengthen identification with the working class, through communications from leaders and interactions among members. Using General Social Survey data from five decades, we develop an original multi-indicator IRT-based measure of objective class status and find that union membership makes it more likely that individuals identify as working class, across all objective class groups. Panel data analysis shows that union membership predicts future working-class identification but that the opposite is not true, suggesting that these associations are causal. Finally, we show that identifying with the working rather than middle or upper class is associated with more support for redistribution and the welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses whether local economic segregation, or the degree to which people live among others of similar economic status, influences the American public's preferences for government redistribution. To test this proposition, we combine unique measures of economic segregation at the local level (using zip codes), covering nearly the entire U.S. population, with individual-level opinions on government spending and taxation. Multilevel regression analysis with random intercepts is used to assess whether the public's preferences for redistribution are shaped by local economic segregation. Our findings suggest that residents living in highly segregated areas are less likely to favor redistributive government policy. Additionally, the results show that the influence of economic segregation on public support for redistribution is particularly strong among the affluent. This research not only contributes to our understanding of the consequences of economic change, but it also demonstrates the importance of considering local context when studying the attitudes of the American public. While the expansion of income inequality is certainly a global phenomenon, the political, economic, and social environments that make up the communities where people live are bound to have an influence on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As levels of residential economic segregation increase in the United States, politicians may have greater incentives to focus their attention on the demands of those living in wealthier communities at the expense of those living in less affluent areas. To better understand the link between economic context and political representation, we develop a measure of economic segregation at the local level and combine public policy preferences and multiple roll call votes in the House of Representatives over several sessions to measure policy responsiveness. Our empirical analysis presents evidence that, regardless of one's individual level of income, citizens who live in an area of concentrated affluence are better represented by their Member of Congress. Conversely, citizens who live in an area of concentrated poverty are poorly represented. Importantly, we also show that the disproportionate focus affluent areas receive from congressional campaigns and the disproportionate campaign contributions that flow from those areas are two possible mechanisms that explain the relationship between economic context and political representation. These findings suggest that growing residential economic segregation in the United States has important implications for our understanding of political equality and the responsiveness of elected officials to public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An accumulation of evidence suggests citizens with low incomes have relatively little influence over the policy decisions made by lawmakers in the United States. However, long before elected officials are asked to cast a final vote on a bill's passage, an equally important decision has already been made: the decision for government to focus its limited attention and agenda space on the issue at all. Therefore, it is possible that political inequality is infused earlier in the policymaking process at the agenda-setting stage if the issues held important by some citizens are given attention while the issues held important by others are not. To investigate this question, we develop novel state-level measures of citizens' issue priorities and find sizable differences in which issues poor and rich citizens think are most important and deserving of government attention. We then use bill introduction data from state legislatures to measure government attention and uncover evidence that state legislators are less likely to act on an issue when it is prioritized by low-income citizens as compared to affluent citizens. These findings have important implications for our understanding of political equality and the functioning of American democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most Americans appear to acknowledge the large gap between the rich and the poor in the United States, it is not clear how the public has responded to recent changes in income inequality. The goal of this study is to make sense of several existing, and at times conflicting, perspectives on how changes in inequality affect public preferences for government action, by demonstrating that each of these perspectives can simultaneously coexist in a logical manner. The argument put forward here is that growing inequality systematically shapes preferences for redistribution in different ways, depending on two important factors: economic context and the type of redistribution being considered. Using time-series cross-sectional data covering over three decades and all 50 states, the findings show that context does affect the degree of the public's response to inequality and that support for action is stronger for particular types of redistributive policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]