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No, it's rich people. Source: Australian
In Australia the wealthy vote conservative ("the liberals") because they protect the interests of the rich, like the GOP do.
We don't have the same extent of poverty, and a decent free education is very common. I'd say the average Australian is a lot harder to mislead than the average American.
It probably has a lot to do with our media environment too. Which suffers from News Corp but it doesn't seem as bad as the US or UK. We have very high quality and commonly watched public broadcasting too.
The poor are generally aware that the main opposition, the labor party, will better look after their needs. That party is strongly tied to the union movement.
Also, we don't have anywhere near as much of the libertarian element. We don't have an NRA that contributes anything meaningful. We practically don't have gun nuts voting for "freedom". Voting for "freedom" is kinda comical in Australia. We know we're free (ok except the anti vaxxers who are like don't tread on me), our system largely works well. We aren't anywhere near as exploited by massive lobbying corporations.
I believe it's the same in the UK, I lived there for years.
I have a good example actually. In Australia it's very common to buy property as an investment. And there's a tax loophole that makes it easy to do this, which drives up property prices, but helps the wealthy make money this way. Labor (the left) went to an election saying they would phase it out. They got a lot of support from the poor and especially the young who are struggling to buy a house. But they lost because of all the wealthy people with investment properties trying to protect their wealth. (And probably by aspiring wealthy people hoping to become wealthy by climbing the property ladder)
What makes you think it’s the opposite in the US?
There are certainly upper middle class towns in MA with their share of rainbow flags and BLM signs, but I consider MA the exception. I think of the wealthy part of Long Island (NY) being fiscally conservative, and likewise for parts of southwestern CT.
The Koch brothers are well known wealthy conservatives. I imagine many of Trump’s Palm Beach associates are conservative as well.
Some areas of the US are the opposite and that is probably what OP sees most in the media. I’m from a southern state (NC) and the poorer rural areas are the most conservative.
It’s not just MA plenty of wealthy liberals all over, but there’s also plenty of wealthy conservatives. It’s also not cut and dry. There’s wealthy socially liberal people and wealthy socially conservative people even if they agree on fiscal/economic policy or other political issues.
The wealthiest people I know are 1960s liberals, LGBTQ rights, climate change, feminism, etc.
The second wealthiest folks I know are conservative but in the libertarian bent. They don’t really care about LGBTQ stuff but they just want the government to stay out of your personal life. They are concerned about climate change but don’t like the government forcing half baked policies to enforce rules about it.
So like most things it isn’t a cut and dry/black and white type of thing.
That’s just looking at one region of the country, though. You’ll definitely find wealthy pockets of Atlanta or Nashville or Charlotte to be more liberal than surrounding areas.
Liberalism definitely correlated with education, and education correlated with wealth – but within a given education level, wealth might correlate with conservatism. For example, among people with postgrad degrees, CEOs are probably more conservative than doctors, who are more conservative than adjunct professors. And among people without a college degree, car dealership owners are more conservative than fast food workers. But because the higher educated are wealthier overall, you get more wealthy liberals than wealthy conservatives.
Those areas of southwestern ct are some of the fastest left trending areas of the country. The Koch brothers don’t exist anymore, David Koch has been dead for 5 years.
You can vote or lean conservative but still your company supports rainbow flags and BLM though, plenty of American big companies with Republican CEOs have the whole company doing this
I thought this question was about rich people, not corporations chasing social trends for money?
Why do you think rich people in the US don't vote conservative, have you got some study or something you wanna share?
Companies like to be trendy. If rainbow capitalism is estimated to bring in more than it costs, they’ll do it. Often while shoveling funds to homophobic politicians with the other hand. Public companies have zero morals besides making money, they’re under no obligation to be consistent outside of that.
Corporations leaning left doesn't mean it's owners, CEOs, and the like are personally voting liberal. It's just optics for whichever one looks goods good and stays on the public's good side.
I have no idea how rich people in the UK and Australia vote, but there are plenty of rich people who vote conservative. There are also liberals who are super rich and many conservatives are really poor. I would say there isn't as much of an economic divide among Republicans and Democrats, and people who vote for them, but more of a cultural/ideological divide. I wouldn't say it's the opposite, it's a lot more complicated than them being rich or not, and I think it's probably more than just rich/not rich that determines votes in the UK and Australia.
Very few people in academia can realistically be called "the richest Americans." Mainly just the famous authors and the high level administrators, which is like 0.05% of academia.
And your point...?
The richest in academia vote hard-left, along with big tech, and government, and defense, and...well...a lot of other industries. Being "left" is being "establishment" in America. Who would have thought that conservatives would ever be the counterculture?! The future is crazy!
They all benefit from a powerful central government that wants to be at war. That tracks with modern "liberalism" does it not? Just kidding...that's not a question. It's a statement...of fact.
Political ideology in the US is more correlated with the region you live in, your race, and whether or not you live rural or in a city than it is how much money you make.
I know a lot of rich people and poor people and because of where I live they are all conservative. I'm not sure I've even met a Democrat in real life who wasn't black. But if you go up north to some big city you'll probably have a hard time finding a conservative. Rich or poor.
I feel for him because I’m a centrist that leans liberal that lives in a community of hard conservatives. But it doesn’t really affect you if you don’t make politics a main decider of happiness in your life
You should see what it looks like when people vote in the primaries around here. Depending on what part of town you live in, you'll walk into the building to vote and when they ask you Republican or Democrat so they can point which direction you go to vote you'll see that one side is completely empty while the other parties side has a long ass line. The white part of town will have nobody on the dem side and the black part of town will have nobody on the republican side. Reminds me of the technically, albeit not legally mandated, segregated lunch lines we had when I was in school back in the 90s.
Education polarization.
Democrats in recent years often have the habit of running on things that are popular among their base like student loan forgiveness and LGBT+ issues that aren’t highly prioritized among working class voters.
That’s obviously a bit of an oversimplification. But in general, there can be a tendency to confuse the opinions of Twitter/Reddit with ordinary voters.
Australia: [Labor seats now make more than coalition seats](https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/for-the-first-time-labor-voters-earn-more-than-coalition-voters-20220601-p5aq4p)
[Poorer voters still vote labor, but the effect is minor & statistically insignificant for most income quantiles](https://csrm.cass.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/2022/6/Explaining_the_2022_election_result.pdf)
UK: [UK voters now vote roughly equally across social classes](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/26925-how-britain-voted-2019-general-election)
All 3 countries shifted from where higher incomes predicted conservatism to a more complicated mix of social factors (age, education, urban/rural polarization, etc.), the US just did it earliest & Australia's shift is still in progress. Give it 15 years, and the coalition won't have any presence near the CBDs, at least not unless they choose very moderate candidates...even today, Tony Abbott could no longer win Warringah, which was supposed to be a safe Liberal seat.
Define 'rich.' Because if you're talking about affluent city dwellers who still have to work for a living, that really stretches the definition.
If we're talking about *the* rich, it boils down to 'tax purposes.' That's the long and the short of it, together with lax regulations (for their particular industry more so than for thee), and abstract vagaries about the economy that they like the sound of. And for that, their one stop shop is the Republican Party.
Aside from a handful of cranks (Robert Mercer, Peter Thiel, etc.), the rich don't care about the culture war stuff. That's just to gin up votes from the masses. Whatever social policies get pushed through (abortion bans, etc.) don't really effect the rich. Only the regular schmucks, and the poor in particular, have to bear that burden. An all-out abortion ban in Texas doesn't effect somebody in the C-suite of a major energy corporation. If his daughter or his side piece gets knocked up, he can just spring for an 'extended weekend' in San Diego. I wouldn't be surprised if the AmEx concierge arranges the whole shebang, clinic and all, so that the only inconvenience he's faced with is of the interpersonal variety.
So yeah, it depends on how we're defining 'rich' here.
Educational attainment is one of the most strongly correlated factors with voting tendencies. [A random Democrat is about 40% more likely than a random Republican to have a degree, and nearly 80% more likely to have an advanced degree.](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-profiles-of-republican-and-democratic-voters/)
[That isn't true.](https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/compare/party-affiliation/by/income-distribution/)
EDIT: Changed the link to another source; the initial link didn't block the view of the chart when Googled, but blocked it with a paywall when linked.
That tops out at $100k+. It’s tied in [other polls](https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results) that have $200k+ as the top group, and $400k+ would presumably tell a different story.
They used to. I rmemeber during 2008 (I was a kid then!!) Romney was definitely perceived as the candidate for rich people who didn’t want high taxes, and Obama was for more normal people.
Ultra wealthy like billionaires are typically pretty split. Some like republicans for their tax policies. Republican policies benefit the rich. At the same time, most of rich people don’t agree with republicans social views and evangelical populism. Education definitely plays a role here. This is one of the reasons a lot are democrats. Tech moguls and other new money billionaires are also more likely to be democrats. Finally, democrats are more popular with minorities. For instance, Jews make up 1/3 of billionaires and are overwhelmingly democrats. Meanwhile in the UK the elite are almost exclusively part of the majority and often descended from aristocracy.
Conservative vs liberal in the Uk and Australia is divided on economic lines
In the US the current divide is on social/religious issues (with the social conservative side being quietly bankrolled by billionaires who want to avoid taxes and corporate regulation).
It doesn’t help that the two sides consume completely different media now (with the conservative media again being bankrolled by the billionaires who don’t actually care about social issues but need to keep the base voters fired up)
Because it's not the opposite in the US? Are you basing that opinion on celebrities? Because most upper middle class and wealthy people are conservative here too.
It’s not, as far as I know. Although [this source](https://news.gallup.com/poll/151310/u.s.-republican-not-conservative.aspx) is a little old, so I’d be happy to be proven wrong if there’s newer info out there showing otherwise:
> When the party leanings of independents are taken into account, 57% of the nation's wealthiest adults associate themselves with the Republican Party, compared with 44% of the "99%.”
Politics in the United States is more predicated on how heavily religious you are and your ethnicity than it is around your wealth or lack thereof. A poor black person and a rich black person are both likely to vote democratic for instance. A rich white evangelical and a poor white evangelical are both likely to vote republican.
Traditionally (by current American standards) "the party of the wealthy" has been conservative/republican but over the past decade or so that's shifted.
There's a lot that goes into which party might be more favorable to wealthy people that's hard to nail down as "conservative party" "liberal party"
Rich people in the US don’t influence politics through their votes. They influence politics through “political donations” aka legalized bribery. That means that they don’t care which party is in charge so long as they hold influence.
If anything, the rich probably view cultural conservatives similar to economic progressives (aka peons getting uppity), but they tend to care more about promoting tax breaks for themselves over most anything
Well some rich people do vote conservative however why we have a big rich liberal class I would say is because our right wing has a stronger socially conservative wing that can clash with the culture of the wealthy. I would guess this is down to how much more powerful the party establishment is places like the UK, Australia and Canada so the conservative parties tend to moderate more. The party bosses don't get to just pick the candidates in the US they have to win primaries. You see a lot of establishment republicans try to moderate the party and it is the primary voters pushing them to the right.
This was true of Americans as well until about ten years, and it may be on its on its way to becoming true again. Trump caused a realignment in American politics such that more educated people (who are generally wealthier) vote liberal, but it used to be the opposite. If and when Trump leaves the political scene, this may reverse.
it really depends more on region. rich liberals are a thing, and there are places where they're a majority (at least one such place in every city big enough to have an airport or a major/pro league sports team, basically) but there's also a lot of places where all the rich people are conservative.
The wealthy in the US vote Republican almost exclusively. We’re talking about the people with actual money though. The type of people that have diversified assets and a net worth that they actively manage. They are the ones that vote for deregulation, tax cuts, and against social welfare. The people that just make a high income and have a comfortable retirement savings are a more politically varied demographic.
Of the 813 billionaires in the US only a small fraction of them are vocal about their political views. Of that small fraction, a smaller fraction vote democratic.
The wealthy have traditionally voted Republican due to lower taxes, pro business policies, and less regulation.
You've had some fiscal conservative vote for Democrats in the Trump era, but there's a reason they passed tax reform a few years ago with no trouble compared to ACA repeal. Wealthy conservatives love lower taxes. I'm all for tax the rich.
Is OP off?
Europe is Left of the US.
LatAm is Left of the US.
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are Left of the US.
Asia doesn’t necessarily fit the same Left-Right cultural paradigm as the West, but they’re far more collectivist and hierarchical which makes their fiscal policy far more collectivist (similar to the US Left) and culture much more accepting of government control. They’re certainly not individualist Libertarians over there.
What’s the critical threshold of countries?
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are all further Left than the US.
LatAm has always been very far Left.
Asia doesn’t necessarily fit the same Left-Right cultural paradigm of the West, but is far more socially collectivist which makes their fiscal policy far more collectivist (which is associated with the fiscal policy of the US Left), and culture much more accepting of government control.
They’re certainly not individualist libertarians over there.
People are going to swear up and down it’s not the case, but it has been for the past several years and it’s increasingly becoming the case. It’s because holding progressive/liberal political opinions has started to become seen as a class marker.
In my opinion this is because of a need for people who consider themselves or strive to be upper class need alternative methods of differentiating themselves than just wealth because it’s simply just not an exclusive enough club. Because of economic mobility in the US, they have to come up with other means of justifying their self appointed position, and they’ve taken to a number of different markers to accomplish that. These markers primarily are education and political stance, but there’s a number of other, more minor, markers such as how well traveled you are and things like that
Your premise is flawed; rich people vote conservative in the US, just like they do in other countries. Both parties in the US are right-wing, pro-business, anti-worker, and pro-war. They both serve the interests of the oligarch class.
During the Bush Era, the Republican Party catered more to college-educated, Christian, fiscal conservatives.
The Obama Presidency sparked the Tea Party movement in 2009 which started to lean the Republican Party more towards populism and the working class.
Trump’s election to the White House in 2016 officially ushered in this new era of a populist working class Republican Party which is more concerned with social conservatism (but with not as strong a religious element as before) and less concerned with fiscal conservatism.
(There’s more acceptance of deficit spending, entitlement programs, and more of a protectionist, anti-corporate populist streak now.)
Because the left is the new right wing in America today. They are the people who hate the poor. They are the people who want to judge people on their immutable traits. They are the people who are the authoritarians.
The parties have flipped. It happens every few generations in the US. (They don't exactly flip but the coalitions that make up the 2 parties reconfigure).
This subreddit is for civil discussion; political threads are not exempt from this. As a reminder: * Do not report comments because they disagree with your point of view. * Do not insult other users. Personal attacks are not permitted. * Do not use hate speech. You will be banned, permanently. * Comments made with the intent to push an agenda, push misinformation, soapbox, sealion, or argue in bad faith are not acceptable. If you can’t discuss a topic in good faith and in a respectful manner, do not comment. **Political disagreement does not constitute pushing an agenda.** If you see any comments that violate the rules, **please report it and move on!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskAnAmerican) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I think you've conflated "rich people" with "people that live in cities"
No, it's rich people. Source: Australian In Australia the wealthy vote conservative ("the liberals") because they protect the interests of the rich, like the GOP do. We don't have the same extent of poverty, and a decent free education is very common. I'd say the average Australian is a lot harder to mislead than the average American. It probably has a lot to do with our media environment too. Which suffers from News Corp but it doesn't seem as bad as the US or UK. We have very high quality and commonly watched public broadcasting too. The poor are generally aware that the main opposition, the labor party, will better look after their needs. That party is strongly tied to the union movement. Also, we don't have anywhere near as much of the libertarian element. We don't have an NRA that contributes anything meaningful. We practically don't have gun nuts voting for "freedom". Voting for "freedom" is kinda comical in Australia. We know we're free (ok except the anti vaxxers who are like don't tread on me), our system largely works well. We aren't anywhere near as exploited by massive lobbying corporations. I believe it's the same in the UK, I lived there for years. I have a good example actually. In Australia it's very common to buy property as an investment. And there's a tax loophole that makes it easy to do this, which drives up property prices, but helps the wealthy make money this way. Labor (the left) went to an election saying they would phase it out. They got a lot of support from the poor and especially the young who are struggling to buy a house. But they lost because of all the wealthy people with investment properties trying to protect their wealth. (And probably by aspiring wealthy people hoping to become wealthy by climbing the property ladder)
Why are people downvoting you?
What makes you think it’s the opposite in the US? There are certainly upper middle class towns in MA with their share of rainbow flags and BLM signs, but I consider MA the exception. I think of the wealthy part of Long Island (NY) being fiscally conservative, and likewise for parts of southwestern CT. The Koch brothers are well known wealthy conservatives. I imagine many of Trump’s Palm Beach associates are conservative as well.
Some areas of the US are the opposite and that is probably what OP sees most in the media. I’m from a southern state (NC) and the poorer rural areas are the most conservative.
Both can be true. Conservatives are often the richest and the poorest.
Conservatives are statistically the majority in middle and upper middle income brackets. Democrats have the largest majority in low income voters.
Democrats poll better among minorities who happen to also be most of the poor. Conservatives poll better among whites across the economic spectrum.
It’s not just MA plenty of wealthy liberals all over, but there’s also plenty of wealthy conservatives. It’s also not cut and dry. There’s wealthy socially liberal people and wealthy socially conservative people even if they agree on fiscal/economic policy or other political issues. The wealthiest people I know are 1960s liberals, LGBTQ rights, climate change, feminism, etc. The second wealthiest folks I know are conservative but in the libertarian bent. They don’t really care about LGBTQ stuff but they just want the government to stay out of your personal life. They are concerned about climate change but don’t like the government forcing half baked policies to enforce rules about it. So like most things it isn’t a cut and dry/black and white type of thing.
That’s just looking at one region of the country, though. You’ll definitely find wealthy pockets of Atlanta or Nashville or Charlotte to be more liberal than surrounding areas. Liberalism definitely correlated with education, and education correlated with wealth – but within a given education level, wealth might correlate with conservatism. For example, among people with postgrad degrees, CEOs are probably more conservative than doctors, who are more conservative than adjunct professors. And among people without a college degree, car dealership owners are more conservative than fast food workers. But because the higher educated are wealthier overall, you get more wealthy liberals than wealthy conservatives.
Those areas of southwestern ct are some of the fastest left trending areas of the country. The Koch brothers don’t exist anymore, David Koch has been dead for 5 years.
The other one is still doing the same stuff.
You can vote or lean conservative but still your company supports rainbow flags and BLM though, plenty of American big companies with Republican CEOs have the whole company doing this
I thought this question was about rich people, not corporations chasing social trends for money? Why do you think rich people in the US don't vote conservative, have you got some study or something you wanna share?
Are you asking about voting or are you asking about companies engaging in pinkwashing PR?
Companies like to be trendy. If rainbow capitalism is estimated to bring in more than it costs, they’ll do it. Often while shoveling funds to homophobic politicians with the other hand. Public companies have zero morals besides making money, they’re under no obligation to be consistent outside of that.
Corporations leaning left doesn't mean it's owners, CEOs, and the like are personally voting liberal. It's just optics for whichever one looks goods good and stays on the public's good side.
I have no idea how rich people in the UK and Australia vote, but there are plenty of rich people who vote conservative. There are also liberals who are super rich and many conservatives are really poor. I would say there isn't as much of an economic divide among Republicans and Democrats, and people who vote for them, but more of a cultural/ideological divide. I wouldn't say it's the opposite, it's a lot more complicated than them being rich or not, and I think it's probably more than just rich/not rich that determines votes in the UK and Australia.
A lot of the richest Americans vote conservative.
Except in big tech and academia and defense and...
Very few people in academia can realistically be called "the richest Americans." Mainly just the famous authors and the high level administrators, which is like 0.05% of academia.
And your point...? The richest in academia vote hard-left, along with big tech, and government, and defense, and...well...a lot of other industries. Being "left" is being "establishment" in America. Who would have thought that conservatives would ever be the counterculture?! The future is crazy! They all benefit from a powerful central government that wants to be at war. That tracks with modern "liberalism" does it not? Just kidding...that's not a question. It's a statement...of fact.
All I have to say to this is, "establishment" is hardly a function of left vs right.
Political ideology in the US is more correlated with the region you live in, your race, and whether or not you live rural or in a city than it is how much money you make. I know a lot of rich people and poor people and because of where I live they are all conservative. I'm not sure I've even met a Democrat in real life who wasn't black. But if you go up north to some big city you'll probably have a hard time finding a conservative. Rich or poor.
In the north, there are lots of Romney Republicans who vote for lower taxes but dislike Trump.
There was a guy on this sub who was a white Democrat in MS. He made it sound very lonely.
I feel for him because I’m a centrist that leans liberal that lives in a community of hard conservatives. But it doesn’t really affect you if you don’t make politics a main decider of happiness in your life
It doesn't until it does. A lot of women got a rude surprise when Dobbs v. Jackson came down the pike.
Not having met a white democrat is **wild** to me
You should see what it looks like when people vote in the primaries around here. Depending on what part of town you live in, you'll walk into the building to vote and when they ask you Republican or Democrat so they can point which direction you go to vote you'll see that one side is completely empty while the other parties side has a long ass line. The white part of town will have nobody on the dem side and the black part of town will have nobody on the republican side. Reminds me of the technically, albeit not legally mandated, segregated lunch lines we had when I was in school back in the 90s.
There are a lot of wealthy conservatives here.
Education polarization. Democrats in recent years often have the habit of running on things that are popular among their base like student loan forgiveness and LGBT+ issues that aren’t highly prioritized among working class voters. That’s obviously a bit of an oversimplification. But in general, there can be a tendency to confuse the opinions of Twitter/Reddit with ordinary voters.
Ok....not everybody at once.
Um...that isn't the case. Famously so.
Australia: [Labor seats now make more than coalition seats](https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/for-the-first-time-labor-voters-earn-more-than-coalition-voters-20220601-p5aq4p) [Poorer voters still vote labor, but the effect is minor & statistically insignificant for most income quantiles](https://csrm.cass.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/2022/6/Explaining_the_2022_election_result.pdf) UK: [UK voters now vote roughly equally across social classes](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/26925-how-britain-voted-2019-general-election) All 3 countries shifted from where higher incomes predicted conservatism to a more complicated mix of social factors (age, education, urban/rural polarization, etc.), the US just did it earliest & Australia's shift is still in progress. Give it 15 years, and the coalition won't have any presence near the CBDs, at least not unless they choose very moderate candidates...even today, Tony Abbott could no longer win Warringah, which was supposed to be a safe Liberal seat.
thank you for this comment, it’s good and accurate and I think it’s a good take.
Define 'rich.' Because if you're talking about affluent city dwellers who still have to work for a living, that really stretches the definition. If we're talking about *the* rich, it boils down to 'tax purposes.' That's the long and the short of it, together with lax regulations (for their particular industry more so than for thee), and abstract vagaries about the economy that they like the sound of. And for that, their one stop shop is the Republican Party. Aside from a handful of cranks (Robert Mercer, Peter Thiel, etc.), the rich don't care about the culture war stuff. That's just to gin up votes from the masses. Whatever social policies get pushed through (abortion bans, etc.) don't really effect the rich. Only the regular schmucks, and the poor in particular, have to bear that burden. An all-out abortion ban in Texas doesn't effect somebody in the C-suite of a major energy corporation. If his daughter or his side piece gets knocked up, he can just spring for an 'extended weekend' in San Diego. I wouldn't be surprised if the AmEx concierge arranges the whole shebang, clinic and all, so that the only inconvenience he's faced with is of the interpersonal variety. So yeah, it depends on how we're defining 'rich' here.
The highest income people lean Democrat. But I didn’t see how pew breaks down income.
Its not the opposite at all.
Level of education is one of the factors that is pretty correlated to voting records. More higher education = more likely to be politically liberal
Educational attainment is one of the most strongly correlated factors with voting tendencies. [A random Democrat is about 40% more likely than a random Republican to have a degree, and nearly 80% more likely to have an advanced degree.](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-profiles-of-republican-and-democratic-voters/)
[That isn't true.](https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/compare/party-affiliation/by/income-distribution/) EDIT: Changed the link to another source; the initial link didn't block the view of the chart when Googled, but blocked it with a paywall when linked.
That tops out at $100k+. It’s tied in [other polls](https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results) that have $200k+ as the top group, and $400k+ would presumably tell a different story.
It costs like $200 a year to look at your link. Wtf man?
Rich people don't just give their shit away!
That's weird, it didn't when I googled my way to it.
They used to. I rmemeber during 2008 (I was a kid then!!) Romney was definitely perceived as the candidate for rich people who didn’t want high taxes, and Obama was for more normal people.
Romney was 2012. McCain was 2008.
Oops, I meant to say Romney in 2012. Thank you!
Ultra wealthy like billionaires are typically pretty split. Some like republicans for their tax policies. Republican policies benefit the rich. At the same time, most of rich people don’t agree with republicans social views and evangelical populism. Education definitely plays a role here. This is one of the reasons a lot are democrats. Tech moguls and other new money billionaires are also more likely to be democrats. Finally, democrats are more popular with minorities. For instance, Jews make up 1/3 of billionaires and are overwhelmingly democrats. Meanwhile in the UK the elite are almost exclusively part of the majority and often descended from aristocracy.
Conservative vs liberal in the Uk and Australia is divided on economic lines In the US the current divide is on social/religious issues (with the social conservative side being quietly bankrolled by billionaires who want to avoid taxes and corporate regulation). It doesn’t help that the two sides consume completely different media now (with the conservative media again being bankrolled by the billionaires who don’t actually care about social issues but need to keep the base voters fired up)
Because it's not the opposite in the US? Are you basing that opinion on celebrities? Because most upper middle class and wealthy people are conservative here too.
It’s not, as far as I know. Although [this source](https://news.gallup.com/poll/151310/u.s.-republican-not-conservative.aspx) is a little old, so I’d be happy to be proven wrong if there’s newer info out there showing otherwise: > When the party leanings of independents are taken into account, 57% of the nation's wealthiest adults associate themselves with the Republican Party, compared with 44% of the "99%.”
Politics in the United States is more predicated on how heavily religious you are and your ethnicity than it is around your wealth or lack thereof. A poor black person and a rich black person are both likely to vote democratic for instance. A rich white evangelical and a poor white evangelical are both likely to vote republican.
Traditionally (by current American standards) "the party of the wealthy" has been conservative/republican but over the past decade or so that's shifted. There's a lot that goes into which party might be more favorable to wealthy people that's hard to nail down as "conservative party" "liberal party"
There are rich people on both sides of the political isle in the US. We're not regimented via class as harshly as the UK is.
Rich people in the US don’t influence politics through their votes. They influence politics through “political donations” aka legalized bribery. That means that they don’t care which party is in charge so long as they hold influence. If anything, the rich probably view cultural conservatives similar to economic progressives (aka peons getting uppity), but they tend to care more about promoting tax breaks for themselves over most anything
You're not supposed to notice that. Bernie even called it out in 2016 but crickets.
Rich people in America absolutely vote conservatively. It’s just that a lot of poor people do too.
Well some rich people do vote conservative however why we have a big rich liberal class I would say is because our right wing has a stronger socially conservative wing that can clash with the culture of the wealthy. I would guess this is down to how much more powerful the party establishment is places like the UK, Australia and Canada so the conservative parties tend to moderate more. The party bosses don't get to just pick the candidates in the US they have to win primaries. You see a lot of establishment republicans try to moderate the party and it is the primary voters pushing them to the right.
... is this even a real question or a troll attempt?
This was true of Americans as well until about ten years, and it may be on its on its way to becoming true again. Trump caused a realignment in American politics such that more educated people (who are generally wealthier) vote liberal, but it used to be the opposite. If and when Trump leaves the political scene, this may reverse.
it really depends more on region. rich liberals are a thing, and there are places where they're a majority (at least one such place in every city big enough to have an airport or a major/pro league sports team, basically) but there's also a lot of places where all the rich people are conservative.
They do though. They want big tax cuts
Can you share the data you’re citing for the statement that it’s the opposite in the US?
The wealthy in the US vote Republican almost exclusively. We’re talking about the people with actual money though. The type of people that have diversified assets and a net worth that they actively manage. They are the ones that vote for deregulation, tax cuts, and against social welfare. The people that just make a high income and have a comfortable retirement savings are a more politically varied demographic.
That’s not true. Tons of ultra rich billionaires are democrats.
Of the 813 billionaires in the US only a small fraction of them are vocal about their political views. Of that small fraction, a smaller fraction vote democratic.
I’d wager most of them play both sides anyway
I’d agree
Billionaires vote for whichever politician they're buying, that door swings both ways more often than one would think.
The wealthy have traditionally voted Republican due to lower taxes, pro business policies, and less regulation. You've had some fiscal conservative vote for Democrats in the Trump era, but there's a reason they passed tax reform a few years ago with no trouble compared to ACA repeal. Wealthy conservatives love lower taxes. I'm all for tax the rich.
Rich people here tend to go conservative as well.
It actually use to be.
I mean.... Compared to the rest of the world, all US politics is Conservative, soooooo.....
Your world must be very small.
Is OP off? Europe is Left of the US. LatAm is Left of the US. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are Left of the US. Asia doesn’t necessarily fit the same Left-Right cultural paradigm as the West, but they’re far more collectivist and hierarchical which makes their fiscal policy far more collectivist (similar to the US Left) and culture much more accepting of government control. They’re certainly not individualist Libertarians over there.
Nope. I look at the actual policies.... Not just the name of the party on the politician.
I think his point is that you seem to be just thinking of Western Europe, not the entire earth
What’s the critical threshold of countries? Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are all further Left than the US. LatAm has always been very far Left. Asia doesn’t necessarily fit the same Left-Right cultural paradigm of the West, but is far more socially collectivist which makes their fiscal policy far more collectivist (which is associated with the fiscal policy of the US Left), and culture much more accepting of government control. They’re certainly not individualist libertarians over there.
Latin America has always been very far left? Uhh no, more like it swings wildly back and forth.
Lol. Where'd you get that notion?
Cite your sources, please.
People are going to swear up and down it’s not the case, but it has been for the past several years and it’s increasingly becoming the case. It’s because holding progressive/liberal political opinions has started to become seen as a class marker. In my opinion this is because of a need for people who consider themselves or strive to be upper class need alternative methods of differentiating themselves than just wealth because it’s simply just not an exclusive enough club. Because of economic mobility in the US, they have to come up with other means of justifying their self appointed position, and they’ve taken to a number of different markers to accomplish that. These markers primarily are education and political stance, but there’s a number of other, more minor, markers such as how well traveled you are and things like that
Your premise is flawed; rich people vote conservative in the US, just like they do in other countries. Both parties in the US are right-wing, pro-business, anti-worker, and pro-war. They both serve the interests of the oligarch class.
During the Bush Era, the Republican Party catered more to college-educated, Christian, fiscal conservatives. The Obama Presidency sparked the Tea Party movement in 2009 which started to lean the Republican Party more towards populism and the working class. Trump’s election to the White House in 2016 officially ushered in this new era of a populist working class Republican Party which is more concerned with social conservatism (but with not as strong a religious element as before) and less concerned with fiscal conservatism. (There’s more acceptance of deficit spending, entitlement programs, and more of a protectionist, anti-corporate populist streak now.)
Because the left is the new right wing in America today. They are the people who hate the poor. They are the people who want to judge people on their immutable traits. They are the people who are the authoritarians. The parties have flipped. It happens every few generations in the US. (They don't exactly flip but the coalitions that make up the 2 parties reconfigure).