U.S. Midterm Election Voter Turnout at Pre-Civil War Level

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12888

What you see--in particular the point we make is: at one level, this looks like a sort of typical election from any time since the New Deal period, meaning that the lower-income voters, if they vote at all, support the Democrats, and by very large majority, I would add. You know, you can forget all the stuff about Reagan Democrats and things like that. That's just generally--there's a number of political scientists who've looked at that question, Larry Bartels and others, Andrew Gelman. They all sort of find that result. The lower-income groups back the Democrats. Then that propensity to vote Republican rises sharply with each level of income, with a hiccup at the various top--a little hiccup at the very top of the income scale, where you will find some significant percentages of Democrats that don't quite follow that straight-line story.

And so the first thing to be said, I think, is how come so few lower-income voters turned out. I think there the answer's pretty clear. They've had a very difficult time, and they've been living under a Democratic presidents for six years now, since--or almost six, since they took over. And while we hear constantly about how wonderful the economy is doing, in fact the stock market is up, but the unemployment rate's still pretty high and wages are dead flat. They're almost pancake flat there. And as of last July, everybody else except the 1 percent's income was down about one--I'm sorry--it was down about 6 percent from where it was in 2008. People haven't recovered their income losses there. The labor markets aren't back to where they were.

And after six years, I think it's perfectly obvious what's going on here, which is that people are just saying--this being a family program, I won't--I'll control myself here. They're saying, who needs this? And they're sort of nonvoting, if you like, for a new America. That, I think, is the essence of the story.