Income Inequality in U.S. Voting: A Visualization

Abstract

Although it is clear that the 2020 election broke turnout records, we do not know how levels of voting changed across income groups. Journalistic accounts emphasized increases in turnout across demographic groups but relied on self-reported voter data. The authors use validated voting data from both the Common Election Study and the Pew Research Center to examine the relationship between income and voting across the two elections (along with education and race in supplemental analyses). The authors show that levels of inequality in political participation were the same or higher in 2020 compared with previous years and that there are substantial differences in coefficients for income between the two data sets, raising questions about the accuracy of validated voter data.

Democracy is legitimate only insofar as it is democratic. High voter turnout is part of democratic legitimacy, but the degree to which voters represent the electorate is also important. The 2020 election saw the highest voter turnout in more than 100 years: 66.8 percent of those eligible to vote cast ballots, compared with 60.1 percent in 2016 and rates between 49 percent and 64 percent since 1920 (McDonald 2020). Media and scholarly observers celebrated the surge in voting in 2020, but did turnout increase evenly across the income spectrum?

In this visualization, we examine the relationship between income and voter turnout in recent presidential elections. We use the Common Election Study (CES; Kuriwaki 2022) and the American Trends Panel (Pew Research Center n.d.), both of which include both demographic information and validated turnout data based on matching respondents to state voter files.

These figures show the predicted margins for voter turnout by household income groups, produced by logistic regression with controls for age, gender, race, and state or region. The CES (Figure 1A) and the American Trends Panel (Figure 1B) show that participation in the 2020 election was at least as unequal as in 2016 and that the highest income households pulled away from the rest; the CES indicates that most of the increase in voting in 2020 came from households in the top 63 percent of the income distribution (>$50,000), whereas turnout declined among the poorest households (<$30,000). Figure 1C shows a steeper income slope for 2020 compared with 2008 and 2012 as well, indicating greater inequality.

Figure 1.

Predicted margins for voting on the basis of income group in two data sets across four presidential elections.

Supplemental analyses show similar patterns for education: in both data sets, the difference in turnout between those with a bachelor’s degree or higher and those with a high school degree or lower was greater in 2020 than 2016 (Appendix Figures 1 and 2). We also found that the highest turnout increases were among White and Asian people (Appendix Figure 3), and that the class pattern is as strong or stronger if we look at White people alone (Appendix Figure 4).

We are confident on the basis of our analyses of the two data sets that there was as much income inequality in turnout in 2020 as 2016, likely at least a bit more. Although validated turnout in surveys is more reliable than self-reported voting, it is still subject to all the known issues with survey data: thus we see large differences between the CES and Pew data, and weighted turnout estimates often do not match actual vote counts.

Our analysis cannot assess the causes of this apparent increase in voting inequality, but a few possibilities are worth mentioning. The 2020 election coincided with a pandemic that exacerbated existing inequalities. Many states allowed universal voting by mail for the first time. Studies have shown that when voting is easier, privileged people respond more, and inequality increases (e.g., Berinsky 2005). Campaigns may have targeted occasional voters more intensely; this also tends to increase inequality (Enos, Fowler, and Vavreck 2014).

Despite widespread celebration of higher participation in 2020, there was still stark inequality in voting in 2020. The unrepresentativeness of voters is worrying.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-srd-10.1177_23780231231154358 – Supplemental material for Income Inequality in U.S. Voting: A Visualization

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-srd-10.1177_23780231231154358 for Income Inequality in U.S. Voting: A Visualization by Daniel Laurison and Ankit Rastogi in Socius