Working-class voters are claimed to vote against their economic interests when cultural issues are made central to politics.
Frank argued in What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004), about his home state, that conservative politicians won working-class votes on abortion, guns and cultural resentment and then delivered economic policies that favoured the wealthy. Bartels replied in 2006 that white working-class voters outside the South had not moved rightward, and that economic issues still predicted their votes more than cultural ones.
In practice
- A declining mill town votes for the candidate who opposes a minimum wage rise and speaks to its sense of being looked down on.
- A union member explains that he votes on his values rather than his pension.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation, Frank's, is that cultural issues distract from economic ones. Others are that voters weigh non-economic values legitimately, that their economic interests are more complicated than the theory assumes, or that they distrust the party offering economic benefits.
- In its favour
- Named a pattern much discussed in American politics and prompted research on how cultural issues shape party loyalty.
- Against it
- The data dispute its premise, and the framing that voters misunderstand their interests draws the same charge of condescension as false consciousness. Voters of every persuasion put values above narrow economic gain.
- Standing
- Contested on the evidence and on its premise. Compare false consciousness and base mobilization versus persuasion.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works