Module 12: Bartels v. Frank - Who's Right?

After reading these two articles, in my opinion, Bartels seems to be right. Frank’s article asserts that the Republican Party has created a “dominant political coalition” by attracting the lower-income working-class citizens of America on the basis of cultural issues (such as guns, abortion, gay rights). There are several reasons why this may not be the case. Frank seems to oversimplify his logic. This so-called trend we see in the Republican Party is almost entirely constituted in the South. The South is an area where support for the RP was overly inflated by segregation era feelings. It’s not this way throughout the entire country. Because there is only a high concentration of “dominant political coalition” primarily in the South, Frank is incorrect in assuming the entire country still acts and feel this way. Think of places like New York City, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago, etc. – highly Democratic areas of the country. You compare this to the South and you usually see something a bit different. The South is a highly concentrated area of citizens who hold very, very strong beliefs on issues such as guns, abortion and gay rights –which make you believe that social issues are the most important political influence in this region, but this may not be the case because it’s oversimplified – it’s not like this everywhere, therefore you cannot generalize.

Bartels also argues that there is no proof that, “culture outweighs economics as a matter of public concern” when it comes to looking at working-class Americans. Bartel uses data from National Election Study (NES) surveys to test Frank's thesis and he finds that, “abortion, gun control, school vouchers, gay marriage, the death penalty, immigration, and gender roles – suggests a total impact that is only about two-thirds as large as the total impact of the economic issues included in the analysis.” It can therefore be concluded that working-class citizens haven’t moved right and that "moral values" are not pushing them to vote Republican like Frank suggests. Bartels cannot find any evidence that economic issues are no longer an issue among Americans. It’s quite clear from Bartels’ research that social issues (including abortion, gun laws, gay rights, etc.) are less strongly related to party identification and presidential votes than economic issues. Moreover, while social issue preferences have become more strongly related to presidential votes among middle- and high-income whites, there is no evidence of a corresponding trend among low-income working class, which is what these articles focus on.

Social issues are important, but not the most important influence when looking at working-class Americans. When looking at the 2008 election, we see that, while social issues like abortion and gay rights were talked about a little bit, the main focus of this election was economics. Perhaps comparing the 2008 election to these articles is unfair. We were after all in the midst of a economic “crisis” as this election as taking place, so no doubt more focus was put on economic over social issues. That gives an unfair advantage to Bartels. I think during 2008 there was still an overall concerns for gay rights, abortion, and guns, but it was highly overshadowed by economic concerns so it’s not fair to say that economic issues really do in fact always trumpet social concerns.