Affluent voters one key to Obama's win

Mark J. Penn, chief adviser to President Bill Clinton in the 1996 presidential election and to Hillary Rodham Clinton during her Senate and presidential races writing in Politico:

...the fusion of expanded minority voting and the expanded upper class, combined with shifting demographics, were key to Obama’s victory. But while demographers have been predicting the growth in minority voting — especially the Latino increases — for decades, they did not predict the upscale income changes in the electorate or focus on them. Most people in America (over 80 percent) no matter what their income, say they are middle class, which is why that phrase is so powerful on the stump.
...
69 percent of all Americans in polls I conducted in recent years now also call themselves “professionals,” a new class transcending the old class labels or working or middle class or the wealthy. They have white-collar jobs requiring higher education and are earning more than ever before. Because of layoffs and business scandals of recent years, they have become increasingly embittered toward the corporate cultures that would have otherwise been their natural home base.

Unlike the small-businessman who is typically anti-government, these professionals come out of the era of the growth of global corporations believing more than ever before in government intervention, teamwork and collective action. They are the voters who favored the bailout, while the left and the right saw it as a betrayal of their fundamental principles.

These higher educated voters generally believe more in science than religion, in the interconnectedness of the world, and in pragmatism over ideology. They see us all living in a new world and are watching their kids enter it taking new economy kinds of jobs in places increasingly far away from home.

Posted by John B. Chilton on November 12, 2008 7:30 PM | |
Comments (1)

This identification with the middle class has been obvious for years. Surprising it took so long to be noticed

Posted by Ann Fontaine [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 13, 2008 1:32 PM

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