Replication data for: The Primacy of Race in the Geography of Income-Based Voting: New Evidence from Public Voting Records

Why does the relationship between income and partisanship vary across U.S. regions? Some answers have focused on economic context (in poorer environments, economics is more salient), while others have focused on racial context (in racially diverse areas, richer voters oppose the party favoring redistribution). Using 73 million geocoded registration records and 185,000 geocoded precinct returns, we examine income-based voting across local areas. We show that the political geography of income-based voting is inextricably tied to racial context, and only marginally explained by economic context. Within homogeneously non-black localities, contextual income has minimal bearing on the income-party relationship. The correlation between income and partisanship is strong in heavily black areas of the Old South and other areas with a history of racialized poverty, but weaker elsewhere, including in urbanized areas of the South. The results demonstrate that the geography of income-based voting is inseparable from racial context.

为何美国各地区的收入与党派认同之间的关联存在差异？现有相关解释主要围绕两类语境展开：其一为经济语境——在欠发达地区，经济议题更受民众关注；其二为种族语境——在种族多元地区，富裕选民会反对主张推行收入再分配的政党。本研究依托7300万条地理编码选民登记记录与18.5万条地理编码选区投票结果，对各局部地域的基于收入的投票行为进行了系统分析。研究发现，基于收入的投票的政治地理分布与种族语境密不可分，仅能由经济语境得到微弱解释。在全非黑人族群的同质化地域中，地域收入水平对收入与党派认同的关联几乎无影响。收入与党派认同的相关性，在美国旧南部的黑人聚居区以及其他存在种族化贫困历史的地区表现强劲，但在包括南部城市化区域在内的其他地区则相对较弱。本研究结果证实，基于收入的投票的地理分布与种族语境密不可分。