Republicans: Party Of The Common Man

Sowell debunks another myth:

Election frauds are nothing new and neither are political frauds in general. The oldest fraud is the belief that the political left is the party of the poor and the downtrodden.

The election results in California are only the latest evidence to give the lie to that belief. While the state as a whole went for Kerry, 55 percent versus 44 percent for Bush, the various counties ranged from 71 percent Bush to 83 percent Kerry. The most affluent counties were where Kerry had his strongest support.

In Marin County, where the average home price is $750,000, 73 percent of the votes went for Kerry. In Alameda County, where Berkeley is located, it was 74 percent Kerry. San Francisco, with the highest rents of any major city in the country, gave 83 percent of its votes to Kerry.

Back in September, I wrote about the myth that the Democratic Party is the party of the common man.

The extent to which the parties have flipped positions on the little-guy/rich-guy divide is illustrated by research from the Ipsos-Reid polling firm. Comparing counties that voted strongly for George W. Bush to those that voted strongly for Al Gore in the 2000 election, the study shows that in pro-Bush counties, only 7% of voters earned at least $100,000, while 38% had household incomes below $30,000. In the pro-Gore counties, fully 14% pulled in $100,000 or more, while 29% earned less than $30,000.

For those of you who don't like math, the pro-Gore counties had twice as heavy a concentration of voters making over $100,000.

Likewise, the top individual and corporate donors to 527s were overwhelmingly liberal: in fact, of the top 10 individual donors to 527 committees, all backed anti-Bush or Democratic-allied groups.

Democratic 527s outspent Republican 527s 5-to-1 in the 2004 election season.  In general:

Democrats outspent Republicans on the White House race by a $10 million margin, $250 million versus $240 million. They spent another $110 million, of which $70 million was spent in support of Kerry while $40 million went to Bush.

So much for the myth that the "big money" is backing the Republicans.  The facts show that Hollywood and corporate America is backing the DNC, and that is also where the votes of the richest Americans go.

- Cassandra