Actually, it was what you asked, and it was answered. No, the vast majority of rich people are not democrats. The vast majority of people, period, don’t give a crap about voting. I suspect the reason why you don’t think your question was answered was that you actually mean to post was: “Why do some many celebrities vote democratic?” while most of them are indeed rich, they hardly make up the bulk of rich people in America. The fact is that you perceive this because they are celebrities, and as such the media focuses on them. That has no relevance to the actual divide between “Rs” and “Ds”
Huh? It’s precisely why the Democrats have such a huge base! It’s the closest thing to a coalition that we have in this country! They’re all single-issues. Do you believe in gun control? You vote Democrat. Do you believe in abortion? You vote Democrat. Don’t use the “G” word in school? Democrat. Gay? Democrat. It’s purely single issues that give the Democrats any power at all.
Oh come now. The pro-choice crowd are NOT single issues voters, nor are the pro-gun control, nor the pro separation of church and state folks. Every single single-issue favors the Republicans.
Invisible Wombat writes:
> If you look at just the top few thousand Americans in terms of wealth (not
> income), the list would include many Hollywood and media liberals, and a lot of
> the Silicon Valley business types who also tend to support liberal candidates.
Well, no, actually. The fact that you know the names of people doesn’t mean that they are the richest people. In fact, entertainment celebrities and Silicon Valley business people aren’t anything close to being a majority of, say, the 5,000 richest people in the U.S. In fact, most of the people in that 5,000 are people that you’ve never heard of. Most of them are people who’ve made their money (or whose ancestors made their money) in rather ordinary businesses, and on the average they are more conservative than the average American.
Indeed, while quite a few people did make money in dotcom businesses (although some of the ones who did then lost it in the dotcom bust), very few people in the entertainment business become rich. Acting is a terrible business, and 80% of the people who call themselves actors don’t even make a living off it. The people behind the camera (or behind the stage) in entertainment are a little better off, but still it takes a very good craftsman to make it into upper-middle-class status.
Furthermore, I’ve never seen an actual survey showing that Hollywood people are, on average, liberals. There are several threads on the SDMB (which I don’t feel like searching for) in which a slew of actors were named who are publicly known for their conservative views. Yes, there are a lot of Hollywood actors who are publicly liberal, but I’m not sure if that means that most Hollywood actors are liberal or that just the publicly outspoken ones usually are.
Mr Boblibdem, I’m afraid you’re flat-out wrong. I’ve never met and rarely heard of a voter whose reason for voting Republican was any single issue, though many have a primary emphasis on one or another issue. I think you tend to see Republican issues distinctly, because you are an outsider, but from my perspective the Republican base is a lot less balkanized than the Democrat’s base.
I shall scurry forth and search for polling data.
Even if there were twice as many democrats as republicans, democrats tend to be more urban, and a more concentrated population is a lot less powerful politically in this country due to the way voting works.
Well, you’ve met my question (based on anecdotal data) with your own anecdotal data. Thanks, but this is GQ and I was hoping for some facts.
Every day, we see wealthy celebrities loudly espousing liberal viewpoints. They have their conservative counterparts, but not nearly as many–or maybe the liberals are just louder. There are huge concentrations of wealth around big cities on the east and west coasts. Those cities tend to vote strongly democrat. The less-populated states with the lousy economies tend to vote strongly republican. This flies in the face of the “rich folks vote republican” common wisdom.
Do more of the “old money” rich people vote republican (folks like the Kennedys and Kerry being obvious exceptions), and the “new money” rich folks (e.g., entertainers and entrepreneurs) vote democrat?
I’m not making a statement or supposition, I’m asking a question. Does anyone have any actual information (hard data) about the correlation between the wealthiest people in the country and their party affiliations?
Are party registrations public information? Would it be possible, through donation records or records of public statements, to go through the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans and figure out what party affiliations they have?
This is aptly demonstrated by the major shift of Catholic voters from the Democratic to Republican Party. The single-issue of reproductive rights (abortion/birth control) has been THE major impetus of the “Neo-Caths” moving to the right. Their “pro-birth” stance has pretty much trumped any official doctrinal stance on issues like capital punishment and pre-emptive war.
Just goes to show that living like a rat warps your mind! 
Hell, that’s where they measure population density by the square meter!
So did I.
[Hi-jack]: Are there collective nouns for the political parties? If not, “a question of Democrats” is actually a pretty good one. What would be a good collective noun for Republicans? Or maybe we should use the collective nouns for donkeys and elephants, i.e. A herd (or drove) of Democrats and a herd (or parade) of Republicans. [/hi-jack]
InvisibleWombat writes:
> Does anyone have any actual information (hard data) about the correlation
> between the wealthiest people in the country and their party affiliations?
I’ve seen statistics on this. On average, the wealthier one is, the more likely one is to be Republican. Unfortunately, I’m three and a half thousand miles from home at the moment and thus don’t have access to my books.
> Every day, we see wealthy celebrities loudly espousing liberal viewpoints.
Again, what you see are celebrities. The vast majority of rich people are not celebrities. The vast majority of celebrities will not end up rich, although they may have a few good years of income. Most of them will then spend the rest of their life struggling to get by on what they have (hopefully) saved.
I just read a very interesting book about this subject. What’s the Matter with Kansas? looks at how Kansas has become so solidly conservative even though the state has a history of being liberal. The economic conditions that pushed the state to be a Democratic state have come back but they now are voting Republican.
I found it well researched and pretty illuminating.