Missing Voices: How Poor and Working Class People See Politics & Why It Matters

• In Event: Class, Political Engagement, and Voting Behavior

Abstract

Electoral politics looks and feels different, depending on where in the social world a person is located. A fully functioning democracy should include the voices of people from all social positions, but poor and working-class people of all races vote at lower rates than their better-off and more-educated peers. Most research on this inequality in political participation to date misses the ways—whether or not it actually is difficult to vote—politics looks and feels inaccessible to many people among the poor and working class. This paper argues that political participation, like much of social life, is as much about relationships and meaning as it is about interests or resources.

In this paper, we analyze 260 semi-structured interviews with low-income and/or non-college-educated people from across Pennsylvania. Our interviewees belong to all major racial-ethnic groups in the US, range in age from 18 to 76, and live in a variety of communities in major cities, small towns, suburbs, and rural areas. The modal interviewee reported a household income below $30,000/year.

Across the majority of our interviewees, there was a pervasive sense that politics is ruled by money, that decisions are influenced by “rich people” and “corporations” and that outcomes generally benefit those groups as well. There was however substantial variation in how people thought about their own role in electoral politics, and whether they participated.

There were two main types of politically engaged respondents. First, there was a set of people who came from better-off families of origin and/or attended college (but were downwardly mobile into low-wage jobs); this group mostly had well-developed ideological views and were very engaged. Another highly-involved group was older, predominantly Black, and saw voting as a moral duty; many cited the recency of Black people’s access to democratic participation as a reason they made sure to vote in every election (see e.g. Dawson 1995).

Many of our other interviewees, however, voted rarely or not at all. Among these, the overarching theme we heard was that politics seemed distant and disconnected from their lives. We argue it is the result of social class distance between lower-income people and those involved with politics (e.g. Carnes 2018, Laurison 2021). This came through in two primary ways. First, many respondents expressed deep cynicism, and were convinced that no politician is really concerned with their interests or needs. Many people pointed to the lack of improvements in their communities and neighborhoods, and expressed the view that little was likely to change for them no matter who might win the next election (or noted that nothing had changed even when they were able to vote for Barack Obama).

The second key theme among low-participation respondents, common especially among younger people and those without politically engaged family members or friends, was a sense that politics is something “other people” do. Most of the respondents in this group had never been asked to register or to vote. They often described the people they imagined as being more politically engaged in obliquely and directly classed terms, for example as “more clean-cut” or “educated” or “someone who wears a suit all the time.” They didn’t see any role for themselves in a political process they understood as being composed mostly of relatively well-off people.

We concluded each interview by asking respondents if they had ideas about how people like themselves might be brought into politics; one of the most consistent things we heard was that if people saw some evidence of change in their communities, they’d be more likely to get involved.

Authors

• Daniel Laurison, Swarthmore College

• Kelly Diaz, Swarthmore College

• Claudia Alegre, UCLA

• Elizabeth Zack, Indiana University

• Rachel Broun

• Lydia Orr