Why are "the rich" more able to identify the party which represent their interests than "the poor"?

Question

Consider the following premises, for which I think there is fair degree of consensus (at least according to my knowledge of political history of Latin America, but perhaps more broadly):

• the majority of rich individuals vote for right wing parties

• there is no clear voting pattern among the poor regarding left and right wing parties

• right wing parties favour policies that, even if they might benefit the poor, they certainly benefit the rich (e.g. low taxation, privatisation of companies, free trade, etc)

• left wing parties favour policies that, even if they might benefit the rich, they certainly benefit the poor (e.g. higher taxation, more subsidies, more public services at lower costs, protectionist policies, etc)

Then, a natural question arises. Why are the rich more able to identify the party which represents their (class) interests (i.e. right-wing) than the poor?

Possible hypothesis that I have think of are:

• higher education allow for better understanding of policies
• media mainly in control of right-wing parties, obscuring/altering information to the poor
• politicians are normally upper class, so the poor cannot identify easily with them
• demagogic politicians from the right can lure poor voters to them, whereas demagogic politicians from the left cannot lure rich voters to them (but why?)
• left-wing policies are much more evident to be at expenses of the rich than right-wing policies are to be at expenses of the poor. E.g. higher taxes clearly mean taxing the rich more, whereas lower taxes does not directly affect taxation of the poor.

How do different political theory explain this? An answer with references would be greatly appreciated.

Edit (more to come...): as it is natural to expect that a lot of the focus is in the US (as the question was originally phrased in such a way), the evidence in terms of voting patters by income level in the US is not entirely evident in supporting the premises. In general, the likelihood of voting Republican increases with income (see page 50 here) and it is still high for the lowest income. It could be that the proportion voting Democrat among the high income individuals might be higher than its respective proportion for the poor (see here). In the UK the story is slightly more supportive, especially because the rich tend mainly to vote conservative. The poor give a lot of votes to Labour and a less proportion to conservative.

Answer 1

Why are “the rich” more able to identify the party which represent their interests than “the poor”?

Mostly, because your assumption is just that, an assumption, and is an incorrect one at that.

I won't go down the rabbit hole of disputing your Marx-influenced class based assumption that somehow, left wing parties^[1] represent interests of "the poor" and the right wing parties of "the rich", even though that assumption is also largely wrong^[2].

(as food for thought: would you rather be "the poor" in Venezuela or the USSR, or in USA or UK? As a basic fact, you may want to look at a number of people trying to - legally and illegally - immigrate to USA vs. # of poor people from USA trying to emigrate to more left wing countries. Cuba is, after all, just a boat ride away from Florida)

I will only look at the other side of your assumption that "the rich" somehow solidly identify with right/conservative side.

At least in the USA, the number of the "rich" who identify with the party which you claim "doesn't represent their interests" is staggeringly high (40% by now) and keeps rising.

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First, general research (I tried to pick left of centre media, since they don't have incentive to make stuff up if it sounds worse for Democrats):

• From staunchly Trump-hating Washington Post's "Tech billionaires like Democrats more than Republicans. Here’s why":

  As much as Republicans, the Democrats are now also the party of billionaires.

  (their source is research by Adam Bonica, )

  The same research is covered by Forbes, giving exact #s:

  The next time you hear Senator Bernie Sanders rail against the nefarious influence of “millionaires and billionaires,” it might be important to know that 39% of the nation’s wealthiest donors are backing Democrats more than Republicans this election. Even more interesting, the number of card carrying liberal titans is likely to increase dramatically, as billionaires from new industries, especially Silicon Valley, are unambiguously Democratic cheerleaders*.

• From New York Times' "How Did the Democrats Become Favorites of the Rich?"

  Democrats now depend as much on affluent voters as on low-income voters. Democrats represent a majority of the richest congressional districts, and the party’s elected officials are more responsive to the policy agenda of the well-to-do than to average voters. The party and its candidates have come to rely on the elite 0.01 percent of the voting age population for a quarter of their financial backing and on large donors for another quarter.

  ...

  In 2014, the median income of households in Democratic districts was higher than in Republican districts, $53,358 to $51,834. Democrats represent seven of the 10 most affluent districts, measured by household income (four in California, two in Virginia and one in New York). Democrats also represent a majority of the 100 most affluent districts, 54-46.

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Second, let's look at actual "very rich" - top billionaires.

Here's Fortune's list of billionaires who supported Clinton

Looking down Forbes richest list:

1. Bill Gates

   Exact political views aren't widely known overall (but is definitely socially liberal, with most of his extremely huge philanthropy set to benefit 3rd world and alleviate poverty). The most factual approach is to go off his political donations which go more to Democrats than Republicans.

   Evidence points to him being a Democrat supporter (Hinting at supporting Clinton; attending Obama fundraiser and expressing support for Obama)

2. Warren Buffet

   Registered Democrat, supported and endorsed both Obama and Clinton, donates more to DNC.

3. Jeff Bezos

   Democrat supporter

4. Amancio Ortega

   He's from Spain, no idea of his politics. Casual googling didn't help

5. Mark Zuckerberg

   I admit this surprised me. I expected him to be an outspoken Democrat, but he's registered as neither, was publicly quoted explicitly stating he's neither, and donated to both parties.

   Most reports are ambiguous (1; 2-Wiki); but he's clearly socially liberal in his views, regardless of political party leanings.

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_{[1] - insert my usual rant that "left" and "right" are often merely meaningless vague labels and single-axis model doesn't adequately explain political ideology. Having said that, in a system with 2 or 3 major parties like US and UK, the parties themselves CAN be labeled as more or less left-or-right}

_{[2] - In short, the "certainty" asserted in the updated text of the answer is anything BUT certain. Higher taxation doesn't necessarily benefit the poor (Laffer curve, the OECD-documented negative effects of corporate taxes on GDP). Also, history seems to show that countries where the Left won and established socialism, ended up with nightmarishly low standards of living for the poor, far less than that of capitalist Western countries' poor anywhere not using oil exports to pump up living standards artificially (USSR except 1970s, Venezuela post-Chavez, North Korea, pre-Deng China).}

Answer 2

There are so many false assumptions in your question. But one that wasn't addressed by the other answers is this:

There are a lot of people who vote based on their moral principles. Whether rich or poor, one can believe that the proper role of government is to help to poor. Or one can believe that charity should not be compelled by law. One can believe that abortion is a woman's moral right and vote accordingly whether one is a woman or not or personally benefits or is harmed by abortion policy.

A rich person and a poor person can have precisely the same beliefs about the proper role of government in society. And they can each vote based on their views, regardless of whether they believe that benefits them or harms them.

There is also a tremendous amount of indirect harm or benefit. I'm a man. Regardless of my moral views, why should I care whether abortion is legal or illegal since it won't directly affect me? Well, even ignoring the moral argument or arguments about the proper role of government, I have a mother, sisters, and daughters. My son may have a wife. It is antisocial to ignore the affects of government policy on others to be irrelevant when you vote.

Perhaps people aren't as cynical as you imagine and vote what they believe is right and what they believe will be best for everyone. Not everyone believes that everyone should vote their personal interest and it will all somehow all work itself out.

Answer 3

Your question fails to take into account that not everyone is concerned with how taxation affects them. I can comfortably say that because I don't make that much in the grand scheme of things taxation policy has to swing pretty wildly to make much of a difference for me to care. I am generally left leaning, but not because of my strong opinions on fiscal policy issues. If I pay a few extra dollars in taxes to save millions for Warren Buffet or the Koch Brothers or George Soros, or Donald trump, it's not enough for me to actively be angry about.

That said, those four individuals (and the two groups they are parts of) might take other non-economical stances that I am more concerned with. There are lots of other issues for people to take strong stances on that the two parties are so diametrically opposed on. I for one am a single issue voter on environmental issues -- I don't care very much for fiscal policy, but nothing gets on my nerves more than "I stand with coal country" bumper stickers. There are issues that gather single policy voters as well, here is a small (definitely non exhaustive) list of things people might vote on despite other damaging (to that voter) policies taken by the party they vote for.

• LGBT Rights
• Legalization of Abortion
• Legalization of certain Drugs
• Restriction of firearms
• Environmental issues
• Religious freedom
• Stance on terror
• Domestic Police Policy

Edit: Apart from my answer, this question has some serious classist undertones. Assuming the poor are unable to understand what they want in a politician leads to the assumption that the poor need to be guided by an external entity for their own good. Making policies decisions with this mindset never turns out well.

Answer 4

From the viewpoint of someone born into a sub-working class family (my grandfather died in his early thirties leaving his family in Dickensian poverty), I would observe that “working class” is not an intrinsic human characteristic. But the “working” aspect is real. I worked my way through seven years of trade schools (engineering and law) to gain middle class standing. With a good bit of risk taking my children and I have gained rather comfortable financial positions.

The problem with high taxation is that it locks individual into fixed financial status. Taxation is on income rather than the distractor wealth. Income is the rate of change of wealth I.e. no net income, no gain in wealth. And high wealth individuals really don’t need much income per se. They can let their investments ride at corporate tax rates, but only one layer of taxation. Perhaps at some level working class people recognize that with high income taxation their rather remote chance of striking it rich diminishes.

Answer 5

Very interesting, yet very complex question, to discuss in a few lines. First of all, need to clarify the subject a bit. Every political party is nothing but a mirror of the class it represents. Thus, political parties function as agents of the interests of the social group or class they come from, as Gramsci has pointed out.

“Although every party is the expression of a social group, and of one social group only, nevertheless in certain given conditions certain parties represent a single social group precisely in so far as they exercise a balancing and arbitrating function between the interests of their group and those of other groups, and succeed in securing the development of the group which they represent with the consent and assistance of the allied groups – if not out and out with that of groups which are definitely hostile.”

[] Antonio Gramsci, Selections From Prison Notebooks, ibid., p. 148.

Thus, speaking about the Western democracies (EU & USA), since the ruling parties are not working-class parties, they implement anti-working class policies (as you have correctly pointed out). But that's only a part of the whole picture, the real deal is that a whole framework is established which sustains and reproduces the status quo, the fact that the capitalistic class is oppressing and exploiting the working class.

Now, there are quite a number of reasons why this does not change.

(1) Lack of Class-Consciousness from the existing working-class. If you don't know where you are, you definitely cannot know where to go.

Working-class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected — unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a Social-Democratic point of view and no other. The consciousness of the working masses cannot be genuine class-consciousness, unless the workers learn, from concrete, and above all from topical, political facts and events to observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical, and political life; unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata, and groups of the population

[] Lenin, What Is to be Done, Chapter: Trade-Unionist Politics And Social-Democratic Politics

(2) Cultural and Ideological Hegemony of the ruling class (Source: On Cultural Hegemony) The ruling class has the economical & social power and thus can affect (through media, family, school, literature, the internet, etc.) the public opinion as to what is right or wrong. Nowadays, it is for example common perception across West that the capitalistic system is sustainable and beneficial for the majority.

(3) Anti-revolutionary forces that are presented as revolutionary. That's common practice, especially in crisis-periods. "Leftish" forces and parties are created to disorient the working-class, are depicted as allies, but in fact end up as Trojan Horses, to suppress the working class forces.

Source: Lenin on Opportunism

Answer 6

Well, because they are wealthier they have more leisure, and therefore more time to identify what actually is within their interests and also to assert those interests.

Again, because they are wealthier, they can 'buy' into institutions like politics, the law, education, media and so on, and through their involvement, again assert their interests, and this may mean a campaign of disinformation as a tactic.

One does not need to go to Marx to see this, but merely look at his predecessor, Adam Smith; if we can theorise the wealthy as a collective, then according to Adam Smith they would act in their own interests, both collectively and individually.

Answer 7

Because there are many political parties that are founded as kind of representing people with less income that readily sell themselves immediately after winning elections. One big politician just said openly after winning: "Just forget that we were talking during elections".

This makes difficult to figure out which political force would represent the interests, especially as long as you do not support exactly the radical communism yet.

Answer 8

The left always complains that "the poor" "don't know what's good for them or they'd vote for us". In reality the poor in large numbers know very well what's good for them and don't vote for the party that raised their taxes to the point they became the poor, meaning the left.

In the same vogue, a lot of "the rich" vote for the left, because the left enacts legislation that strangles competition to their corporations, allowing them to become even richer.