The Patriot Post® · Sanders Fares Poorly Among the Low-Income Class

This election season has produced plenty of unusual results. Among them is the fact Hillary Clinton is steamrolling Bernie Sanders when it comes to winning states with large income disparities. During an interview with Bernie Sanders, NBC’s Chuck Todd pointed out, “Seventeen of the 25 states with the highest levels of income inequality have held primaries. Sixteen of those 17 states have been won by Hillary Clinton.”

When pressed for an explanation, Sanders retorted, “Poor people don’t vote. I mean, that’s just a fact. That’s a sad reality of American society.” He added, “If we can significantly increase voter turnout so that low-income people and working people and young people participated in the political process, if we got a voter turnout of 75 percent, this country would be radically transformed.”

That may be. But exit polling suggests they would not necessarily embrace Sanders’ ideals. In another fascinating twist, The Washington Post reveals that “Sanders has lost Democratic voters with household incomes below $50,000 by 55 percent to 44 percent to Clinton across primaries where network exit polls have been conducted.” As for why his numbers among the lower class are, at best, meager, the reality could be that most lower income individuals put more value in a system that gives them the best opportunity to join the 1% than they do redistributing wealth.

Reason’s Ed Krayewski speculates, “Perhaps poor people are not interested in policies like those Sanders espouses because most efforts to ‘reduce’ income inequality destroy the prospects of upward income mobility for working Americans. The increased dependency on the state, the increased regulations, the increased taxes, all work against efforts by poor working Americans to improve their economic conditions. Perhaps they are aware of this despite a generations-long effort by Democrats to propagandize the poor and lock them down as a voting base in places like Detroit and Baltimore, whose poor people have not enjoyed any relief due to decades of single-party rule.”

Whatever the reason, these are startling results for a man who on his website pontificates, “The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time.” As it turns out, most in the lower income class don’t even agree.