[Marxism] One more round with Julio Huato on the U.S. electorate

["Jose G. Perez" <elgusanorojo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In responding to my post detailing the demographics of those who vote,
Julio Huato says, "To show that the former half [those who vote] doesn't
matter and that the latter half [those who do not] does, José invokes
facts and figures that are hard to examine or verify independently
because the sources are unclear. "

First, my main sources were explicitly and repeatedly indicated in the
text. They were the exit polls done by the news media. Although often
presented as the particular news outlet's poll, in reality there is only
ONE exit polling operation on a national scale. That was VNS until 2002,
and this year the polls are being conducted by a joint operation of two
polling firms, usually referred to as Edison/Mitofsky. Nothing
complicated, obscure or hidden about that.

The 2004 Democrat presidential primary in New Hampshire poll, for
example, is here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3762821/. 

The basic technique for finding recent exit polls is to point your web
browser to: news.google.com, type in the state and the words exit poll.
If you don't want to go through all the trouble, all current exit polls
are accessible from this page (among many other places):
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/primaries/pages/misc/exit.html

The 2000 presidential exit poll can be found here:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/index.epolls.html. (To find the
older exit polls, the general Google engine is better, but really there
isn't much of a point, the ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and AP exit polls were all
the same one as CNN's.)

Second, Julio Huato's assertion that I say "the former half doesn't
matter" is purely his own invention. What I actually said was about
non-voters and it was this: "That is the more politically significant
half of the story."

I also explained why it is the more politically significant half: "As we
will see, the *majority* of the working class does not vote, and this
non-voting is concentrated especially among the most conscious and
militant social layers of the class, the oppressed nationalities."

To show how heavily skewed towards more privileged layers participation
in election is, I examined both the "official" figures by from the
census as well as the most often cited source on turnout. They reveal
participation in the 2000 election was just over half of the VAP (voting
age population, as estimated then). 

Then I turned to the exit polls to show what was the social composition
of this voting half. It was whiter, and had much higher income levels,
than the U.S. population as a whole. There are several other demographic
indicators that round out this picture, including education, but I just
referred to those without giving detailed stats. I also have detailed
stats from New Hampshire's primary, which had just been held, showing
that even in NH, which is a relatively privileged, high-income, white
state, those who came out to vote were disproportionately higher income
than the population of the state as a whole.

And I noted, based on having closely followed voting patterns in general
elections since 1990, because of my work, that this picture is what you
will find in election after election and primary after primary.

Julio Huato accuses me of handling the data irresponsibly, of looking
only at New Hampshire figures instead of the census bureau 2000 data.
Huato is confused. My figures for NH were for the 2004 primary, the only
census bureau figure involved was the Voting Age Population, for which I
used the New Hampshire 2000 figure from the census bureau, since a
current one seems to be unavailable.

The report Julio Huato says he is relying on, based on a supplemental
list of questions to the Current Population Survey, isn't necessarily
preferable to the exit polls in my opinion. 

It is based on people who claim to have voted *after the fact* and that
supplemental survey has a non-response rate of 13%. True, a comparable
or higher number of people do not cooperate with exit polls. But exit
polling firms have statistical techniques for compensating for
non-responses because the sex, race and approximate age of the
nonresponders, as well as the general area where they live, are known
from observation and taken into account. The Census Bureau attempts to
compensate for systematic biasing of the sample introduced by
non-cooperation, but based on their overall population estimates.

As a result, the Census shows 111 million votes in a race where only 105
million votes were counted, and if all those people really voted, it is
a much higher rate for annulled or blank ballots than the generally
accepted figure of 2% nationwide. The census bureau itself suggests that
"a significant part of the discrepancy between survey estimates and
official counts [of votes] is the result of respondent misreporting.
Incorrect reports of having voted from survey participants may be due to
a reluctance to admit being outside the mainstream of American culture
or the desire to exhibit a civic responsibility." In previous years,
over-reporting of voting was even higher, up to 12%.

Be that as it may, however, the Census Bureau figures show exactly the
same demographic patterns as the exit polls.  By their calculation, some
60% of whites voted; 53% of Blacks; fewer than 30% of Hispanics and
Asians did so. Even factoring out non-citizens, 43% of Asians and 45% of
Hispanic citizens voted. 

Summarizing its findings, the Census Bureau says, "The characteristics
of people who are most likely to go to the polls are a reflection of
both the racial/ethnic composition of the citizen population and the
attributes of people with the biggest stakes in society: older
individuals, homeowners, married couples, and people with more
schooling, higher incomes, and good jobs." 

For example, of citizens who responded to the survey with household
incomes of $50,000 or more, 72% voted; the rate for those with incomes
under $10,000 was 38%. Citizens with college degrees voted 75% of the
time; those without a high school degree, 38%. Note these are figures
for "citizens," not human beings. 

And since Julio Huato is such a stickler for precise sourcing, the quote
and statistics are from "Voting and Registration in the Election of
November 2000" issued in Feb. 2002, which can be downloaded here: 

http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p20-542.pdf

Thus Julio Huato's suggestion that I'm using some sort of unverifiable
source that contradicts other, more authoritative sources is completely
and thoroughly false. I consciously used the sources I believe more
accurately reflect the actual voters, the exit polls, because of the
"overreporting" and large non-response problems with the Current
Population Survey. The sources I chose are well known, widely
accessible, easily verifiable. The census bureau numbers *confirm* the
general patterns to be found in the exit polls. 

That is what is most important for the purposes of our discussion. Julio
Huato had made the argument we needed to go into the Democratic Party
because that's where the workers are. My point is that in reality, a
majority of the workers don't even vote once every four years. 

Huato seems unconvinced that this statement --the majority of workers do
not vote-- is factually accurate. That is must be so, mathematically, is
easy to demonstrate, because since turnout was about 50%, and bourgeois,
managerial, administrative and professional layers participated in much
greater numbers (70-80% of those layers), then the rest of the
population MUST have participated in lower numbers than 50%.

But arguing about whether or not the right figure for the working class
is 40%, or 50%, or more is irrelevant.  The *political* point is that
voters are "people with the biggest stakes in society," as the census
bureau puts it, and mostly NOT those who at some level have realized
that they have nothing to lose but their chains.

Julio Huato says, "Well, whatever José's figures show, they don't show
that the mass of U.S.  workers who are registered, vote, and vote for
the DP is insignificant," refuting one more position I do not hold and
did not put forward (I guess hay must be real cheap where Julio lives,
he keeps putting up so many straw men). What the figures show is that
the mass of nonvoters is even MORE significant than those who vote
Democrat.

Why is this important? Because it shows there is space, tremendous
amounts of political space, TODAY, now, for a party based on working
people. 

Why don't MORE working people who could do so register and vote? Because
they have no one to vote for, as they see it, no one to take their
concerns into the government.

This has a lot to do with a lot of things, including winner-take-all
single-seat election districts, a lack of proportional representation,
undemocratic laws which exclude millions of people from voting, the way
the media labels some candidates irrelevant giving 99.9% of the
attention to just a handful of them, almost always --ain't THIS a
coincidence-- rich white men.

Julio also challenges my assertion that the media systematically
promotes electoralism, the two party-system and voting, and fails to
reflect even a tiny bit in its coverage the views of the biggest
"party," the party of non-voters. He does this is a truly peculiar way,
by citing what AOL chooses to present subscribers when they log on, and
claims, "On the contrary, if there's a media plan ... then the goal is
to sabotage voting" because AOL is huckstering for Valentine Days gifts
and so on.

I do not think that Julio's claim that the mainstream media is trying to
get people to ignore the elections and not vote passes the giggle test.
The capitalist press spends an incredible amount of time, effort and
money in covering electoral farces, and most of all on the quadrennial
presidential one. The *social pressure*  this creates is everywhere to
be seen -- even in Julio Huato's preferred source, the census bureau,
which says their polling results are distorted by this pressure.
Remember what I quoted above -- more people claim to have voted than did
so due to "a reluctance to admit being outside the mainstream of
American culture or the desire to exhibit a civic responsibility."

How do 49% (according to the Federal Election Commission figures) or 45%
(according to the Census Bureau) -- in any case, as close to 100 million
adults as makes  no difference -- wind up feeling they are "outside the
mainstream" when the guy who won the election got HALF that number? 

Julio Huato interprets non-participation in voting as "apathy," and I,
at least, believe this is fundamentally wrong. It represents
disaffection with and alienation from U.S. capitalism, its state
institutions, and the electoral farces the capitalists stage to
legitimize the rule of their representatives. 

I do not claim this is some ultra-advanced revolutionary level of
consciousness or anything else like that; but I do believe it does
contain more elements of *class* consciousness than are often reflected
by people who vote for John Bush as a "lesser evil" to George Kerry
and/or vice-versa.

José












 

-----Original Message-----
From: marxism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:marxism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Julio Huato
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 7:08 PM
To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Marxism] In reply to José G. Pérez


Jose G. Perez admits that it "is certainly true" that

>"Workers -- and even more so proletarian workers -- in the U.S. are 
>MUCH
>more likely to be registered Democrats -- support and vote for
Democratic 
>candidates in federal elections than for any other party.  Black
workers, 
>who have had to wage very tough political [fights] to conquer the right
to 
>vote and basic civil liberties, are heavily inclined towards the DP."

He then adds to my statement and makes his point:

>especially the most oppressed and exploited workers vote Democrat than 
>any
>other party. But that's only half the story, the one that the bourgeois

>press never tires of covering, people who vote.
>
>THE OTHER HALF OF THE STORY --THOSE WHO DO NOT VOTE-- IS CONSCIOUSLY 
>AND
>SYSTEMATICALLY BOYCOTTED BY THE BOURGEOIS PRESS."

To show that the former half doesn't matter and that the latter half
does, 
José invokes facts and figures that are hard to examine or verify 
independently because the sources are unclear.  He alludes to some exit
poll 
of the recent Democratic primary in New Hampshire.  What is the source?

Where are the data?  He also says the Census data on the 2000
presidential 
election is from exit polls.  Not true.  The data comes from a
supplement to 
the CPS conducted by the BLS and the Census Bureau.  Instead of looking
at 
the whole dataset, apparently José looked at the part that pertains to
New 
Hampshire only.  Then, to avoid "boring us" with too many facts and
figures, 
he jumped to his conclusions.

Well, whatever José's figures show, they don't show that the mass of
U.S. 
workers who are registered, vote, and vote for the DP is insignificant.

José corrects my guess on the total number of officially registered 
Democrats.  I didn't have that number and ventured a guess based on the 
proportion of registered voters who voted for the DP candidate in the
2000.  
So, he says, it's not 50 million, but only 30 million plus.  Thirty
million 
sounds like a lot of people to me.  In spite of his allusion to rich New

Hampshire voters dominating the primaries, most of those 30 million
people 
are likely to derive their main income from their labor.

I know (I said it before) that registration in a party of this kind is
in 
and by itself a formality.  Each individual voter decides how much to
get 
involved.  Someone who votes regularly for the DP behaves very much like
a 
registered Democrat.  As I said before, only a minority of the
registered 
members of a party of this kind gets involved in the daily life of the 
party.  But this doesn't mean that forms don't matter.

While media-reported primary exit polls about one state may be
informative, 
I was talking about recent registration and participation rates in the
U.S. 
as a whole in the federal elections.  The primary source for this is the

Census Bureau 2000 dataset.  There are cross-tabs  by age, race,
occupation, 
educational attainment, etc. and a solid estimate of working class 
participation can be inferred.  In a previous posting 
(http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2003w46/msg00009.htm), I

used these data 
(http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/voting/p20-542.html) to
show 
that about half of U.S. workers do vote.

The raw fact is that over 110 million people in the U.S. (out of the 200

million of voting age) voted in 2000.  A clear majority of voters in the

U.S. are workers or members of working families, in the sense that their

main source of income is the sale of their labor power.  If we restrict
our 
definition to proletarian workers (with annual incomes, say, below
$50,000) 
only, then I estimate that 60% were registered and over 50% voted in
2000.  
Even if the workers' voting rates were very small (and they are smaller
than 
those whose main source of income is capital), workers still make up the

bulk of the voting crowd.  Even if it were not an overwhelming majority
of 
the U.S. workers, it would still be a substantial percentage.  And,
again, I 
stress, we're biasing the estimate downwards because we're including in
this 
category 16 million non-citizens (at least 12 million of them workers)
who 
have no right to vote in the U.S. -- so it's not their choice to
abstain.

For what I can infer, José and I disagree on the definition of "working 
class" and "proletariat."  José seems to use even narrower definitions
than 
mine, so that only very poor workers are regarded as workers or as 
proletarian workers.  Indeed, poorer and younger workers (and the 
unemployed) have significantly lower registration and voting rates.
José 
implies, for example, that someone who earns above the median income in
NH 
must be a capitalist.  I disagree.  His main argument is that the
workers 
who don't vote are the "most oppressed and exploited," so their current 
political behavior should determine the attitude of socialists in the 
electoral process.  I disagree again.

But before I tackle this, let me discuss the meaning of abstention in
the 
current U.S. political context.  From the point of view of the workers
who 
do vote, who regard voting as a political necessity or as their civic 
obligation, voluntary abstention does not appear like an appropriate
form of 
opposition to the system.  It appears as apathy, as giving up one's
basic 
civic responsibility without putting up a fight, as a sterile individual

reaction, not as a collective response.  In the current conditions in
the 
U.S., "abstention" might be justified when imposed by circumstances
clearly 
beyond people's control -- i.e., legal restrictions, defective machines,

administrative tricks, overt coercion, extreme poverty, health issues,
etc. 
that keep people from voting or from having their vote count.

That said, I don't believe that the media promotes electoral
participation 
in any meaningful way.  I don't observe the bourgeois media "consciously
and 
systematically" trying to boycott abstention.  On the contrary, if
there's a 
media plan to boycott anything, then the goal is to sabotage voting.  
Regardless of motivation, just judging by the consequences, the media
leads 
a large-scale campaign of diversion and degradation, which effectively 
amounts to promoting abstention -- especially among the youth.

Let me illustrate my point.  At home I access the Internet via AOL, a
pretty 
"mainstream" media outlet.  The first thing I see when I log on is a
slide 
show on AOL's main window.  Here're the slides AOL is playing out for me

right now:

Slide I: AOL Valentine Days (AOL Shopping)
Slide II: TheSuperBowl@AOL (AOL Sports)
Slide III: Going Ape Over Evolution (AOL News)

Only the third slide offers a link to a story that might get a person 
involved in politics (about Georgia's attempt to remove the "e" word
from 
textbooks).  But the emphasis of the note is on scandal, rather than on 
information.  So even this story pushes people in the wrong direction --
in 
the direction of cynicism and withdrawal from collective action.
Nowhere I 
see anything that might lead people to think, "Oh, I see how my vote is 
important," "Gee, we should defeat abstention," or anything like that.  
Nowhere.

With no illusions about the social and political nature of the DP,
knowing 
that at the end of the day we will win, inside or outside of the DP, I 
contend that we need to take part in elections and that the best way is
to 
wage the class struggle in the guts of the DP.  We cannot pretend that
the 
DP and the two-party system don't exist.  But I won't repeat my old 
arguments again.  They are in the archives.

What I want to stress now is that my point is based on a premise that,
IMO, 
is IRREFUTABLE.  My premise is that there is NOTHING in the recent
political 
history of the U.S. that suggests even remotely that the current 
abstentionism is political motion -- or even the prelude of political
motion 
-- against the two-party system, against the current direction of public

affairs in the U.S., or against capitalism.  Nothing.

Abstentionism would prelude political motion if people were struggling 
against massive rejection from -- or massive fraud in -- the elections;
if 
they were intent to vote, but the system didn't let them; that is, if it

were forced, imposed abstentionism; that is, if the impulse of the
movement 
were not towards abstaining, but towards voting and enforcing the vote,
in a 
clearly biased, exclusive, or fraudulent electoral process.

But in such case, instead of telling people to give up, we'd be
encouraging 
them to engage more.  In that case we'd be demanding voting rights for
12 
million migrant workers, we'd be demanding to repeal state laws that
take 
away voting rights from victims of the prison system, we'd be denouncing

tricks like those in the state of Florida that prevented black voters
from 
having their votes counted, etc.  Instead, what we have is the 
rationalization of passive, individualistic abstention.

The fact is that abstention -- even if it adds up to a large percentage
-- 
is not lethal to the U.S. political system and/or to capitalism.  So the

bourgeoisie (and the media) cares little about it.  After all,
abstentionism 
can be framed as an individual choice that, by omission, implicitly, 
delegates the ultimate decision to those who do vote.  If people don't
vote, 
it must be because they trust the judgement of those who do.  Those who 
abstain regal the media with a rationale to ignore them or minimize
them.

Abstentionism is not in and by itself lethal to a political system.
What is 
lethal to a political system is masses of people determined to reform it
or 
replace it with something better.  A lot of radicalized mass political 
movements in recent history began in the polls or as a protest against
the 
de-facto elimination of voting rights (military coups, etc.).  Mere lack
of 
"legitimacy" in a political system is not much of a threat, particularly

when associated with mass passivity.  Especially not in the current
U.S.' 
case, where 110 million people -- most of them workers -- do vote.

Of course, small groups in the left can come up with sophisticated
alibis to 
justify their abstention.  But given their number, these alibis don't
turn 
abstention into mass political motion.  Abstention, as it occurs today
in 
the U.S., is not an enlightened form of political mobilization.  It is
the 
opposite.  It is passive withdrawal.

José argues that the workers who vote are the "half of the story" that 
doesn't matter.  In his view, it is the other "half," the abstention
"half," 
that matters.  That is because the workers who don't vote are the "most 
oppressed and exploited" in the working class.  I think José mixes
apples 
and oranges here, and then he wants to squeeze grape juice out of them.

José says that I propose to "trail" the political behavior of a
political 
backward sector of the working class -- those who have illusions in the 
two-party system.  I think he's right to be concerned about socialists 
rationalizing and trailing the political attitudes of a particular
sector of 
the working class in opposition to the rest of the class.  As he has 
reminded us in his essays on the Communist Manifesto, socialists must
play 
an active part in the workers' concrete struggles WHILE they put forth
the 
broader interests of the class, promote the unity of larger sectors of
the 
class.

José says that poor Black and Latino workers are the "most oppressed and

exploited."  I think they are definitely the most oppressed in the U.S.

(Marx distinguished the FORM of exploitation from the DEGREE or rate of 
exploitation, and so should we; however, this would be another
discussion.)  
>From identifying the most oppressed U.S. workers it follows that 
>socialists
are committed to taking part in their concrete struggles while promoting

unity with other workers.  It doesn't mean, however, that socialists are
to 
rationalize and "trail" their current political attitudes or behavior.  
Again, socialists put forth the broader interests of workers.

For example, Latino workers are (still) a minority of the U.S. working 
class.  Their struggles for equal rights, individual and collective
respect 
(racial, ethnic, national) takes place in a broader context and
socialists 
need to take such context into account.  Just because they are among the

most oppressed workers in the U.S., it doesn't mean that the strategic 
choice of socialists should imitate the electoral position of these
workers 
-- which is, again, imposed by circumstances beyond their control.

The issue here is even broader than this.  To illustrate my point, let
me 
use a historical reference we're all familiar with.  In the late 19th 
century, the Russian social-democrats (Marxists) were debating where to 
concentrate their organizational work.  It was a straightforward problem
of 
economy of effort.  The social-democrats were looking for a political 
fulcrum, an area of work where the return on their political effort
would be 
highest.  One argument, by those with the old populist mental mold was
to 
focus on the peasants.  They were obviously the most oppressed.  Not
only 
that -- they were also the overwhelming majority of the Russian people.

Moreover, at the time, the main political goal of the coming revolution
-- 
according to most social-democrats including Lenin -- was the
elimination of 
the autocracy, something whose attainment the Russian peasantry, utterly

disappointed by the fake reforms of Alexander II, was not unable to
lead.

In several works (e.g., the Development of Capitalism in Russia), Lenin 
argued strongly against this approach.  Neither absolute poverty, nor
sheer 
number was the criterion to set the organizational priorities of the
Russian 
social-democracy.  Lenin was fully aware that he was betting the house
-- 
the overall strategy of the social-democracy in Russia.  As the pundits
now 
say, he was "positioning" his product in the political marketplace.  The

strategy of a party implies a ranking of its priorities and an
allocation of 
its people and resources.  Lenin thought that the biggest bang for their

organizational buck would be gained from joining the daily struggles of
the 
industrial workers in the urban centers.

This was a dramatic shift away from revolutionary tradition.  Many were 
disconcerted because it was somewhat counter-intuitive.  Lenin did not
deny 
that the peasants in the country side were the most oppressed or the 
majority of the Russian working people.  But he thought the most
effective 
path to help them get rid of their oppression was not to invest the
scant 
resources of the Russian social-democracy in them, which would have been
an 
effective subordination of the broader interests of workers to their 
concrete needs.  Instead, his focus was on a smaller crowd whose
"specific 
weight" in Russian society (Lenin's phrase), whose collective ability to

induce social change, was greater.  While the industrial workers were
not 
the most oppressed, poor, or numerous, Lenin argued, they had the vital 
nerve of Russia's economy in their hands and, hence, the highest
political 
potential.  In Lenin's mind, organizing one urban, industrial worker
would 
have a political impact equivalent to dozens or hundreds of poor
peasants.  
Regardless of the success or failures of the Russian social-democrats to

pull off their original plan, the lesson is clear.

The recent biggest mass demonstration in favor of equal rights for
migrant 
workers (the Freedom Ride, early October 2003) did not call for
abstention, 
did not exclude electoral participation -- it demanded equal rights 
(including the right to vote) and it committed people who can vote to
use 
their vote to support the cause of migrant workers.  In the current U.S.

context, migrant workers who struggle for equal rights -- for the right
to 
have a driver's license, to open a bank account,  to leave the U.S. and 
return as they see fit, to join a union or go on strike without fear of 
deportation, to vote, etc., won't advance their immediate concrete goals
by 
having socialists advocate abstention.

And the same goes for Black poor workers in their own struggles.  That 
should be clear.

Julio

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