Public workers living near Washington, D.C., or state capitals have increased their power and influence in federal and state governments by voting more heavily for Democrats than any other employment group.
Half of the 20 U.S. counties with the highest median household incomes are Washington, D.C., suburbs, according to a Wednesday Government Accountability Institute report posted on Real Clear Investigations. Only five D.C. suburbs were in the top 20 as recently as 2000. (RELATED: Federal Employees Give To Dem Campaigns 10 TIMES More Than To GOP)
Likewise, three of the top 12 counties were suburbs of state capitals. An estimated 90 percent of all bureaucrats in America live within 30 miles of a capital.
The “proportion of federal employees has nearly double since 1950” compared to the overall workforce, the report’s authors, Brian Baugus and George Diemer wrote. “And that has corresponded with an increase in influence.”
Baucus is an assistant professor of economics at Regent University, and Diemer is an assistant professor of business at Chestnut Hill College.
“This well-off and influential group votes in higher proportions than any other group and far differently than the American electorate at large,” Baugus and Diemer wrote. “Studies going back to the 1930s support these conclusions.”
Baucus and Diemer contend that, “bureaucrats are below the political radar, but the balance of power may be tilting irrevocably toward this special interest and the growing government it serves, with the American taxpayer picking up the tab.”
Government employees represented the largest voter turnout by employment category in both the 2008 and 2012 elections. Overall voter turnout was less than 64 percent in 2008 and nearly 62 percent in 2012, but bureaucrat turnout was 76 percent in both elections.
Capital regions in Michigan and Wisconsin had low turnouts in the 2016 election, as the two traditionally Democratic states flipped from President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 to Republican Donald Trump. Similarly, Trump would have won both New Hampshire and Virginia had the capital regions voted like the rest of those states.
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