Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Valerie Nazzaro
Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Abstract: A variety of factors have been found to dictate an individual’s decisions when voting in political elections, especially family income. In the United States, the highest and lowest levels of family income tend to yield higher voter frequency from the Democratic Party, whereas the frequency of voters for Republicans increases towards the middle class. In this study, a binary variable was constructed using the results of the 2020 American National Election Studies Survey (ANES) to analyze how an individual’s family income is associated with their decision in the 2020 Presidential Election. Income level was coded into a response variable of five levels. The analysis revealed a significant difference in how family income was associated with voter choice in 2020 between the third income level ($50k-79,999k) and the fifth level ($125k+). However, while the overall relationship between family income and voter selection was statistically significant, this was the only significant relationship between specific levels. The relationship between voter selection and family income was overall insignificant when controlled by state of voter registration for nine selected states, and the significance between the third and fifth income levels was lost.