IN THE LEAD-UP to the 2020 elections, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival organized a massive voter drive reaching 2 million poor and low-income voters in 16 states, including battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. This effort, as shown in our October report, “Waking the Sleeping Giant: Poor and Low-Income Voters in the 2020 Elections,” contributed to higher turnout among poor and low-income voters who may be key to shifting the political terrain in 2022, 2024, and beyond.
According to our research, poor and low-income voters (households with income under $50,000 a year) made up approximately one-third of the voting electorate in 2020. They made up at least 20 percent of the total voting population in 45 states and Washington, D.C. In battleground states (those with a margin of victory of 5 percent or less in 2020), the numbers were higher, ranging between 35 and 45 percent of the total vote share. These findings cut against long-standing assumptions that poor and low-income people are apathetic about politics or elections. Instead, we found that they register at comparable rates as the rest of the country—and they vote, especially when their concerns are on the agenda.
A closer look at the demographics of the battleground states shows that white low-income voters accounted for a higher vote share than all other racial segments of low-income voters combined. Given the small margins of victory and the high vote share of poor and low-income white voters in these states, it is likely that some of these voters joined other low-income minority voters to cast their ballot for the same ticket and agenda. This challenges the prevailing narrative that poor and “working class” white voters vote against both their own interests and the interests of low-income minority voters. In fact, not only is it possible to build multiracial coalitions of such voters around a more progressive agenda, it may be necessary to bring these low-income voters together to win that agenda.
Indeed, our nonpartisan voter outreach drive led by the Poor People’s Campaign had a positive and statistically significant impact on low-income voter turnout in 2020. In Georgia, our outreach turned out more than 39,000 new low-income voters, in an election decided by roughly 12,000 votes. While we cannot interpret these findings to say that these voters were decisive to that outcome, these numbers emphasize the powerful political impact poor and low-income voters could have if engaged directly and on their interests.
Our findings offer a path toward realizing the nation we have yet to become. Policies that would improve the lives of poor and low-income people—around living wages, child care, paid leave, affordable health care, debt relief, clean air and water, safe communities and more—are widely popular but far from fully implemented.
Poor and low-income voters have been largely ignored in electoral politics, but according to this data, they could make the difference in the 2022 midterm elections. Let this be a lesson to all: The path to electoral victory in this country goes through the 140 million poor and low-income people—ignoring them is impossible.
The poor are the political force—the sleeping giant—we have been waiting for.
Shailly Gupta Barnes (@ShaillyBarnes), author of the October 2021 report "Waking the Sleeping Giant," is policy director at the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice.
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