For a 2002 conference on the 2000 US presidential election, I wrote a paper analyzing the relationship between the Electoral College vote and federal spending per state, measured as the ratio of federal dollars received to total federal taxes paid in each state. I found that the states that received the most federal spending per tax dollar had the highest Republican vote, contrary to what one might expect. This phenomenon has become known as the federal fiscal paradox. The paper and its updates have been cited, quoted, and served as the foundation for several news stories, including the New York Times (12/18/18 and 2/12/12).
These papers raise the question: what about people, not states? Do the people who benefit the most from federal spending vote Democratic or Republican? After Mitt Romney's (in)famous claim in 2012 that Obama's supporters are among the 47% of Americans who don't pay taxes and depend on government programs, I found that Romney's supporters were as likely as Obama's to believe that they benefit from federal spending (Lacy. 2014. Moochers and Makers in the Voting Booth: Who Benefits from Federal Spending and How Did They Vote in the 2012 Presidential Election? Public Opinion Quarterly.) The article also shows that the amount of federal spending received by a voter's state of residence is positively correlated with voting Republican. This is the first work to show the federal fiscal paradox at the individual level rather than only at the state level. An update covering the 2004 through 2016 elections shows the same pattern: beneficiaries of federal spending are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. People who believe they pay more in taxes than they receive from the government are also evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.
I have several papers underway related to this project. One paper shows that people’s beliefs about whether they benefit from federal spending differ by race, even after controlling for income, age, employment status, family size, education, and military veteran status. A second paper shows that women are more likely than men to believe they receive as much in federal spending as they pay in taxes, perhaps revealing a “don’t know” response to the questions. Finally, a survey experiment I completed on large national survey with a Dartmouth student, Daniel Pham, shows that voters give higher approval ratings to Republicans in Congress who increase social spending than to Democrats, and Democrats do not receive higher approval ratings from any form of spending. This paper makes a larger point that voters reward unexpected behavior from politicians.