NEW CANAAN, Conn. — In the divide between red and blue, few things matter more than the green.
So it's no surprise that in New Canaan, the richest town in the richest county in the richest state, Republicans are the dominant political species.
The 20,000 people who live in this manicured, tree-shaded town on Connecticut's "Gold Coast" have a per-capita income four times the national average. This is where much of Wall Street sleeps, where conservative commentator Ann Coulter grew up, where NBC anchor Brian Williams and General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt live. And although John Kerry came in 2004 for a fund-raiser at singer-songwriter Paul Simon's home, New Canaan voters chose George Bush by a margin of 61-39 percent.
In America, only race and religion define wider gaps than money between the parties. And the income-politics polarization appears to have increased in the last 50 years.
But cultural and social crosscurrents upset easy stereotypes — both the old view of blue-collar Democrats and country-club Republicans and the new view of latte Democrats and NASCAR Republicans.
There's an apparent paradox in American politics: Rich people vote for Republicans, but rich states vote for Democrats.
Eight of the 10 states with the highest per-capita incomes (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, New York, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Delaware) voted for Kerry; all 10 states with the lowest incomes (Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, South Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama) went for Bush.
"It didn't used to be that way. Poor states used to support Democrats," said Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University who has studied the relationship between income and voting patterns.
Gelman believes that, when it comes to voting, income matters much more in red America than in blue America. In poor states, such as Mississippi, rich people are much more likely than poor people to vote Republican, while in rich states, such as Connecticut, high income has a lower connection to voting for the GOP.
In New Canaan, there is support for Gelman's theory in the hillside home of Andrew and Kira Brandman. Andrew is a senior vice president of the New York Stock Exchange and votes Republican. Kira, after a career in telecommunications, stays at home with the couple's two young children and is active in the local Democratic Party.
"We're really both more centrist than to the right or left," said Kira, 38. "We have similar thoughts on abortion and where tax money should go. But my vote is for the betterment of everyone, instead of just the betterment of myself.
"My husband describes himself as socially responsible, fiscally conservative. He's pro-choice, he's for gun control, but he works hard and he wants to keep his money."
The local Republican Party chairman, investment banker John Ponterotto, sees a financial incentive for New Canaan Republicans: their tax bracket.
"My theory is that until you get up to incomes of about $75,000, people are not that interested in taxes," Ponterotto said. "But when you get up to $150,000 to $200,000, you really start to feel the bite of income taxes and it becomes an issue for you. And the only people willing to address that are the Republican Party."
Ponterotto said he sees a shift among the super-rich. "At exceedingly high income levels, there's a lot of support for the Democratic Party. I don't hear people with $2 million incomes complaining about taxes; I hear people with $200,000 incomes complaining about taxes."
In the 2004 presidential election, the difference nationally between voters with incomes below $50,000 a year (predominantly Kerry supporters) and above $50,000 (predominantly Bush supporters) was 12 percentage points. The gap was even wider at the extremes: 64.1 percent of voters with incomes more than $200,000 voted for Bush, while 63.6 percent with incomes below $15,000 voted for Kerry.
Laura Olson, a professor of political science at Clemson University and a scholar of divisions in voting, believes the rich blue state/poor red state split "has more to do with the massive urban-rural divide in American politics than with income itself."
"Big cities somehow give rise to a different culture, or ethos, than do rural areas, and I think a lot of that has to do with the kinds and numbers of other people you encounter in each setting and the kind of work you are likely to engage in in each setting," Olson said.
She also noted that rich Republicans raise the per capita income in states like Connecticut but are far outnumbered by their Democratic middle-class neighbors, producing the paradox of rich Democratic states.
Larry Bartels, director of Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University, says it's a mistake to try to infer the voting behavior of individuals from the behavior of states.
"Poorer states have become more Republican, but that is because the wealthier voters within those states have become more Republican," Bartels said. He attributed most of that trend to the South's move away from the Democrats after the civil-rights era.
"Nationally, the relationship between voters' income and Republican support is quite strong, stronger in the past 30 years than it was in the 1950s and 1960s," Bartels said.
In "Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches, political scientists Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal argue that there is also much more partisan stratification by income now than 50 years ago.
The "latte Democrat, NASCAR Republican" image isn't accurate, McCarty said in an interview: "It may well be that such creatures exist, but they're somewhat atypical.
"At a time when a lot of discussion is focused on cultural and social issues, it masks to a degree the financial inequities."
Not all scholars agree.
Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard, says income is a good predictor of political preferences only at the top and bottom. In the vast middle, he says, the relationship is much weaker.
"Political parties and politicians have had an increasing tendency to divide on cultural and religious issues rather than on economic differences," Glaeser writes in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. "Today, religion rather than earnings predicts Republicanism."
In the same journal, however, three political science and economics professors from MIT argue the opposite, saying "the pull of economic issues is so much stronger that the role of moral issues is clearly of secondary importance."
The tug of both social and economic issues is apparent in New Canaan.
Here, Christopher Chase would seem to be a prototypical rich guy. He is an investment banker in Stamford, drives a BMW 525, and, at 48, has been married more than 20 years and has two sons. But he votes Democratic.
"What motivates me are economic and political issues. ... I have sympathy for the liberal social agenda," Chase said. "My ideal candidate would be one who is thoughtful about economics and also happens to have a heart."
Paul Giusti, a selectman in New Canaan's town government, made his money in housing construction in the Midwest. The grandson of Italian and Lithuanian immigrants, he votes Republican.
"In our town, the people who vote Republican, I think, believe in less government intervention and more personal freedom," Giusti said. "I've been able to get a good education, work hard, take advantage of opportunities, and be successful.
"If I can do that, I think the opportunity is there for anybody anywhere to do that."
The competing influences of money and culture vary by voter, said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.
"Rich people might want to vote Republican for reasons of class, but they might also want to vote Democratic because of culture, especially if they are highly educated, live in cosmopolitan states, and think same-sex marriage is only fair," he said. "Likewise, poor people might want to vote Democratic for reasons of class, but they might also want to vote Republican because of culture, especially if they are very religious, live in traditional states, and think same-sex marriage is sinful."