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VOTER SATISFACTION WITH democracy may have less to do with who actually wins an election and more to do with income inequality.
That is according to researchers at Michigan State University.
Researchers Eric Chang and Sung Min Han studied presidential and parliamentary elections in 43 countries, including the United States, and found that rising income inequality widens the gap in satisfaction with democracy between electoral winners and losers.
The findings have been published in the December issue of the journal Electoral Studies.
“This study suggests that the degree of income inequality is the real driver behind electoral winners and losers’ satisfaction with democracy,” said Chang, associate professor of political science.
Elections matter much more for both the rich and poor when income inequality is high.
Income inequality in the United States has risen dramatically in recent decades, driven largely by the very rich getting richer. The share of income owned by the top 10 percent of the wealthiest households increased from 32 percent in 1970 to 47 percent in 2014, according to the Census Bureau.
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to revive small-town America – a pledge that most experts believe must involve tackling the income gap.
Past research found that voters who support winning parties are more satisfied with democracy than those who vote for the losers. In this winner-loser gap theory, the difference in satisfaction levels is smaller in consensus democracies where the losing party can still affect policy outcomes, suggesting an institutional effect.
But the MSU study is one of the first to argue that the effects of economic inequality are more critical to satisfaction with democracy than the institutional effects of political systems.
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Cos that decisions not gonna cause any problems.
“A nonagenarian lawyer representing a Hindu deity “ ..well presumably the lawyer for the other side is also representing a fictitious deity?
This is a very dangerous development.
@Gary Sheahan: why?
When the gods start warring with each other it seems to go on forever .I wonder did ever hear about a Good Friday kind of thing and follow their poor mortals and come up with some sort of arrangement
Hmm, what could possibly go wrong?
India going out of their way to piss off the muslims
@Mr.Misery: yep the Danes and French caused mayhem with a couple of cartoons. What are the Indians thinking??
@Greg Daniel: PM Modi is a Hindu ethno-nationalist, he’s been whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment for ages in India as a means to get into and hold onto power-he is a dangerous individual who will end up formenting mass murder if he’s not careful
@Mr.Misery: What could India possibly have against the religion that killed as many as 80 million of their people?
@DJ François: Yep, definitely. Kashmir was only the start of it. Now this. Lots more to come
@Fifty Shades of Sé: 80 million Indians killed by Muslims? Where did you get that from?
@Fifty Shades of Sé: religion killed 80 million? Hope they caught it.
@DJ François: hate mongering at it’s worst
@Niall Carry: I’m a Hindu. I know what we have suffered at the hands of invaders since time immemorial
But that is what Islam does, look at all the Christian sites in Israel as they all had an Islamic site built on most of them. And Christians did the same to pagan sites and so on and so on…
have your say