Income Inequality is Much Worse in Blue States than Red States

One reason Democrat politicians talk a lot about inequality may be that Democrat-dominated states have much higher levels income disparity.

Income inequality is higher in states that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 when measured by the average income of the top one percent against the average income of the bottom 99 percent, according to data from a new report by the Economic Policy Institute. For Clinton states, the top incomes were on average 23.6 times the average income for the other 99 percent.

In Trump states, the average for top earners was just 19.7 times the average for everyone else.

Clinton won the majority of the vote in the most unequal state, New York, where top earners make 44 times what other households do. She took 8 out of the top ten, with Trump winning only Florida and Wyoming out of the most unequal states.

Trump won six of states with the ten lowest levels of income inequality, while Clinton won four.

The state with the lowest threshold to be in the top one percent $254,362 is Mississippi, where Donald Trump won 58 percent of the vote. You would have to make three times as much, $700,800, to be in the top one percent in Connecticut, the state with the highest threshold and where Hillary Clinton won 54 percent of the vote.

Alaska has the smallest income gap, with the top one percent earning an average of $910,059, 12.7 times the average of $71,876 for everyone else. Trump got 53 percent of the vote there.

Trump voting states had a median top one percent threshold of $333,139 and the average income of the top earners was $946,688. In Clinton voting states, the median one percent threshold was $442,804 and the average of the wealthiest one percent was $1,036,142.

The income data suggest why Trump’s message of Make America Great Again resonated with some parts of America, while Clinton’s insistence that America already was great resonated with her supporters: Clinton’s supporters were wealthier. The median income of the lower 99 percent earners in states that voted for Clinton was close to $56,000, 21 percent higher than the median income of the Trump 99 percent.