"47 percent of Americans are entitled victims"

"There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what.  All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you-name-it... These are people who pay no income tax." -- Mitt Romney




This hot story is nothing so shocking to those who follow politics.  After all, numerous right-wing talking heads have regurgitated this number, apparently citing a study that predicted that 47% of "tax units" would pay no income taxes in 2010.  That prediction did not however come to pass.  According to IRS data there were 144,002,309 tax returns filed in 2010, and 93,798,331 of those paid some income tax.  The number of "tax units" not paying any tax (and presumably, most getting something back from Uncle Sam) then came to just under 35%.[1]

Now it may be posited that the above remarks were supposed to refer to potential voters.  Even assuming that voter participation was as high as in 2008, that would calculate to only around 140 million voters, so we are back to a similar calculation of percentages as before.

But beyond the wanton recklessness with facts, Mitt reveals something ugly that could hurt him in this election and perhaps even in more personal ways.  You see, demographics are not as cut and dried as he seems to believe.  In fact the wealthy and the upwardly mobile are not demonstrably more conservative than the poor or the mediocre.  People of all strata are drawn toward ideologies based on the values they perceive there, more than by self-interest.  And there is a considerable block of the conservative base that is not terribly wealthy and may have considerable deductions that they may write off on their taxes.

To demonstrate this, I picked a solidly Republican state with a very white population, that ranks highest in charitable giving at 10.6% of their Adjusted Gross Income [2] and has a larger than average household size. That state is Utah.  It seems that when we examine the IRS date for that same year of 2010, we find that of the 1,134,626 tax returns filed by Utahns, only 699,598 payed any income tax.[3]  That comes to 38.3%, or 3.4% more "entitled victims" than the national average.

Now this latest mouth-dump won't flip Utah to the democratic side, but if it could have a chilling effect on the Santorum crowd.  And then there are the neighboring swing states of Colorado and Nevada...


[1][3] http://apps2.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=171535,00.html

[2] http://abcnews.go.com/Business/generous-states-charities-lean-republican/story?id=17030246#.UFjS9qDu1xU