Wal-Mart Shoppers are the trendiest voting block, and are pissed off at Republican rule

Pollsters are flagging the giant Wal-Mart shopping base as an identifiable voting demographic. Read about it here: Revenge of the Wal-Mart shoppers

Who are the Wal-Mart voters? They are among the most liberal people in our society in terms of their embrace of a Governmental role in addressing society’s problems.

Wal-Mart shoppers are mostly comprised of persons of lower income, or the lower middle-class, and tend to be persons who benefit greatly from the government programs that economically conservative Republicans hate. They are the working poor, as well as the working not-so-poor.

Wal-Mart voters may still skew toward the rural and southern, but that’s changing: The article portrays the Wal-Mart voter as mostly southern rural lower middle class. But the article recognizes that the demographic profile is likely to change as more Wal-Marts make their way into urban and suburban communities

Wal-Mart’s inroads in the urban St. Louis Missouri area (my area): Until about 10 years ago, Wal-Mart did not have much of a presence in the St. Louis Missouri area. You had to drive pretty far out to find a Wal-Mart. Over the years, Wal-Mart has gradually increased its local presence, until Wal-Marts are fairly common in the close-in suburban ring. Supercenters are still not present in the close-in St. Louis suburban ring.

According to the article linked above, Wal-Mart shoppers are essentially liberal Democrats in their outlook toward the role of government. Here are some quotes:

From Revenge of the Wal-Mart shoppers

Wal-Mart voters are simply not a viable, reliable conservative constituency. When Pew looked at the opinions of those pro-government conservatives in a 2005 study, it found that 94 percent favor a higher minimum wage, 63 percent favor the government guaranteeing health care to all citizens, and fewer than half favor drilling in ANWR. What’s worst: more than half of pro-government conservatives held positive views of both Bill and Hillary Clinton.

This is clearly not a voting bloc that Republicans can count on in 2006 or 2008.

Wal-Mart voters are giving Democrats a 6-point edge as to who’s better equipped to handle foreign policy, an 18 percent edge on health care and a 25 percent edge on gas prices (the parties are dead-even among Wal-Mart voters on the economy and immigration). What’s more, moral values hardly rate as an issue this year, for any voting bloc.

[emphasis added]

If the article is correct, that “moral values issues” are not polling as being very important this voting season, then I speculate as follows:

• People realize that the Republican religious moralizing that attracted their votes came with a steep too-painful price: They got “conservative” governmental policies skewed more toward big business’s interests than the common people’s interests -the balance favored the wealthy too much. They think it’s time for a new balance.
• People realize that anti-gay marriage amendments and anti-flag burning amendments don’t do much good at addressing the community’s real daily problems. Across the political spectrum, people are angry at our Congress for devoting valuable time to such issues.
• People have come to believe that the Republicans squandered the budget surplus that Clinton oversaw. People do not like deficit spending, and they know that Bush and his one-party rule have been the worst budget offenders in modern history. A tax cut for the rich in a time of high deficits seems absolutely insane to the common people.
• People realize that the money spent on the Iraq war wasn’t and isn’t a good investment for America.
• Gas prices have brought it all home to the common people - This generation of common working poor have seen that governmental polices can make real differences in peoples daily lives, for good or ill. And under the Republicans, it has almost all been for ill, as regards the common people.