Who are Mitt Romney’s 47 percent? A breakdown

CONNIE CASS

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Just which 47 per­cent of Amer­i­cans was Mitt Rom­ney talk­ing about? It’s hard to say. He lumped together three dif­fer­ent ways of sort­ing peo­ple in what he’s called less-than-elegant remarks.

Each of those three groups — likely Obama vot­ers, peo­ple who get fed­eral ben­e­fits and peo­ple who don’t pay fed­eral income taxes — con­tains just under half of all Amer­i­cans, in the neigh­bor­hood of 47 per­cent at a given moment. There’s some over­lap, but the groups are quite distinct.

Con­fus­ingly, Rom­ney spoke as if they’re made up of the same batch of Americans.

A look at the three groups:

___

OBAMA VOTERS

What Rom­ney said: “There are 47 per­cent of the peo­ple who will vote for the pres­i­dent no mat­ter what.”

He’s right on the nose, accord­ing to the lat­est Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll: Forty-seven per­cent of likely vot­ers say they sup­port Obama. And 46 per­cent say they sup­port Rom­ney, essen­tially a tie. This num­ber fluc­tu­ates from poll to poll and week to week and could shift sub­stan­tially before Elec­tion Day.

Who they are:

—Most are employed: Sixty-two per­cent of the Obama vot­ers work, includ­ing the 10 per­cent work­ing only part time. A fourth are retired. Five per­cent say they’re tem­porar­ily unemployed.

—Most earn higher-than-average wages. Fifty-six per­cent have house­hold incomes above the U.S. median of $50,000. Just 16 per­cent have incomes below $30,000, and about the same share (20 per­cent) have incomes of $100,000 or more.

—They’re all ages but skew younger than Romney’s vot­ers: Twenty per­cent are senior cit­i­zens and 12 per­cent are under age 30.

—They’re more edu­cated than the over­all pop­u­la­tion: Forty-three per­cent boast four-year col­lege degrees or above; 21 per­cent topped out with a high school diploma.

___

PEOPLE WHO GET FEDERAL BENEFITS

What Rom­ney said: “There are 47 per­cent … who are depen­dent on gov­ern­ment … who believe they are enti­tled to health care, to food, to hous­ing, to you name it.”

Whether they are depen­dent and believe they are enti­tled to any­thing is arguable, but Romney’s sta­tis­tic is about right — 49 per­cent of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion receive some kind of fed­eral ben­e­fit, includ­ing Social Secu­rity and Medicare, accord­ing to the most recent Cen­sus Bureau data. Look­ing only at peo­ple who receive ben­e­fits that are based on finan­cial need, such as food stamps, the por­tion is smaller — just over a third of the pop­u­la­tion. Many peo­ple get more than one type of benefit.

The biggest pro­grams and their per­cent­age of the U.S. population:

—Med­ic­aid: 26 percent

—Social Secu­rity: 16 percent

—Food stamps: 16 percent

—Medicare: 15 percent

—Women, Infants and Chil­dren food pro­gram: 8 percent

___

THOSE WHO PAY NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX

What Rom­ney said: “Forty-seven per­cent of Amer­i­cans pay no income tax.”

Romney’s about on tar­get — 46 per­cent of U.S. house­holds paid no fed­eral income tax last year, accord­ing to a study by the non­par­ti­san Tax Pol­icy Cen­ter. Most do pay other fed­eral taxes, includ­ing Medicare and Social Secu­rity with­hold­ing. And they’re not all poor. Some middle-income and wealthy fam­i­lies escape income tax because of deduc­tions, cred­its and invest­ment tax preferences.

Why they don’t pay:

—About half don’t earn enough money for a house­hold of their size to owe income tax. For exam­ple, a fam­ily of four earn­ing less than $26,400 would owe no taxes using the stan­dard exemp­tions and deductions.

—About 22 per­cent get tax breaks for senior cit­i­zens that off­set their income.

—About 15 per­cent get tax breaks for the work­ing poor or low-income parents.

—Almost 3 per­cent get tax breaks for col­lege tuition or other edu­ca­tion expenses.

Who they are:

—The vast major­ity have below-average earn­ings: Among all who don’t owe, 9 out of 10 make $50,000 or less.

—But some of the wealthy escape taxes, includ­ing about 4,000 house­holds earn­ing more than $1 mil­lion a year.

Posted by AP News on Sep 20 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.