The Poor People’s Campaign highlights the political power of low-income voters
Poverty and the myriad issues that are of concern to poor and low-income Americans have not been directly addressed in recent election cycles (even though there were 63 million low-income eligible voters in 2016). With the pandemic, an even greater number of Americans are experiencing poverty-related issues. The Poor People’s Campaign is making the case to put poverty on the political agenda as a moral imperative and as a political strategy to win elections. In a recently released study, Columbia School of Social Work’s Robert Paul Hartley, a faculty affiliate of CPSP, provides evidence of what could happen if low-income people voted at similar rates as higher-income voters and where new participation could flip the results from the 2016 presidential elections.