| Summary/Abstract |
AS IS WELL KNOWN, AMERICANS WITH HIGHER INCOMES tend to be more politically active than lower-income citizens. They vote more often, engage in more political discussions, attend more campaign events, contribute more money, and contact more public officials.1 But research to date has only examined the moderately affluent respondents that surveys of the general public are able to reach: the top 20 percent or 30 percent of income earners. What about really wealthy Americans, with incomes or wealth in the top 1 percent, who might potentially have a great deal of political influence? Do they—as resource-based theories would suggest2—participate at still higher levels than the merely affluent? Do they more often initiate contacts with high-level government officials? If so, about what? Matters of narrow economic self-interest or the common good (as they see it)? Answers to these questions may have implications for the workings of democratic politics.
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