These twin contradictions are central to the outcome of the 2024 campaign, but neither is. new. Countless studies and debates have examined the Democratic Party’s “working class problem.” The Republican Party’s problems have been quietly growing since the 1990s, but then Donald Trump turned a gradual trend into a serious predicament.
The latest warning for Republicans was also issued in South Carolina, where Trump defeated Nikki Haley by a 3-2 margin in last weekend’s primary. Even if he won, exit polls showed Trump losing college graduates by 54% to 45%. His broader problems in metropolitan areas were highlighted by a 62 percent to 38 percent loss in Charleston County. And remember. These were Republican primary voters in a very conservative state. His education issues are even more serious among non-Republicans and could trouble him in battleground states.
The Democratic challenge is gaining more attention in part because President Biden appears to be the ideal Democrat to restore the party’s standing with working-class voters of all races. In conversations over the decades, “Scranton Joe” always turned to his frustration with the Democratic Party’s inability to understand the “working middle class.”
As he will make clear in Thursday’s State of the Union address, his economic policy leans in more than just labor and trade issues. When talking about his administration’s investments in infrastructure, technology and clean energy, he said many jobs are being created — often by leveraging the private sector — and that all Americans have access to “good careers.” He points out that the “road” has been opened. Should I go to university or not? ”
These programs poured millions of dollars into struggling communities that were central to Trump’s electoral strength. In a study published last month, my colleagues at the Brookings Institution found that “economically distressed counties received a more than proportionate share of their investment surge compared to their current share of the economy.” concluded.
But these efforts have yet to produce the working-class resurgence that Democrats had hoped for. A Quinnipiac poll released on February 21 showed Mr. Biden leading Mr. Trump 49% to 45%, pointing to the class challenges of each candidate. Among white registered voters with a college degree, Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump 60% to 34%. Those without a college degree gave Trump 58% to Biden 37%.
Meanwhile, the survey also shows President Trump doing better among Latino and Black voters than he did in 2016 and 2020, according to John B. Giudice and Rui Teixeira’s recent book. This confirms the argument made in “Where Have the Democrats Gone?” The authors found that between 2012 and 2022, Democrats lost their advantage among nonwhite working-class voters by 25 points. This could be a big problem because Biden needs both a wide margin and high turnout among Black and Latino voters.
But it’s worth noting that the Democratic Party has long been bleeding white working-class voters before the hand-wringing gets out of hand (Richard M. Nixon’s Southern Strategy in the late 1960s and the 1980s) ) due to white racial backlash and the rise of new cultural and religious issues. Trump has made this problem even worse for Democrats. He didn’t create it.
Still, many changes occurred during the 1970s and 1980s, including a decline in industrial employment, an associated decline in union membership, and a surge in immigration.Recently, the Supreme Court Dobbs This decision undermined abortion rights and, of course, the rise of Trump himself.
For Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, the last two fundamentally changed the political terrain. She argued that Trump’s sheer “vulgarity” is driving many college-educated voters away from the Republican Party and stealing votes from women overall. The Republican Party’s troubles with abortion and recent threats to in vitro fertilization have upended previous calculations that viewed social issues as primarily Democratic issues.
If immigration and crime remain Republican centerpieces, they will have less of an impact than Republicans had hoped after 2022, as Democrats regularly give more weight to abortion rights. “Women are in a completely different position,” Greenberg said, adding: Dobbs Working-class partisanship is in turmoil as young, secular voters turn away from the Republican Party.
Conversely, Republican pollster Whit Ayers said in an interview that Trump encapsulated all the resentment felt by voters experiencing both economic decline and cultural alienation.
“At a time when many jobs, especially blue-collar jobs, have gone overseas and the opioid crisis has destroyed many families, his message is anti-expertise, anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual, anti-media, anti-establishment. “It’s a thing,” Ayers said. “There’s an audience that understands that message.”
Its audience is particularly large outside metropolitan areas, so what is often cited as a class difference may actually be a difference in location. It’s dramatically explained in a new book, White Rural Rage, by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman. Political scientist Daniel Schlozman, co-author with Sam Rosenfeld of the upcoming book “The Hollow Parties,” said in an interview that one of the most important factors in polarization is America’s urban/suburban and small town/rural America. Given the structure of the Senate and the Electoral College, Republicans will have significant influence over elections and government.
One clear example is West Virginia. In 1980, it was one of only six states (and the District of Columbia) to support Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan. Currently, West Virginia is one of the most Republican states in the Union. Another piece of evidence is that in 2004, North Dakota and South Dakota had four Democratic senators. Now they’re all Republicans.
This only emphasizes the irony of Bidenism. The Brookings study reveals that the biggest beneficiaries of Biden’s investments are not in staunch Democratic metropolitan areas, but in small “micropolitan areas.” Brookings said such locations “account for about 25% of the nation’s job-strapped population, but 50% of all strategic sector investments going to needy counties starting in 2021.” %.
Mark Muro, one of the report’s authors, argues that spreading investment into abandoned areas creates a “healthier economy”, but the full impact is not yet being felt. As a result, he said it may be “too early” for Biden to take political credit.
Mr. Biden’s best hope is to sell enough of these investments to close the gap with Mr. Trump by a few points in sparsely populated counties in key states, and for Mr. Biden to strengthen his position on the southern border. We would like to encourage this movement. What is unlikely is that class lines will be redrawn to something like the New Deal era.
Ayers said this means Biden will likely need to rebuild an electoral coalition roughly the same as in 2020, when he won 51% of the popular vote. Trump’s approval rating remains at the 46-47% level he achieved in the last election, and there appears to be little room for growth. If Biden wins, political analysts may ask themselves why they didn’t focus more on class issues in the Republican Party.
Biden and his party cannot give up on winning over working-class voters for practical and principled reasons. The president has made clear he intends to continue bending policy decisions in their direction, saying doing so is the only way to heal the nation’s deep rifts in the long term.
But in the short term, his winning strategy may have a large appeal among wealthy voters who may not be able to match Scranton Joe and his blue-collar loyalty but are fearful of the alternative. You’ll need to make a difference. The money funneled to struggling red counties is likely not as significant as the size of Mr. Greenberg’s anti-vulgarity coalition.