Will Democrats “Get in Touch” with Working-Class America?
A new post-election survey shows the shoddy condition of the Democratic brand—and future opportunities should the party return to its working-class roots.
Continuing TLP’s examination of 2024 data, the erosion of working-class support for Democrats across multiple issue and image fronts is impossible to ignore.
For example, in a comprehensive post-election survey of 4800 working-class voters conducted by PPI and YouGov (including oversamples in the battleground states of AZ, GA, MI, WI, and PA), Republicans outperformed Democrats across every indicator of party leadership and values. As seen in the charts below, pluralities or majorities of working-class voters overall viewed Democrats as “incompetent,” “out of touch,” “not on my side,” “weak,” and “untrustworthy.” In contrast, 50 to 63 percent of working-class Americans viewed Republicans in this election as “competent,” “in touch,” “on my side,” “patriotic,” “strong,” and “trustworthy.”
Compounding difficulties for Democrats, the PPI/YouGov survey found that nearly seven in ten working-class voters believe Democrats have “moved too far to the left” compared to less than half of these voters believing Republicans have “moved too far to the right.” Notably, this includes double digit advantages for the GOP on perceived party extremism across all five battleground states “despite these states having plenty of moderate leadership,” as the report authors write.
If Democrats want to be honest with themselves, they will admit that their party is no longer the historic voice for blue-collar, working-class Americans. The Democrats’ national party brand is sadly a pathetic shell of its former self.
Additional findings from the survey highlight just how far Democrats have fallen with this critical voting bloc. As seen in the table below, working-class Americans favored Republicans over Democrats on every contested issue in the 2024 campaign. The GOP margin over Democrats in terms of party trust on the issues ranged from +2 on healthcare to +28 on immigration. Working-class independents trusted the GOP by even greater margins than working-class voters overall across all the issues with advantages ranging from +14 to +38.
On the brighter side, although working-class Hispanics trusted the GOP more on the key issue of immigration (R +8), Democrats did score better with Hispanic working-class voters along some important economic populist dimensions including fighting for working people (D +17), promoting the interests of ordinary people (D +20), housing affordability (D +9), and healthcare (D +24).
Similarly, a majority of working-class voters overall, 55 percent, expressed some worry about Trump in this survey compared to 45 percent who don’t worry at all about him. Concerns that Trump “will prioritize the interests of the wealthy over ordinary Americans” emerged at the top the list of potential worries. Given Trump’s stated priority of enacting massive tax cuts for corporations and high income earners as part of his new agenda, the favoring of the wealthy over others could emerge as a potential weakness for Trump with his new working-class coalition.
However, as mentioned last week, traditional populist bashing of the rich won’t be enough for Democrats to gain back the support of working-class voters. Democrats will need to do far more in opposition to develop an updated and affirmative economic agenda that addresses the needs of workers and their families if they want any hope of winning them back.
Looking at some of the possible components of a Democratic working-class agenda, the PPI/YouGov survey found a whopping 80 percent of working-class voters backing the Biden administration’s new rules to support worker strikes and union ratification along with 70 percent who support the administration’s national investments in domestic energy production. Eight in ten working-class Americans also like Democratic proposals for more alternatives to college and affordable ways to increase workplace skills. On the cautionary side, working-class voters overall do not want a blowout of new government spending that fuels more inflation while large shares of working-class voters—including 83 percent of white, 75 percent of black, and 64 percent of Hispanic working-class voters—also desire federal deficit reduction.
Should Democrats successfully update their brand, policy agenda, and leaders to better reflect the modern sensibilities of working-class Americans—meaning they transform themselves into a party that is actually “pro-worker, pro-family, pro-America” rather than one that is elitist and culturally left—they have a fighting chance to claw back some ground with workers across racial lines in a still sharply divided American political landscape.
But this will take some honest reckoning with the depths of working-class alienation from Democrats, and a willingness to try new policy and political approaches to help re-establish the party as a true representative of working-class values and economic interests.
Great data! (My wife and I love data....not as much as we love each other, but that's another story)
The barrier for the Democratic Party ever being attractive to working class voters is that too many of them (within the "progressive" wing) simply don't like them as people.
Read articles in NYT and WaPo, and read comments to those articles. Our "favorite" put-down word used to describe them is "low-information." Not only do "progressives" look down on them, but they simply don't hang out with them. They don't belong to the Lion's club with them, go to the same bars, belong to the same churches, hunt with them, drive OHVs with them, etc.
We live in a blue collar area, and our families have a rich blue collar tradition, including some of our children, and including one of us having a career in law enforcement (my wife, actually, and I'll spare you pages of my bragging on her like I do by stopping total strangers on the street). We had been voters for Democrats for 50 years, but switched this year largely because we don't want to live in this type of "progressive" country.
We voted for Trump (holding our noses) to be "with" our families, friends, and neighbors.
When "progressives" get the boot from our beloved Democratic Party, and it stops being so elitist, we'll be back.
But we're not holding our breath.
Dems can discuss worker's rights and unionization, until they are Blue in the face, but it seems unlikely, that is their road to redemption. Only 6% of the US private workforce is unionized. Moreover, Biden's "national investments in domestic energy production", refers to Green energy policy, that mainly benefits the wealthy, while driving up the cost of energy, for everyone else.
Dems lost Texas border districts, that have not voted Red in a century, mostly due to insane border polices, but the Dem war on fossil fuels, did not help. US Border residents, have limited job prospects out of high school, if they wished to continue residing, in the area. The Oil Patch, is an exception. Straight out of high school, 18 year olds, earn $80K a year. Moreover, they often enjoy the work hard, play hard schedule, that allows them to return home for long breaks. Everyone employed in the oil industry knows, oil production is at record levels, despite Dem policy, not because of it.
Dem Party powerful, still fail to grasp, the importance of inflation, immigration and crime, in the election. Mere weeks after Biden's loss, Blue Governors and Mayors were lecturing the entire US, they would impede any deportations, with their last breaths.
Violent migrant crime is now a nationwide, near daily, occurrence. Yet, these Mensa members never once, stated they would support the removal of violent criminals and gang members from their locals, while protecting, otherwise law abiding, long time, undocumented residents.
Refusing to support, the removal of violent migrant criminals, is tone deafness on a level, rarely seen in politics, prior to the last 4 years. In the past few days, a few have wisely decided, defending foreign murderers, rapists, muggers, thieves and their ilk, may no be the political hill, on which, they wish to die.
Vague family and worker friendly policies, undoubtedly poll well, but if Dems are serious about reclaiming Blue Collar workers, they must prioritize them, not 10 million new arrivals and Green schemes, that enrich the already wealthy. That begins with a sincere apology, and an actual, genuine, attempt to undo the harm, the past 4 years have caused Blue Collar workers, not defending, the indefensible.