November 6, 2024 - 5:15pm
Donald Trump’s election as the 47th president of the United States has hit the Democratic Party like a freight train. He became the first president since Grover Cleveland in 1892 to win a second non-consecutive term, and he did so while winning the popular vote — and an outright majority of all votes at that. The message from America was unambiguous: voters were unhappy with the ruling party.
In the weeks and months ahead, the Democrats will have to accept that they have fundamentally misunderstood the electorate, and even their own coalition. Over the past decade, both party coalitions have been shifting, and the biggest change has been along class lines. Democrats, long the party of the working class, started attracting white-collar professionals while Republicans began shedding their image as the party of big business and picked up more support from non-college-educated voters.
Many Democrats didn’t seem fazed by this shift. In fact, some welcomed it. As the party’s leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, once said: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”
Now, though, it’s clear that this formula is no longer sustainable for the party, whose shedding of the working-class vote has become a significant impediment to electoral success. According to the early demographic data from the AP VoteCast survey, voters without a college degree shifted six points more Rightward from 2020, backing Trump by 11 — the largest such advantage for any Republican nominee since at least 1996. Moreover, the gap between this group and their college-educated peers, who backed Harris by 16 points, is the widest on record at 27 points, a sign of how polarised America is becoming along education lines.
Perhaps even more startling, the Democrats lost voters who earn less than $50,000 annually for the first time on record. Since 1988, when the exit polls began asking voters about their income, Democrats have won the working class every time, even in elections they lost. From 1992 to 2020, the party carried these voters by double digits. This year? Harris lost them by one point.
The party also continued its slide with union households, long a core Democratic constituency. Exit polls show Harris won them by roughly 11 points, behind only Hillary Clinton for a Democrat since 1988. In the crucial Midwestern “Blue Wall” states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, she merely matched Joe Biden’s margin with these voters; in Wisconsin, she only narrowly won them — a substantial underperformance compared to Biden.
What’s more, these losses cut across racial lines. Black and Hispanic working-class voters and union voters also voted for Trump at higher rates this time than they did in 2020. So, unlike in the past when many on the Left tried chalking up his wins to a scourge of racism, Trump’s convincing win this time across demographic and geographic lines means fewer people are likely to sympathise with that conclusion.
Some Democrats may protest, saying that Harris made direct overtures to the working class. The party’s convention over the summer included a prominent role for organised labour, and she pledged to take on the crucial issue of inflation by going after corporations for “price-gouging”, as well as expanding the housing supply to lower the cost of buying a home. She said she would raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations while lowering them for the working and middle classes. All of these were popular ideas.
However, Harris and the Democrats missed some key details. First, they underestimated just how much higher prices for things such as groceries, gas, and housing had taken a toll on the public. It didn’t matter that the country’s economic fundamentals are strong or that unemployment is low or that wage growth is now outpacing inflation. People still saw the higher sticker prices when they went to buy food and were angry that these had not come back down in years.
The other thing the Democrats missed is that policy could only take them so far. Biden had a productive presidency legislatively, but his approval rating continued ticking downward, as did the party’s. The elephant in the room that Democrats must confront is their culture. On an array of issues — immigration, climate, sex and gender, race — they remain out of step with the broader public. And at a time when American politics increasingly revolves around cultural issues, being on the wrong side of that equation is a surefire way to lose elections.
We will learn more about these results in the weeks ahead, but the Democrats are evidently now at a crossroads. They have built their modern coalition around the college-educated professional class that overwhelmingly holds progressive cultural attitudes, and it turns out that this strategy may be actively hurting their electoral viability. As they begin picking up the pieces from this defeat, the time for a Democratic reckoning has come.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThe Dems think they’re “on the right side of history”.
But…
… shows us that there’s still life in the old democracy dog yet.
That’s my takeaway from the result, and very welcome it is too. The Dems told us that democracy was on the line in this election. They were right about that, at least. It won.
If only those “low information” deplorables had read the works of Gramsci, Marcuse, Derrida, Foucault and especially Kimbelé Crenshaw the Democrats would have won easily.
You forgot to add “and treated them seriously”
Nice 🙂
Why would any working person or inner city dweller vote for open borders policies that will make the rich richer by making them poorer? Or for defunding the police and crime policies that drive retailers and other small businesses out of the cities? It makes no sense at all.
The largest Democrat donor in 2020 was George Soros. I suspect the strings attached to his support are also the biggest reason for their defeat in 2024.
Political parties gradually turn into the inverse of themselves. The Republicans are turning towards the working people, and the Democrats towards the elite. It will probably take another few decades for the drift to reverse.
Interestingly Labour is now the party of the middle classes and the Conservatives, if they don’t change, may well be replaced by Reform backing the working classes.
The Labour party is now, and quite nakedly, solely representing public sector workers. That’s about it, okay a few other debts to union money received.
You could include illegal immigrants and freed paedophiles among that number too.
They don’t even hide it now. They are for, roughly, 20% to 25% of the country. And against the rest.
I think, maybe wrong, but I think that the commenters here have a problem with terminology. We are not talking about the working class, but about people who have skin in the game.
It goes to show that you cannot b.s people that things are getting better when their life tells them it is getting worse! Educated, well paid folk are more insulated to tolerate the lies for longer by their benefitting from the stock market lie.
Not if JD Vance is genuine heir to Trump. In that event the New Conservatism will be cemented.
The electorate: drop identity politics and protect the border.
Democrats: we won’t do that, we take our instruction from NGOs.
Electorate: OK, we’ll vote for Trump.
Democrats: Fascists, democracy is in peril!
Neither the Democrats or the Republicans represent the economic interests of the increasing number of ‘left behinds’ and large tracts of middle America This is not some new phenomena, although it has been accelerated by changes in campaign financing legal judgments in last 2 decades.
Trump won because he channelled their anger and used anti-woke too where his instincts told him it added to his constituent. This is his genius. But he won’t address their fundamental disadvantage and has never had any intention of doing so. The wealthiest ever POTUS supported by Billionaires and secretive funding is not about change the rules of the game. In fact what’s now more likely to happen is the ‘left behinds’ will see the trend accelerate, maybe slightly sedated by lower fuel costs whilst their health care and other protections diminish. The ‘theft’ will not abate. Scapegoats will be used and for a while work, but in time the veil is pulled back and folks will know they’ve been conned.
This is not to defend Harris and the Democrats. They are to blame too. Americans have not fully appreciated how their politics are controlled and manipulated by the extremes of wealth yet they can sense it. The next stage in protecting privilege and advantage will be to try and weaken pluralism and elements of the Constitution. 230 years on the protections argued over and developed by the Founding Fathers will suffer attacks via Executive order but remain in place as designed specifically for such scenario.
I have some sympathy with your “wealthy backers” comments, but would be interested in a short list of which “constitutional elements” you expect to be challenged – and in what way.
As examples – Executive order to end ‘birth-right’ citizenship – look up the 14th amendment. Executive orders on impoundment overriding Congress. He may need this less if he wins the House too, but his majorities are slim and thus he’ll deploy EOs to determine Govt spending.
Much talk of a challenge to 22nd Amendment, but that won’t change and besides his cognitive decline will become more evident over next couple of years that support for a revision would reduce even more. (In fact the 25th amendment may become a bigger talking point).
The biggest push may be against the 1st amendment and an attempt to narrow it’s interpretation to hit Trump critical media by packing Courts even more with lifelong Republican/conservative judges. Ironic given Elon’s supposed defence of free speech but one can see it coming. The Trump critical media are the enemy within in his view.
As regards the sort of custom and practice Constitutional elements, not actually enshrined in the formal Constitution, he’ll walk all over those as much out of ignorance. Self pardoning being but one example.
Nonetheless the Constitution has safeguards Trump can’t and won’t be able to change. 4 years is not long – Starmer will still have 6months to go after Trump left White House for last time. His energy and drive will dissipate after an initial surge. The Golf course will beckon.
Thanks – it’s good to have a list we can review later on.
“College educated”.
We hear this all the time of course, but educated in what exactly? Gender Studies? Media Studies? Political Science Studies? Aroma Therapy Studies? A hundred others.
Little wonder that around fifty per cent of young people with a College degree end up with a job which did not require one. The money was wasted. As it is here in the UK, University campuses are now places where conformity is all. Hardly surprising that such people are shocked when their sacred views are repudiated. They never hear a dissenting voice and are not prepared for the real world.
Much the same in the UK. Universities used to be cauldrons of differing opinions, views and political persuasions. Now you toe the line, keep your head down. How dispiriting. What a waste of a once only experience.
It used to be said a gentleman knew Latin and and gentleman an scholar knew Latin and Greek. The modern day humanities graduate knows F A.
Not whilst they despise them they won’t
From where I sit in Michigan as a working-class Trump voter, there’s whiplash watching the ever-shifting gender, race, whatever grievance groups form and re-form in the Democrat party. Meanwhile, the connection between Dems and organized labor is concretely rooted in a 1960s-era perception of union members who comfortably identify with a Kennedy-style party.
They could win us back, but they need to appeal directly to us and our values which are essentially conservative in nature, and they ought to fundamentally re-assess their relationship with so-called “labor leaders” who are often not working in our interests.
The fact is that Left and Right have switched places. It happened before on slavery during the US Civil War. No doubt the system will return to normal in due course but when is up to the Democrats.