Rich Voter, Poor Voter, Red Voter, Blue Voter

Social Class and Voting Behavior in Contemporary America

Charles Prysby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000063578
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Democracia

This book examines the changing relationship between social class and voting behavior in contemporary America. At the end of the 20th century, working-class white voters were significantly more Democratic than their middle-class counterparts, as they had been since the 1930s. By the second decade of the 21st century, that long-standing relationship had reversed: Republicans now do better among working-class whites. While Trump accentuated this trend, the change began before 2016, something that has not been fully appreciated or understood.

Charles Prysby analyzes this development in American politics in a way that is understandable to a wide audience, not just scholars in this field. Drawing on a wealth of survey data, this study describes and explains the underlying causes of the change that has taken place over the past two decades, identifying how social class is directly related to partisan choice. Attitudes on race and immigration, on social and moral issues, and on economic and social welfare policies are all part of the explanation of this 21st century development in American political trends.

Rich Voter, Poor Voter, Red Voter, Blue Voter: Social Class and Voting Behavior in Contemporary America is essential reading for scholars, students, and all others with an interest in American elections and voting behavior.

1

A Changing Class Alignment?

Democrats are the party of the working man. At least that has been the popular image of the party, one that was forged in the 1930s New Deal realignment and that continued for decades afterwards. But this image may no longer be accurate. The 2016 presidential election seemed to indicate that the white working class now prefers the Republican Party. News coverage of the election emphasized Donald Trump’s appeal to white working-class voters. According to numerous media accounts, many working-class whites, especially those in areas where good blue-collar jobs have been disappearing, found Trump’s campaign message appealing. The Democratic Party found itself doing better among white middle-class voters than among white working-class voters, a reversal of a long-standing pattern. This might be viewed as the result of a unique appeal of Trump, who certainly was an unusual Republican candidate. However, this study finds that the appeal of the Republican Party to the white working class did not begin with Trump. He only accentuated a trend that actually began earlier this century, a development that was not clearly recognized or properly analyzed in earlier election years. To better understand these developments in American politics, we can first look at accounts of Trump’s appeal in 2016, then examine what political analysts were observing about social class and voting prior to 2016.

Donald Trump’s Appeal in 2016

The 2016 presidential election was unusual from start to finish. Both candidates were judged very unfavorably by the electorate. The eventual winner was a wealthy businessman and celebrity who had no experience in government and who was thought to be unqualified by many within his own party. The loser had a lengthy and distinguished political resume and was widely endorsed by leaders in her party. The campaign was extremely negative, with each candidate relentlessly attacking the other’s character. Trump claimed that Clinton was a crooked liar whom he would put in jail if he were elected. Clinton argued that Trump was a racist misogynist who was clearly unfit to be president. Trump prevailed even though his campaign was marked by a series of outrageous comments that provoked widespread criticism. Clinton lost even though she clearly won all three presidential debates, at least in the eyes of the voters. Pundits and political scientists predicted a Democratic victory throughout the fall, and while Trump did lose the popular vote by slightly over two percentage points, he won the electoral college vote by narrowly winning some key Midwestern states. Trump was, to put it mildly, a very atypical Republican candidate, who ran a very atypical campaign, and who won in a rather atypical fashion.

The unusual nature of the Republican candidate and his campaign led to considerable discussion of the source of his appeal. A frequent theme in these interpretations was Trump’s appeal to white working-class voters, an appeal that Clinton seemed to lack. Several explanations were offered for Trump’s ability to win support from the white working class. One popular explanation was that these working-class voters liked Trump’s economic message. They were unhappy with their economic situation, believed that the economic policies pursued by the Obama administration were not helping them very much, and thought that Trump’s proposed changes in American trade policies were what the country needed.

The geography of the Republican vote in 2016 suggests that Trump had a particular appeal to a certain set of blue-collar voters. Trump did only slightly better in the overall popular vote than did Mitt Romney—Trump won about 48.9 percent of the two-party vote, while Romney won about 48.1 percent—but Trump carried Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all states that Romney failed to win. Had Trump lost any three of those states, he would have lost the election. That easily could have happened, as he won three of the four by less than one percentage point. Media accounts of Trump voters in these states emphasized a common theme: Trump had strong support among voters who lived in communities that were in economic decline, areas where good manufacturing jobs had been lost. White working-class voters in these areas were disillusioned with their economic prospects, and many felt that bad trade policies had contributed to their worsening economic situation. These voters were described as feeling left behind and upset that the government did not care about their economic situation.

Reports of interviews with blue-collar workers illustrate these feelings. For example, Thomas Edsall (2016) talked with voters in one small city in Pennsylvania, Pottstown, and he found that voters were concerned over the loss of well-paying blue-collar jobs. This was a community where many people had been employed in manufacturing, but it now was an area where few of those jobs still existed. The presence of shuttered factories no doubt was a constant reminder to these people that the economic prospects had declined for workers who lacked a college education. Especially unhappy were men who liked to work with their hands and who at one time had been able to earn a good salary doing so. The decline of the industrial base in the area greatly reduced their opportunities to find manufacturing jobs. The top two employers in Pottstown now were the school district and the medical center, which were not the types of places that laid-off steelworkers or machinists were likely to find a good job.

Tim Reid (2016) reported similar sentiments among blue-collar workers in Canton, Ohio, a medium-sized city that once had a thriving steel industry. His interviews with members of the United Steelworkers union, usually a strong source of votes for Democrats, revealed considerable support for Trump. These blue-collar workers liked his opposition to free trade, which they saw as responsible for the loss of manufacturing jobs. Reid reported that Ohio had lost about 200,000 manufacturing jobs since the 2008–2009 Great Recession, so this was an issue of great concern to blue-collar workers in the state.

Other journalists and political commentators, often relying on a broader set of data, reported similar conclusions about Trump voters. A common argument was that working-class voters were concerned about declines in their real income and pessimistic about their future (Coontz 2016; Greenberg 2017). They felt that the recovery from the Great Recession produced largely low-paying jobs and that past trade policies were responsible for the loss of good-paying jobs (Confessore 2016a; Gest 2017). Some of these voters were exasperated with the economic policies of past Democratic and Republican administrations alike; they saw Trump as someone who would reverse what they saw as the disastrous economic policies of the past.

Economic grievances may be part of the story, but numerous accounts of support for Trump among white working-class voters stressed negative attitudes toward immigrants and minorities as a key factor. Trump certainly made immigration policy a key issue in his campaign, repeatedly calling for building a wall along the Mexican border to keep people from entering the country illegally, plus adding that he would make Mexico pay for it. He also called for a ban on immigration from Muslim countries, arguing that they were a threat to the U.S. Furthermore, he frequently characterized immigrants in derogatory terms, stating, for example, that many of the Mexican immigrants were rapists and criminals. Expressions of hostility toward blacks were more subtle in Trump’s campaign, but they were nevertheless quite clear. In fact, well before he became a presidential candidate, he gained notoriety for his persistent claim that President Obama was not born in the United States. As a presidential candidate, Trump hired Steven Bannon, whose website had white nationalism as a central theme, to head his campaign. And many of Trump’s tweets criticized prominent black leaders or celebrities and characterized black communities as economic and social disasters (Leonard and Philbrick 2018).

Not surprisingly, many political commentators argued that Trump’s appeal was largely racist in nature (Confessore 2016b; McElwee 2016; Parker 2016). This explanation emphasized that many white voters felt that blacks and other minorities received preferential treatment, that high levels of immigration, particularly illegal immigration, made the nation worse off, and that the cultural identity of the country was being destroyed by the growth of racial and ethnic minorities. While these reasons applied to white Trump voters in general, working-class whites were believed to be more likely than middle-class whites to express these attitudes. Thus, while both economic dissatisfaction and racial resentment may have contributed to Trump’s appeal to the white working class, many analysts found racial attitudes to be a more potent factor.

Trump’s appeal to whites who were economically dissatisfied and/or anti-immigrant were part of a broader populist theme. He argued that the existing political elites had failed the country, particularly the large number of ordinary, working Americans, and he did not just blame Democrats. When he claimed that past trade deals and policies had cost the country millions of manufacturing jobs, he was criticizing Democrats and Republicans alike. Similarly, he argued that both parties had failed to stop the flood of illegal immigrants into the country. His theme was that the country was run by entrenched, powerful interests who cared little about the plight of ordinary Americans, that the country needed a strong leader who would represent those average citizens who were being ignored, and that he was the only one who was capable of doing that. All of this was a classic populist refrain, and according to some political analysts, it was one that was appealing to many white working-class voters.

The anti-establishment character of his campaign was fully displayed in his quest for the Republican nomination. At the start of the primary season, he had virtually no endorsements from prominent Republican leaders; indeed, many of them openly opposed Trump (Cohen et al. 2016). Nevertheless, he prevailed by winning most of the presidential primaries, starting with New Hampshire. A staple of his nomination campaign was a large rally, where he hurled inflammatory accusations, insulted his political opponents, and bragged about his accomplishments and abilities. Although controversial in their content, the rallies made good television news, so Trump received considerable free media time, much more than his Republican opponents were able to generate. His frequent tweets also generated free media coverage as well as being directly received by his many followers. Compared to his Republican opponents, Trump relied much more on these direct appeals to voters and much less on a traditional campaign organization.

The Story Before Trump

Accounts in the popular media may have particularly stressed Trump’s appeal to working-class whites in 2016, but well before 2016 a number of columnists and pundits argued that the white working class, which once was solidly Democratic, was moving toward the GOP. Among well-known national columnists, David Brooks has most frequently echoed the theme that Democrats no longer appeal to white working-class voters; he sees the Democratic Party as attempting to build a coalition of minority groups and well-off liberal whites (Brooks 2005; 2010; 2015). Declining Democratic support among white working-class voters was the theme of Thomas Frank’s (2004) best-selling book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, which argued that white working-class voters, especially those in “Middle America,” began supporting Republican candidates because of social issues. Their cultural conservatism on a variety of issues, often motivated by their religiosity, trumped their economic interests. Frank also argues that the Democratic Party failed to advance economic policies that would have benefitted these voters, a theme that he stresses in his most recent book, Listen Liberal (Frank 2016a). Arlie Hochschild’s (2016) book, Strangers in Their Own Land, reports the results of her interviews of Tea Party supporters in Louisiana, many of whom were not economically well-off; her research, which was completed before Trump was a presidential candidate, concludes that many of these individuals felt that their blue-collar way of life was no longer respected, leaving them politically and socially alienated.

Moreover, the reasons offered for Republican success with the white working class prior to 2016 are similar to those discussed above for Trump’s support among these voters. One theme was that working-class voters no longer viewed the Democratic Party as the champion of their economic interests (Frank 2016b). Trade policies that were unpopular among manufacturing workers, especially unionized ones, contributed substantially to this change in party images. So too did stagnating incomes and declining job opportunities for blue-collar workers. This does not necessarily mean that these voters began to see the Republican Party more favorably on economic issues, particularly since the Republicans also supported past trade policies that many blue-collar workers opposed, but the advantage that the Democrats once had in this area had diminished or disappeared.

Racial attitudes also were an important part of the explanation of declining Democratic support among white voters, particularly less-educated ones. Many of these voters viewed the Democratic Party as increasingly becoming the party of minority groups, and they felt that government policies all too often benefitted minority groups at the expense of whites. Hochschild (2016) used the metaphor of a long line of people patiently waiting for economic rewards that they believed they deserved. Many of the Tea Party supporters that she interviewed thought that blacks, immigrants, and other minority groups were cutting in line ahead of them. They saw the government as unfairly rewarding a variety of supposedly disadvantaged groups at the expense of ordinary, hard-working people. With Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate, it is not surprising that many scholars found racial attitudes to be important in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections (Knuckey 2011; Knuckey and Kim 2015; Lewis-Beck, Tien, and Nadeau 2010).

Social conservatism also was identified as a source of Republican support among white working-class voters prior to 2016. The rise of the Christian Right in the 1980s and the continued salience of hot-button social issues, such as abortion or gay rights, into the 21st century provided reasons for some working-class voters to vote for Republican candidates. This was particularly true for areas where whites were strongly religious, such as the South and many parts of the Midwest. For example, one married couple interviewed by Hochschild (2016) in Louisiana stated that they supported the Republican Party primarily because of their strong anti-abortion attitudes, which trumped their pro-Democratic views on other issues. The impact of these social and moral issues on voting was enhanced by the development of clear policy differences between the two parties in this area in recent decades. The Republican identification of many white Christian conservatives had become so strong by 2016 that Trump was able to obtain strong support from both leaders and voters from the Christian Right, despite the fact that his credentials as a religious conservative were thin and his campaign statements and behavior often seemed inconsistent with traditional religious values (Bailey 2016; Holland and Conlin 2016).

Republican support among white working-class voters now seems particularly strong in rural or less-urbanized areas. This can be explained in part by the fact that whites in these areas, compared to those in heavily urbanized areas, are more likely to be socially conservative, more likely to have negative attitudes towards minority groups, and more likely to see their economic prospects as dismal. But there may be an additional factor in this relationship: rural and small-town voters may feel a more general resentment toward urban areas. Katherine Cramer’s (2016) book, The Politics of Resentment, reports the results of her in-depth interviews with focus groups drawn from residents of rural areas of Wisconsin. She found that these rural citizens resented what they perceived as the tendency of urban elites to direct resources to urban areas, at the expense of those in rural areas, a perception that was prevalent even though the residents of rural areas of Wisconsin actually received more government services for their tax dollars than did those in urban areas. Furthermore, those rural voters saw urban residents as lacking a proper work ethic and good moral values.

In sum, even before Trump’s candidacy, many widely read political analysts and commentators argued that the white working class was moving away from the Democratic Party. Disillusioned by their perceived economic prospects and by what they saw as a lack of co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Preface
• 1. A Changing Class Alignment?
• 2. Conceptualizing Social Class
• 3. Class and Voting in Modern American Politics
• 4. Race, Class, and the Politics of White Identity
• 5. Cultural Issues, Class, and Voting
• 6. Economic Issues, Social Class, and Voting
• 7. Analyzing the 2012 and 2016 Presidential Elections
• 8. Conclusion: Social Class and Voting in the 21st Century
• Index