Report: The Working-Class Vote Is Not Lost

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Editors

In an extensive new study supported by Jacobin, more than 40,000 voters evaluated nearly 800,000 candidate profiles. The results show how progressives could rebuild their working-class support.

A new survey experiment from the Center for Working-Class Politics and Joan C. Williams finds that a six-part formula can lift Democrats’ working-class vote share by nearly 11 points. It also adds nearly 8 points among the party’s affluent, college-educated base. More than 40,000 respondents evaluated nearly 800,000 hypothetical candidate profiles, making the study one of the largest of its kind. The project was supported by Jacobin and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. The formula boils down to two imperatives: lead with working-class economics and connect with working-class values.

The Working-Class Win-O-Meter: Predicted Democratic Vote Shares by Group (Figure 1)

Earlier this summer, Jared Abbott of the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) and Joan C. Williams of the Equality Action Center (EAC) released “The Left’s Coalition Crisis,” a study of working-class and college-educated voters that showed how Democrats could hone their policy messaging to win back working-class voters without losing their college-educated base.

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