A cautionary note though on assuming people will continue to have the same political views throughout their lives:
There normally hasn’t been a generation gap in voting preference. It’s a very recent, unusual phenomenon, and thus unlikely to continue.
Exactly as I surmised. All innuendo and no delivery.
Even when the Dems emphasize the things like unemployment insurance that are of great benefit to the white working class, they also benefit minorities and the deplorables (and I truly now think that Hillary was right–they are deplorable) believe that the bulk of the benefits go to “those people”.
Is there any more room for high school educated whites to move to the right?
They will move further to the right to the extent that the GOP is successful in making them fearful–fearful, in this case, that ‘those people’ are going to Take All Their Stuff (and worse).
The Dems can’t stop the GOP from using that tactic. The tactic can be countered only by the offering of a very explicit plan to create good-paying jobs—a detailed plan to institute training and private-partnership programs: apprenticeships in manufacturing and repair industries, coding schools, health-industry training and licensure path on-the-job positions, infrastructure-rebuilding projects–and more.
Make it clear that the “give the rich more and that will help the economy” GOP message has never actually worked in the real world. Make it clear that it’s a con game. Make it clear that the economy grows best when all citizens who want productive, lucrative work can find it—that the multiplier effect works when you have ten thousand people with a spare $100 to spend, but not when you have one GOP donor who gets a $1,000,000 windfall from his pet politician. That GOP donor is unlikely to spend his million in the US…so tacky! Europe and Dubai and St Barts are the cool places to spend!
Fear can be countered with the security that comes from a strong economy. Widening the income gap—giving more to the rich—has never, and will never, produced a strong economy.
If the high-school educated whites have less to fear, then they’ll stop moving to the right.
The technical numbers are 71-23 for WWC men, 61-34 for WWC women. WWC just means white w/o a college degree. Overall, 66-29 for the WWC for Trump.
For men, a 71% margin is huge. That is about the margin that LGBT give the democrats, about 3-1. For women, even at 61%, that is about the same margin that latinos give the democrats.
Whites w/o a college degree are voting like a minority group. I don’t know if there is room for the WWC to vote 80-20 for the GOP. That is approaching the margins that blacks give the democrats.
I agree the WWC is motivated by fear of outsiders and cultural displacement, but I don’t know if the dems can realistically promise an economic recovery for them. Even if they could, would it matter? The WWC was motivated by cultural issues more than economic ones.
Just 20 years ago the WWC were fairly evenly split between the two parties. Now they are voting 2:1 for the GOP.
I disagree. The WWC is primarily driven by economic insecurity. The Democrats offerings to them, to the extent there are any, are things like Universal Healthcare and cheaper college. But that’s not what the WWC wants. They want good jobs to afford those things.
In re cultural issues versus economic issues: recall that great leaps forward in tolerance/inclusion/progressive change occur when the US economy is doing well.
In the booming 1960s it suddenly became thinkable that blacks could be given civil rights; in the booming 1990s it suddenly became thinkable that gay people could serve in the military (even if they had to refrain from talking about it) and that women could move forward into starring roles in our entertainment–that was the age of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ‘girl-power’ Spice Girls and Xena: Warrior Princess.
Relative economic security and a culture in which cues for prosperity are abundant, seem to open up mental space for letting ‘the Other’ step forward out of the background.
If we had a booming economy, the whites-without-college might start to feel less imperative to hold onto that ‘fear the Other’ viewpoint. The GOP would have to find a new message.
I disagree. Economic hardship pushed the WWC in both directions, but fear of cultural displacement and invasion of minorities was a far bigger role.
Agreed.
With the slight quibble that your “booming economy” really should read “economy with visibly growing prosperity for WWCs”.
The US economy is booming right now. But only for the top couple percent. Which isn’t improving the WWC’s prospects or attitudes even a smidgen.
We and they need shared prosperity. Which they’ll never see if they let the Rs keep operating the levers of power.
Predicting demographic change and voting patterns is a mugs game imo. I am like a broken record on this point, but it’s my opinion that the US has about 2 Presidential elections in which it’s possible to even partially predict any sort of demographic/voting pattern. Once the baby boombers retire in their droves almost every prediction in voting patterns will be off the table.
The real story of the election was this.
1 ) Too many jobs have been outsourced and more will go away once computers and Articifcal intelligence increase. It has to stop. Trump is right here. The middle-class type jobs that were not on government checks liked Trump
2 ) Obama was not good for race relations. He took sides in 3 high profile cases, went against the police when they were in the right, and failed to criticize the angry mob like movements of the left. He shot first and aimed later, missing badly on the facts, and claimed racism when the law found there was none. This didn’t do him any favors with White Americans.
3 ) If you truly want equal rights, judging on merits must be primary. Yet we have too many forced quotas. This is a problem. The group most affected was the white middle class losing their spots to others based on ethnicity, or lower testing scores in the work place / higher education schools.
4 ) The economy as bad with the lowest labor rate ( % of the population working in years, record debt, and no GDP quarter over 2.6%…the first time in a while a president has failed to pass this mark.
This perfect storm allowed Trump to seize the moment and pull off an upset, but in reality, it wasn’t an upset in the term, the people themselves have had enough.
To correct a loss, Democrats must admit why they lost, critique their own base ( Something they almost never do ) and get back on message.
Yes, the Rs are fully committed to increasing income/wealth inequality—currently worse in the USA than in Russia or Iran:
Wealth Inequality: U.S. Wealth Gap Is Worse Than In Russia or Iran | Fortune
Both parties are beholden to the 1% for the donations that make political campaigns winnable. But at least the Democrats are willing to discuss alternatives to a pharaonic economy.
Voting patterns may be entirely irrelevant going forward: The Russians have not ceased trying to hack voting machines and state databases, and the Trump regime is not willing to admit it’s happening. So it’s going to continue.
Here are the exit polls from the 2017 Virginia governor’s race.
Whites w/o a college degree supported the GOP candidate 72-26. Supposedly in the 2016 presidential they supported Trump 71-24.
When I first saw those numbers I was surprised, but I was comparing them to national exit polls from 2016 which showed Trump winning high school educated whites by a 37 point margin. However in Virginia, the GOP margin didn’t really change much, it was 47 points in 2016 and 46 points in 2017.
However, high school educated whites made up a relatively small % of the electorate. Only 26% of voters, with 41% of voters being college educated whites and 33% minorities.
I know the trendline the last few decades is fewer and fewer voters are high school educated whites, with more and more being college educated whites and minorities.
Also, of interest, in the exit polls there is no difference in outcome for college educated minorities vs. high school educated minorities. That needs to be researched, because education only affects voting outcome if you are white. Which again, seems to imply there are cultural (not economic) reasons behind the voting behavior. College educated and high school educated blacks and latinos voted the same, all giving +61 to the democrat. There was a massive difference between college educated whites (+3 for the democrat) vs high school educated whites (+46 for the republican).
I guess it is good, Virginia showed that even if the democrats lose the high school educated white vote by a massive margin they can still win assuming that group makes up a small % compared to minorities and college educated whites.
But I don’t know if the democrats can count on that in 2020. The % of voters who were whites w/o a college degree was 34% in 2016. It’ll probably be closer to 30-32% in 2020 if trendlines hold up. But they didn’t really shift their voting allegiance from 2016 to 2017, so they may not shift when 2020 comes up. So when 2020 comes up, high school educated whits may make up 1/3 of the electorate and give the GOP a 40 point margin again.
Which means even though high school educated whites didn’t really move to the right (in Virginia), they didn’t really move left either. The fact that they made up a smaller % of the overall electorate allowed the democrats to win. However that may not be the case in 2020 when high school educated whites will make up 30-32% of voters as opposed to the 26% they made up in Virginia in 2017.
I wonder if the democrats can flip a small % of high school educated whites in 2020 without losing their values. If high school educated whites are motivated by social issues, how can the democrats appeal to maybe 5-10% of them without giving up our values at the same time? Can we hope economic appeals will overpower the social issues of some of them?
Does the “losing their values”/“giving up our values” bit have to be all or nothing?
Like, could the Dems throw up their hands on – for example – guns, while still tirelessly plugging away for illegals and the rest? Could they say “yeah, we remain 100% opposed to Trump on a Muslim ban; rest assured, we still care just as much about that as we do gay marriage and affirmative action and et cetera; but we actually agree with the GOP when it comes to guns – so, are we cool?”
I’d be delighted if they could / would.
There are certain issues I don’t think the dems will compromise on. Minority rights, and women’s rights mostly.
So if the white working class has left the dems due to this, I don’t know what to do about it. The dems aren’t going to express hostility towards blacks, Latinos, immigrants, Muslims, gays and women just to win over a tiny sliver of high school educated whites.
Gun control is tricky. People are very passionate on both sides. I don’t know if the dems can give it up without alienating some of their own. How important is gun control to democrats on average?
Guns seem to be more of an issue that abortion, gay rights, or the boarder.
I don’t get it, but it always seems to come down to guns.
A question for the OP ref his title vs post #33.
Is the question whether low SES whites can vote for the Rs in greater number or is it whether low SES whites can become more extreme in their beliefs?
Which is really to say are you asking whether the leftish fringe of low SES whites is shrinking or whether the rightish fringe is either growing,becoming more extremist, or both?
IMO those are two very different groups of people being driven by very different cultural and economic forces. Their different problems have different solutions.
My take (unsurprisingly) on how the Ds might win back the low SES whites is to make a full on push for widespread unionization. They flocked to Trump for many things, but his noises about somehow bringing back high paying secure jobs were the most attractive and semi-principled things he ever said.
As long as the Ds can be painted as the lackeys of Wall Street they have a massive credibility challenge. Many of the low SES people recognize that healthy big corps are necessary. And they implicitly understand that a healthy GM is not the same as a healthy JPMorgan.
How much of the belief that the Ds are Wall Street lackeys is pure R propaganda and how much has basis in believable fact is an open question.
It may take a generation or two and perhaps a mini-revolution to get back to an era when both parties and their boosters are just spinning different POVs on the same truth rather than simply inventing and propagating totally false shit from whole cloth.
In certain left-leaning circles it’s very important. For example, when Hollywood stars aren’t busy harassing women, they seem to like to pass their time by creating short artsy videos asking for more gun control. I imagine they’d feel deeply betrayed if Democrats told them to shut up about guns.
Gosh, we have to hope the R’s aren’t too busy grabbing food and medicine from children to attend to this dire emergency!