A new report from the Center for Working Class Politics and author Joan Williams reveals a significant class divide within the Democratic party that threatens its ability to form a winning coalition. The study, titled "The Left's Coalition Crisis: Understanding the Massive Divide Between Working Class and College Educated Voters, and How to Bridge it," is described by its authors as "the most comprehensive review available to date" of class-based political attitudes.
Economic vs. Cultural Priorities
The research found that working-class respondents overwhelmingly prioritize economic issues, with 11 of their top 12 political priorities being economic concerns. The only non-economic issue in that list was lowering the crime rate. In contrast, educated upper-income respondents rated cultural and symbolic issues higher, with only six of their top 12 priorities being economic. They also favored abstract ideals over concrete material ones, prioritizing "resisting authoritarianism" above "protecting social security" and "ending racism" above "protecting Medicaid."
The largest gaps between the two groups were on culture, climate, crime, and immigration issues—exactly the areas many college-educated liberals have built their political identities around. This is problematic because Democratic party primaries are dominated by educated upper-income voters, so these cultural priorities have come to define liberalism itself.
Costly Signals
Abbott and Williams argue that signaling allegiance to such priorities is not costless. It tells working-class voters that candidates are aloof to or ignorant of their concerns, and worse, that they don't respect working people as political actors. The authors note that college graduates in Europe and the United States "are more biased against the less-educated than any other stigmatized group," including racial, religious, and sexual minorities. Blue-collar workers can sense this condescension in injunctions to "be kind" and resent what they perceive as upper-class attempts to morally re-educate them.
Even on economic issues, the priorities of the educated class are class-bound. While working-class voters focus on jobs, wages, and economic growth, educated knowledge workers are mainly concerned with high costs—a function of their relatively privileged position. College-educated workers earn 60% to 80% more than their non-college-educated counterparts, and the top 20% of income earners now drive nearly 60% of all consumer spending. For many, the defining feature of their economic lives is consuming, not producing, making them extremely sensitive to price increases.
Globalization and Place
Working-class voters are also sensitive to prices, but for different reasons. It's the devaluing of work that drives their frustrations, as work, not consumption, defines their lives. Long-term wage stagnation and the disappearance of stable jobs have made essential goods harder to afford. Globalization plays a major role here, and the data show another chasm: while some liberal appeals to "affordability" emphasize scrapping tariffs and embracing more liberal immigration rules, working-class voters are skeptical. Restrictions on trade and immigration address wage stagnation, as free-trade has devastated the working class, shuttering factories and sinking many into despair. Mass migration has also eroded wages for manual workers.
Professional-class status is portable—effective in London, New York, Paris, or Washington DC—but working-class status is not. Seniority in a job or trade is not typically transferable, so place-loyalty matters greatly to working-class people. Meanwhile, globalization has supercharged select high-income metro areas where professionals live and progressives thrive. Democrats now represent nine of the top 10 highest-income congressional districts. Educated upper-income voters, whether progressive or moderate, largely benefit from low-wage immigrant labor and cheap foreign goods, prizing their status as global citizens and cosmopolitan consumers.
A Program for Unity
Despite these tensions, Abbott and Williams found issues that could serve as a foundation for a progressive program of popular-class unity. They propose focusing on issues that win more than two-thirds support from both working-class and educated upper-middle-class respondents: allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, protecting and improving social security, spending $150bn on infrastructure, expanding Medicaid, increasing education spending, and raising the minimum wage.
The article suggests this could be improved with an even greater emphasis on working-class priorities, such as new trade rules, revitalized national industry, pro-labor immigration reform, free childbirth, national paid parental leave, affordable childcare, and expanding underfunded local police and fire departments. Putting working-class priorities first will create political tensions, but navigating them is necessary to expand the coalition. As the author notes, "maybe professional-class progressives could learn a thing or two from their working-class counterparts."
