Thursday, June 24, 2021

The Dog That Didn't Bark in the 2020 Election: The White Working Class

My latest is up at The Liberal Patriot, where I discuss how the white working class vote failed Trump in the 2020 election.
"Trump’s not-so-secret weapon going into the 2020 election was the white working class (noncollege) vote. That weapon didn’t work or didn’t work well enough to save him. The release of Catalist and Census data, as well as other data sources, now allow us to sketch a portrait of that demographic in the 2020 election and how their voting patterns fell short of what Trump needed.
So, here are ten things we now know about white working class voters in the 2020 election (margin shift and support figures all based on the two-party vote from Catalist):
1. White working class voters did indeed shift against Trump in 2020 relative to 2016, albeit not as much as pre-election polls suggested would happen. That 3 point shift against Trump was exactly what Trump didn’t need; what he needed was a 3 point shift toward him to replicate his 2020 success. It’s a popular, if unenlightening, exercise to claim that such-and-such a demographic group “won” the election for Biden, given the small vote margins in a handful of states. I won’t do that here but it’s fair to say that the white working class vote was “the dog that didn’t bark” in 2020. Trump needed more of their support, not less, in 2020 and he just didn’t get it."
Read the rest at The Liberal Patriot. And subscribe--it's free!

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