Now, though, it’s clear that this formula is no longer sustainable for the party, whose shedding of the working-class vote has become a significant impediment to electoral success. According to the early demographic data from the AP VoteCast survey, voters without a college degree shifted six points more Rightward from 2020, backing Trump by 11 — the largest such advantage for any Republican nominee since at least 1996. Moreover, the gap between this group and their college-educated peers, who backed Harris by 16 points, is the widest on record at 27 points, a sign of how polarised America is becoming along education lines.

Perhaps even more startling, the Democrats lost voters who earn less than $50,000 annually for the first time on record. Since 1988, when the exit polls began asking voters about their income, Democrats have won the working class every time, even in elections they lost. From 1992 to 2020, the party carried these voters by double digits. This year? Harris lost them by one point.

The party also continued its slide with union households, long a core Democratic constituency. Exit polls show Harris won them by roughly 11 points, behind only Hillary Clinton for a Democrat since 1988. In the crucial Midwestern “Blue Wall” states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, she merely matched Joe Biden’s margin with these voters; in Wisconsin, she only narrowly won them — a substantial underperformance compared to Biden.

What’s more, these losses cut across racial lines. Black and Hispanic working-class voters and union voters also voted for Trump at higher rates this time than they did in 2020. So, unlike in the past when many on the Left tried chalking up his wins to a scourge of racism, Trump’s convincing win this time across demographic and geographic lines means fewer people are likely to sympathise with that conclusion.

Some Democrats may protest, saying that Harris made direct overtures to the working class. The party’s convention over the summer included a prominent role for organised labour, and she pledged to take on the crucial issue of inflation by going after corporations for “price-gouging”, as well as expanding the housing supply to lower the cost of buying a home. She said she would raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations while lowering them for the working and middle classes. All of these were popular ideas.

However, Harris and the Democrats missed some key details. First, they underestimated just how much higher prices for things such as groceries, gas, and housing had taken a toll on the public. It didn’t matter that the country’s economic fundamentals are strong or that unemployment is low or that wage growth is now outpacing inflation. People still saw the higher sticker prices when they went to buy food and were angry that these had not come back down in years.

The other thing the Democrats missed is that policy could only take them so far. Biden had a productive presidency legislatively, but his approval rating continued ticking downward, as did the party’s. The elephant in the room that Democrats must confront is their culture. On an array of issues — immigration, climate, sex and gender, race — they remain out of step with the broader public. And at a time when American politics increasingly revolves around cultural issues, being on the wrong side of that equation is a surefire way to lose elections.

We will learn more about these results in the weeks ahead, but the Democrats are evidently now at a crossroads. They have built their modern coalition around the college-educated professional class that overwhelmingly holds progressive cultural attitudes, and it turns out that this strategy may be actively hurting their electoral viability. As they begin picking up the pieces from this defeat, the time for a Democratic reckoning has come.

---

Michael Baharaeen is chief political analyst at The Liberal Patriot substack.

mbaharaeen

---