Well, it was nice while it lasted. Beginning in 2016, Donald Trump won over large shares of working- and lower-middle-class Americans to the GOP. Eight years later, majorities of non-college voters and those earning between $30,000 and $100,000 a year voted for him, and the quintile of counties with the highest poverty rate shifted most sharply to the Right. Counties in which residents are most reliant on welfare payments were also more likely to pick Trump.

But now a re-realignment may be afoot. This week’s New York Times/Siena poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans earning less than $50,000 a year intend to vote for a Democratic nominee in the upcoming midterm election, while only about a third support a GOP nominee.

If these numbers hold once voters actually head to the polls, they could spell serious trouble for the President and his party. Already, the smart money is on Democrats easily clinching the House of Representatives. As for the Senate, these are the sorts of polling numbers that could see Abdul El-Sayed winning in Michigan or even James Talarico winning in historically deep-red Texas (notwithstanding Talarico’s now-renounced vegetarianism and belief in a non-binary deity).

Progressive strategists are already planning to reverse the so-called dealignment of working-class voters from the Left — a bond that used to be taken for granted but was disrupted by the rise of Right-wing populism. To be sure, working-class mistrust of the Democrats is deep and will not easily heal. Beginning with Bill Clinton, the party abandoned its New Deal traditions and came to serve as a vehicle for the professional classes and the progressive wing of capital: haughty, censorious, committed to corporate globalisation and exotic cultural causes.

Working-class disillusionment with Trump may not translate into durable support for the Democrats, so much as voters simply staying home. But that itself would be devastating enough for the GOP.

The reasons aren’t hard to divine. Trump won on a platform of lowering costs and avoiding foreign entanglements. Now diesel prices are hovering above $6 a gallon because of a war that predictably squeezed Middle Eastern energy supplies. Fuel prices ripple through the material economy, putting upward pressure on the cost of food, housing, transport, manufacturing, leisure, and much else besides.

This is what war opponents warned about when “Operation Epic Fury” appeared popular with self-identified “MAGA Republicans”, even as it proved unpopular with other groups from the beginning. The Trump coalition, the opponents argued, was much larger than MAGA Republicans: die-hard fans of the President who would cheer if he converted to Shi’ite Islam tomorrow.

Beyond the MAGA die-hards, the Trump coalition included lots of working-class people — including voters of colour — who only supported the President conditionally. Trump’s border crackdown and economic nationalism were popular with downscale America, as was his pushback against DEI and wokeness, which working-class people experience as HR henpecking.

But they didn’t vote for another Middle Eastern war, and they were explicitly assured that they wouldn’t get one if they pulled for Trump. The President himself had described the Iraq War as a “disaster”, and he’d repeatedly railed against the “trillions” wasted in the post-9/11 regime-change wars — funds that, he said, could’ve been spent on hospitals and roads in the homeland.

That message was echoed in the 2024 Republican platform, which included “PEACE IN EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST” among its all-caps planks. For their part, key Trump surrogates such as Stephen Miller had warned about “Kamala [Harris] leaning all in on starting many new bloody wars in the Middle East.”

Promises made, promises not kept — working-class support lost.

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Sohrab Ahmari is the US editor of UnHerd and the author, most recently, of Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What To Do About It

SohrabAhmari

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