[A first-of-its-kind study from Jacobin, YouGov, and the Center
for Working-Class Politics finds that economic populism can help
progressives win more working-class voters. ]
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TRUMP’S KRYPTONITE: HOW PROGRESSIVES CAN WIN BACK THE WORKING CLASS
 
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Editors
June 13, 2023
Jacobin
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_ A first-of-its-kind study from Jacobin, YouGov, and the Center for
Working-Class Politics finds that economic populism can help
progressives win more working-class voters. _

Then-candidate John Fetterman campaigning during the midterm
elections in Pennsylvania in November 2022., Keith Srakocic/AP

 

As the recent defeat of progressive Philadelphia mayoral candidate
Helen Gym vividly demonstrated, progressives — like Democrats
broadly — continue to struggle with working-class voters.
Progressives hardly ever run outside of deep-blue districts, where
they typically depend on middle-class constituencies for victory. And,
with notable recent exceptions like John Fetterman in 2022, they often
fail to compete effectively in heavily working-class areas when they
do run.

Since 2020, however, at least some progressives have begun to
recognize the scale of the problem, dedicating more attention to
bread-and-butter economic issues they hope will resonate with
working-class voters and reengaging with the labor movement.

The Center for Working-Class Politics
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of this larger project. We aim to provide research that will help
progressives expand their appeal among working-class voters, in the
hope of achieving our shared political goals.

In November 2021, together with _Jacobin _and YouGov, the CWCP
published findings from our first original survey experiment
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designed to better understand which kinds of progressive candidates,
messages, and policies are most effective in appealing to
working-class voters.

Among other things, the survey found that voters without college
degrees are strongly attracted to candidates who focus on
bread-and-butter issues, use economic populist language, and promote a
bold progressive policy agenda. Our findings suggested that
working-class voters lost to Donald Trump could be won back by
following the model set by the populist campaigns of Bernie Sanders,
John Fetterman, Matt Cartwright, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, and others.

Yet our initial study left many questions unanswered and posed many
new ones. Which elements of economic populism are most critical for
persuading working-class voters? Would economic populist candidates
still prove effective in the face of opposition messaging and against
Republican populist challengers? How do voter preferences vary across
classes and within the working class? Can populist economic messaging
rally support from working-class voters across the partisan divide?

To address these questions, we designed a new survey
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in which we presented seven pairs of hypothetical candidates to a
representative group of 1,650 voters. We assessed a vast range of
candidate types (23,100 distinct candidate profiles in total) to
better understand which candidates perform best overall and among
different groups of voters.

Our aim was to test which elements of economic populism are most
effective in persuading working-class voters, how the effects of
economic populist messaging change in the face of opposition
messaging, and how these effects vary both across classes and within
the working class.

Overall, we find that progressives can make inroads with working-class
voters if they run campaigns that convey a credible commitment to the
interests of working people. This means running more working-class
candidates, running jobs-focused campaigns, and picking a fight with
political and economic elites on behalf of working Americans.

The key takeaways of our survey, listed briefly below and discussed in
greater detail in the full report and in this summary
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can inform future progressive campaigns.

Some of Our Key Takeaways

RUNNING ON A JOBS PLATFORM, INCLUDING A FEDERAL JOBS GUARANTEE, CAN
HELP PROGRESSIVE CANDIDATES. Virtually all voter groups prefer
candidates who run on a jobs platform. Remarkably, respondents’
positive views toward candidates running on a jobs guarantee were
consistent across Democrats, independents, and even Republicans.
Candidates who ran on a jobs guarantee were also popular with black
respondents, swing voters, low-propensity voters, respondents without
a college degree, and rural respondents. Across the thirty-six
different combinations of candidate rhetoric and policy positions we
surveyed, the single most popular combination was economic populist
rhetoric and a jobs guarantee.

POPULIST “US-VERSUS-THEM” RHETORIC APPEALS TO WORKING-CLASS
VOTERS, REGARDLESS OF PARTISAN AFFILIATION. Working-class Democrats,
independents, Republicans, women, and rural respondents all prefer
candidates who use populist language: that is, sound bites that name
economic or political elites as a major cause of the country’s
problems and call on working Americans to oppose them.

RUNNING MORE NON-ELITE, WORKING-CLASS CANDIDATES CAN HELP PROGRESSIVES
ATTRACT MORE WORKING-CLASS VOTERS. Blue- and pink-collar Democratic
candidates are more popular than professional and/or upper-class
candidates, particularly among working-class Democrats and
Republicans. Non-elite, working-class candidates are also viewed
favorably by women, Latinos, political independents, urban and rural
respondents, low-propensity voters, non-college-educated respondents,
and swing voters.

CANDIDATES WHO USE CLASS-BASED POPULIST MESSAGING ARE PARTICULARLY
POPULAR WITH THE BLUE-COLLAR WORKERS DEMOCRATS NEED TO WIN IN MANY
“PURPLE” STATES. Manual workers, a group that gave majority
support to Trump in 2020, favor economic populist candidates more
strongly than any other occupational group. Low-propensity voters also
have a clear preference for these candidates.

RIGHT-WING OPPOSITION MESSAGES DO NOT UNDERMINE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF
JOBS-FOCUSED CAMPAIGNS, ECONOMIC POPULIST LANGUAGE, OR THE APPEAL OF
NON-ELITE, WORKING-CLASS CANDIDATES. In fact, our study suggests that
candidates running on a progressive jobs policy may actually be more
effective in the face of right-wing opposition messaging.

RURAL VOTERS ACROSS THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM SUPPORT KEY ELEMENTS OF
LEFT-WING POPULISM. While rural Democrats and independents support
pink-collar candidates and rural Republicans support
small-business-owner candidates, they all share a dislike for
upper-class candidates, prefer candidates running on a progressive
jobs guarantee, and respond favorably to populist messaging.

CLASS MATTERS. WORKING-CLASS VOTERS RESPOND DIFFERENTLY TO DEMOCRATIC
CANDIDATES, MESSAGES, AND POLICIES THAN OTHER VOTERS. As defined by
occupational group, working-class respondents across the political
spectrum have a particularly strong preference for non-elite,
working-class candidates; managers and professionals do not.
Working-class respondents also find economic populist language and a
federal jobs guarantee more appealing than other messages and
policies; non-working-class respondents do not.

These class-based preferences persist within racial and ethnic groups:
black working-class respondents, for instance, enthusiastically favor
economic populist rhetoric, while black managers and professionals are
averse to it. Working-class white respondents strongly favor non-elite
candidates; their middle- and upper-class counterparts do not.

PROGRESSIVES RUNNING ON THE DEMOCRATIC BALLOT LINE SHOULD CONSIDER
DISTANCING THEMSELVES FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
ESTABLISHMENT. Regardless of class, gender, or race, we found that
respondents tend to favor Democratic candidates who call out the
Democratic Party for failing working-class Americans.

You can read the full report here
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* Democratic Party
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* elections
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* Working Class Perspectives
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