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There’s an active debate in Democratic politics between progressives and moderates about how to build a winning coalition.
A new report from a pair of California researchers, shared exclusively with NPR, argues that debate misses the point. The answer isn’t centrism, they write, it’s respect for where working-class voters are coming from.
“It’s about understanding that people need a sense of personal and economic security before they will support the changes progressives are calling for,” the authors write.
The report’s authors are, to put a label on it, college-educated coastal elites. Joan C. Williams is a law professor from San Francisco who is known for her work in diversity, equity and inclusion. Jared Abbott leads the Center for Working Class Politics and has a Ph.D. from Harvard. Their intended audience is people who share their progressive politics.
Their message is that the Democratic Party would be making a huge mistake if it keeps catering to social justice warriors and fails to understand, respect and appeal to working-class voters. “The path heavily favors the party that wins working-class voters,” the report explains.
“I am tired of losing,” Williams said in an interview. “I want to build a sustained progressive coalition capable of delivering on progressive goals. And that’s not what we have now, and that’s not what we’ve had for decades.”
Titled “The Left’s Coalition Crisis: Understanding the Massive Divide Between Working Class and College Educated Voters, and How to Bridge It,” the report argues that Democrats have lost support from working-class voters of all races because the party’s base is out of touch with the priorities and values of those Americans.
“Until Democrats understand the importance of really respecting, listening to and taking seriously the values of self-reliance, the values of patriotism and tradition and personal security,” Abbott said, “they’re going to have a major messaging and a major electoral problem.”
Abbott and Williams define the working class as people without a four-year college degree, earning from $40,000 to $100,000 a year — the middle 50% of American incomes.
“If progressives want to build working-class support, they need to connect with people whose top priorities are paychecks, prices and personal safety,” the report states.
The authors offer a two-part prescription to “develop the cultural competence to bridge the diploma divide.”
“First, consistently embrace a populism that decries a rigged economy where hard work fails to yield a stable middle class life,” it states.
Then, “rigorously avoid reinforcing right populism’s narrative that liberal college grads look down on Americans without college degrees.”
The report relies on the results from the Class Gaps Poll, a survey of more than 5,000 Americans conducted earlier this year.
It finds there’s a disconnect between the priorities of college-educated liberals and those of working-class voters on issues like LGBTQ+ rights, abortion access, climate change, immigration and income redistribution.
The greatest divide is on the issue of “resisting authoritarianism.”
“Resisting authoritarianism is the second-highest priority for liberal college grads, but for workers, it’s like 19 out of 20,” said Williams.
Defending democracy was a major theme of Vice President Kamala Harris’ losing presidential campaign in 2024. She delivered her closing argument from the White House Ellipse, recounting President Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
Another major theme of her campaign was defending abortion access. Those are two issues, according to the report, “that liberal college grads prioritize but most working-class Americans don’t.”
The lesson, they argue, isn’t that working-class voters are unreachable. It’s that you can’t reach them if you’re not focused on the issues they care about the most.
“If we really care about stopping authoritarianism, if we really care about defending democracy, we have to stop talking about defending democracy in the way that we’ve been doing for the last too many years,” Abbott said.
So, what should Democrats be talking about? The economy, and not just in abstract terms like “affordability,” because wages are as important as costs, the researchers find.
“Ten out of 12 workers’ top priorities are economics, so if you want them to vote for you, talk about economics,” Williams said.
Abbott said Democratic candidates this midterm election year have done a relatively good job of keeping that economic focus. But how they talk about economic issues matters too.
The researchers took issues that weren’t top priorities for working-class voters and poll-tested new messages framed around working-class values. That shift in messaging was able to move opinion.
“If you care passionately about climate change, and I do, the answer is to tie it to something working-class folks do care about,” Williams said.
When they framed climate initiatives around creating jobs, addressing rising energy costs, reducing pollution and countering China, they got much more support from working-class voters than asking if they support “major investments in energy efficiency and cleaner power to reduce pollution and address the climate crisis even if this raises the cost of energy a little.”
But, the paper warns, working-class reframing only works if it comes from a genuine place of trying to reach across the class divide, or it risks being seen as elites trying to manipulate non-elites.
Notably, Abbott says, reframing most issues didn’t drive down support from college-educated liberals.
“In general, we found that there are no clear systematic tradeoffs, that what’s better messaging for the working class is typically better messaging for all voters,” Abbott said.
