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Is the U.S. Republican Party becoming a “multi-racial, wo= rking-class” coalition? Matt Grossmann assesses the evidence for a ma= jor political realignment in America.

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Movement and Mirage

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Is the U.S. R= epublican Party becoming a “multi-racial, working-class” coalit= ion? Matt Grossmann assesses the evidence for a major poli= tical realignment.

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Victor Fr= eitas

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Hispa= nic voters in America are “literally cascading into the Republican Pa= rty,” Donald Trump said last week, according to Fox News. Sp= eaking on a call with Turning Point USA, a group that advocates for conserv= ative values on American educational campuses, the former U.S. president al= so claimed the Republicans were “becoming the party of the worker and= the party of just about everybody, frankly.” For all his characteris= tic hyperbole, Trump was alluding to something real: As The New York Times = reports, based on the latest round of the regular survey it conducts in col= laboration with Siena College, “Republicans appear to be making new i= nroads among nonwhite and working-class voters—perhaps especially His= panic voters.” In fact, for the first time in the survey series, &ldq= uo;Democrats had a larger share of support among white college graduates th= an among nonwhite voters.” It’s an especially remarkable findin= g, given that the Democratic Party had “won more than 70 percent of n= onwhite voters while losing among white college graduates” in congres= sional elections just six years ago. The new data has reinforced an emergin= g view among political analysts at mainstream U.S. media outlets that&mdash= ;despite the traditionally common sense that the Republicans disproportiona= tely represent the white and the wealthy, while the Democrats represent the= non-white and the non-wealthy—the Republican Party is now becoming a= “multi-racial, working-class” coalition. Is that really what&r= squo;s happening?

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Matt = Grossmann is a professor of political science at Michigan Sta= te University, where he directs the Institute for Public Policy and Social = Research. Grossmann thinks it’s true that the polarization of America= ’s white voters along educational lines is clear and likely to contin= ue—and could plausibly spread to non-white voters, particularly Hispa= nics, over time. But the broader picture he sees is more complicated than t= he narrative of the Republican Party becoming a “multi-racial, workin= g-class” coalition suggests. After all, the vast majority of non-whit= es still aren’t voting for Republican candidates, and some of the non= –college-educated whites who are voting for them have high incomes, c= omplicating the question of their “class.” Neither is there cle= ar evidence on whether non-whites without college degrees are genuinely mov= ing to the right. But there is evidence, Grossmann says, that more and more= people across the American political spectrum are developing their party i= dentities in relation to how they perceive the cultural influence of elite = institutions—universities, the media, large corporations—that t= hey associate with progressive values and progressive politics.

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—&mdash= ;—

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Graha= m Vyse: How do you see support for America’s two political p= arties shifting along educational lines?

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Matt = Grossmann: If you’re a white, college-educated voter in Amer= ica today—or you live somewhere in the U.S. where you’re surrou= nded by white, college-educated voters—you’re likely to be tren= ding toward the Democratic Party. The opposite’s true of white voters= without college degrees. These trends predate Donald Trump’s rise to= the presidency in 2016, but he certainly accelerated them. It used to be t= hat white, college-educated voters were more likely to vote Republican. =09=09=09=09=09=09

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Talking about= voters in terms of their education is different from talking about them in= terms of their broader “class,” which incorporates their educa= tion, income, and occupational status. It’s actually voters with high= incomes and low levels of formal education who’re moving right; vote= rs with higher levels of formal education but lower incomes—your quin= tessential graduate students—are moving left.

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Education-bas= ed divisions among minority voters in the U.S. are still way more uncertain= than some tend to assume. I looked at polling from before the 2020 electio= n, and even when you have adequate samples of Hispanic-American, African-Am= erican, and Asian-American voters—and you’re able to differenti= ate across college-education levels—you don’t see consistent tr= ends in which those voters split by education level. You just don’t s= ee the clear education-based divide among them that you see among white vot= ers. Now, there may have been a shift in 2020, but that hasn’t been s= ufficiently confirmed by survey work. There was a clear shift between 2016 = and 2020 in the overall Hispanic vote, though, which moved toward Republica= ns while the rest of the country was moving toward the Democrats.

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Vyse<= /strong>: What explains that?

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Advertise= ment

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Gross= mann: Part of what we’re seeing is ideological sorting. Whit= e voters have sorted ideologically over a long time—there are virtual= ly no white liberal Republicans or white conservative Democrats anymore&mda= sh;but the same thing hasn’t happened to the same degree among Hispan= ic voters. Many conservative Hispanic voters remain Democrats, for example.= Yet in 2020, Hispanic voters were more likely to support Bernie Sanders in= the Democratic presidential primary and Donald Trump in the general electi= on than they were in 2016. Hispanics who’re more liberal were trendin= g in a more liberal direction and Hispanics who’re more conservative = were trending in a more conservative direction. This behavior seems to have= been tied to the country of origin of the voter’s family: If they&rs= quo;d moved to the U.S. from a country with a left-leaning government, they= were more likely to be trending conservative.

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As Hispanics = have moved toward the Republican Party, plenty have tried to explain the sh= ift. I’m skeptical about explanations that have to do with Republican= s’ political mobilization, or campaigns, or advertising, because we&r= squo;ve seen this shift in places where those interventions didn’t ha= ppen.

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Another expla= nation has to do with how Hispanic voters tend to respond to incumbent pres= idents: It seems that, in presidential elections prior to 2020, Hispanic vo= ters tended to move toward the incumbent. But that year, they increased in = their support for Republicans even where the candidates weren’t incum= bents. The 2020 campaign also centered on different issues than the 2016 ca= mpaign did. Whereas immigration was extremely important in 2016, subjects l= ike the pandemic, Covid restrictions, the economy, and crime were elevated = in 2020. This may have contributed to Hispanic voters’ decision-makin= g.

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Giovanny = Ayala

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More from= Matt Grossmann at The Signal:

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“In America, you still see a lot of high-income voters in the Rep= ublican Party, and you still see a lot of high-income politicians and other= elites who are more concerned with economic than cultural issues. But ther= e’s also a disconnect between elites and non-elites—within both= parties: Republican donors are way to the right of their party’s vot= er base on the issue of taxes; Democratic donors are way to the left of the= ir party’s voter base on the issues of abortion and guns. In other co= untries, these different interests would distribute themselves across a num= ber of different political parties, but in the U.S., there are only two maj= or parties, so the vast majority of voters end up in one or the other.&rdqu= o;

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“The Democratic Party used to be very reliant on the idea that th= ey represented lower-income people while Republicans represented rich peopl= e. In fact, if you asked Americans what they liked about Democrats, the num= ber one thing they would say, for decades, was that the Democrats were the = party of the working class or the middle class. The number-one thing Americ= ans said they disliked about Republicans was that the Republicans were the = party of the rich or big business. An important dimension of Democrats&rsqu= o; image is fading, because their party is increasingly the home of white, = college-educated voters.

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“It’s important to acknowledge that conservatives are reacting to liberal trends in the culture. Things really are moving in a liberal= direction in many ways; the country is diversifying and becoming more acce= pting of what used to be thought of as alternative lifestyles. It’s a= lso becoming less religious and less white. Now, it might be difficult for = progressives to understand how a Hispanic voter could worry about the count= ry diversifying or becoming less culturally conservative—yet some con= servative Hispanic voters indeed worry about them. Those sentiments simply = aren’t off-limits for Hispanic people. It’s also worth noting t= hat 2020 was the first year of the pandemic, and conservatives weren’= t making up the fact that the government’s response involved telling = people what to do—change their behavior in public, wear masks, close = their businesses. And Hispanic small-business owners may well have responde= d negatively to that.”

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The Signal&n= bsp;explores urgent questions in current events around the world—to s= upport it and for full access:

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