The emerging working-class Republican majority

Plus: What changed at the third debate, behind Kennedy's poll numbers, Gen Z's formative experiences, tipping culture, swing voters depicted by DALL-E 3

No. 292 | November 10, 2023

 🐘 Party of the People

Patrick Ruffini: The Emerging Working-Class Republican Majority (Politico)

“A historic realignment of working-class voters helped Trump defy the odds and win in 2016, and brought him to within a hair of reelection in 2020. The polls show a tied race or even a narrow Trump advantage with one year to go until the 2024 election, an advantage that extends to Trump’s fellow Republican contenders. And digging deeper into the data, we can see why: Joe Biden is faltering among the core Democratic groups that were once the mainstay of “the party of the people” —working-class voters of color. Numerous polls have shown Trump reaching nearly 20 percent of the Black vote and drawing to within 10 points of Biden among Hispanic voters. Even if these shifts were to only partly materialize in November 2024, they would signal a lasting realignment poised to upend the party system we’ve known since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

For decades, Democrats w…