Today is election day, and a good day to pay attention to a new report from the Center for Working Class Politics called "Democrats' Rust Belt Struggles and the Promise of Independent Politics."
A survey of 3,000 voters across Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin led to the following conclusions:
Economic populist messaging yielded net support of +45 points. Messages that explicitly named corporate greed and economic elites as the problem outperformed the softer, “populist-lite” alternative by more than 11 points--with the biggest gains among working-class occupations, under-$50k earners, non-college voters, young voters, Latinos, moderates, and non-voters.
“Democratic penalty” in 3 of 4 states. In head-to-head tests, candidates labeled Democrat underperformed Independents by 8+ points on average, even with identical economic populist messages. The gap was largest among working-class, Latino, and rural voters and big enough to flip close races: –11 to –16 points in MI, OH, and WI. Pennsylvania showed no comparable penalty.
The most popular economic policies are bold, tangible, and grounded in fairness — and can unite voters across class and partisan lines. Across 25 ranked proposals, the top items consistently cut costs, curb corporate abuses, and hold elites accountable (capping drug prices, taxing the wealthy, and even enacting a federal jobs guarantee). One popular policy would prevent large companies that receive government support from engaging in mass layoffs. Support for many of these policies cut across ideological and class divisions.
Voter disillusionment with Democrats is more about performance failures and less about ideological extremism. Across partisan lines, respondents viewed the party as corrupt, out of touch, and unwilling to fight for working people. Part of this has to do with perceptions of the Democrats as “woke” or ideologically extreme. Still, only a minority cited “woke” appeals as central to their frustrations with the party.
Read and share the report.
