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Boeing workers listen to union leaders speak as Boeing's Washington state factory workers vote on whether to give their union a strike mandate as they seek big salary gains from their first contract in 16 years, at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington, U.S. July 17, 2024.
Bloc by bloc: Can Dems win back the working class?
One of President Joe Biden’s biggest selling points was his “Scranton Joe” appeal to working-class voters — who have been increasingly voting Republican in recent years. Kamala Harris, on the other hand,was said to embody the college-educated, coastal elite the Democratic Party is accused of increasingly gearing itself toward. Switching candidates, many argued, could come at the expense of key “Rust Belt” states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
These states will be battlegrounds this year, and working-class voters will play an outsized role in deciding which way they’ll sway. In fact, in all six key swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — the working-class voter population is higher than the national average.
Who are working-class voters? People who do not have a college education – around 62% of the US – or those who receive an hourly wage rather than a salary. Forty-six percent of Republicans consider themselves working class, compared to 35% of Democrats.
How are the candidates competing for their votes? According to Eurasia Group analyst Noah Daponte-Smith, Trump is making the same promises he made in 2016 and 2020: “that he will bring back working-class manufacturing jobs, make the economy better than ever, and fight for the interests of the common man.”
Meanwhile, he says, Harris is trying to attract working-class voters “by emphasizing Democrats’ economic record, pointing to the risks of a Trump presidency, and nominating a VP candidate with working-class roots.”
According to the Split Ticket crosstab aggregator – a comparison of polls and candidate preferences by demographic subgroups – Donald Trump leads Harris by 11 points among non-college graduates. That number jumps to a 28-point lead among white non-college graduates. But there are discrepancies: A new UMass Amherst poll shows her eight points ahead among low-income voters.
Still, Princeton professor Robert Wuthnow, who has spent much of his career researching rural and working-class voters, expects the majority of the working class – and an even larger portion of white working-class men – to side with Trump. “I tend to think that white working-class men are going to have difficulty – for some because of gender, for some because of race,” says Wuthnow.
“There is a growing division between the working class and the elite, or people they perceive as having professional jobs and better educations than they do,” says Wuthnow. “Kamala will have a difficult time bridging that gap.”
Daponte-Smith agrees. He believes that while Dems can “somewhat abate” the trend, they can’t fully reverse it.
One way Harris is trying to bring back the working class is with her vice presidential pick. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is a former teacher and US Army National Guard veteran who has been a champion of unions. He graduated from a regional branch of the University of Minnesota and is the first Democrat on a presidential ticket in half a century not to have attended law school.
“My sense is that Tim Walz as Harris’s VP is geared precisely toward attracting the kinds of moderate, working-class, salt-of-the-earth people that Obama won in 2008 and 2012 but who defected to Republicans in the last two cycles,” says Deponte-Smith. “He is an extremely effective communicator who has extensive experience in winning over working-class, right-leaning white voters. So I think he’s an asset to Harris in this respect.”
Meanwhile, Trump – even after spending four years in the Oval Office – is still painting himself as the outsider, or at least a change agent in a system that many working-class Americans do not believe represents their interests. That belief is backed up by the numbers: Fewer than 5% of Congressmen come from working-class backgrounds. Trump was a millionaire by age 8, but he is trying to boost his blue-collar credentials by choosing JD Vance – who grew up in extreme poverty in rural Ohio – as his running mate.
Early on, third-party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. attracted a considerable number of working-class voters, but he has since sunk in the polls to a mere 5%.
What about non-white working-class voters? Much of the working class in the US is Black and Hispanic, which is even more important to recognize since Dems have just nominated the first Black female presidential candidate in US history.
“Trump appears to know that he has a strong base of support among the white working class, and has been aiming to attract Black and Hispanic working-class men,” says Daponte-Smith. “If that’s successful, it will boost him in the swing states.”
“The working class in the upper Midwest is much whiter than in the Sun Belt,” says Daponte-Smith. “This means the working class will likely be much more Republican-leaning in the Upper Midwest,” meaning Harris has a better chance at winning in swing states like Arizona or Nevada.
How are unions leaning? Although the power of unions has been declining for decades, Wuthnow says their endorsements still play a significant role in shaping how members vote.
On Wednesday, the United Auto Workers endorsed Kamala Harris – a disappointing blow to Trump, who made a show of courting unions during the Republican National Convention by giving the Teamsters President Sean O’Brien a keynote speech despite him not having endorsed either candidate.
It’s still the economy, stupid. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act was a $500 billion bet that investing in US manufacturing and infrastructure would help Democrats repave inroads in working-class communities. Despite progress, the bet is not paying off politically because stubbornly high inflation is exacerbating frustration at over 40 years of stagnated wages.
Today’s real average hourly wage of $29.03 has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. Meanwhile, the prices of some critical big-ticket purchases like housing, higher education, and healthcare have been getting steadily pricier. “Their real living wage has been stagnant for a very long time, and it’s also declining relative to the salaries of college-educated workers,” says Wuthnow.
Harris’s early campaign ads have made promises that should appeal to workers, including bringing down insulin prices, taking on the power of the big banks, corporate price gouging, and other concerns that most working Americans can relate to.
Trump, meanwhile, wants to slash illegal immigration, raise tariffs, and increase the minimum wage – policies that may appeal to voters hurt by the exodus of manufacturing and stagnating wages. But the proposed tariffs – including a 100% tariff on foreign vehicles – are expected to further raise consumer prices and are unlikely to generate a significant number of manufacturing jobs.
The Democrats’ biggest challenge is helping voters make the connection between the party’s policies and lower prescription costs or the new manufacturing jobs popping up across the country. “If Kamala can make that case that the Biden administration has been good for working-class people, then I think she’s got a chance of appealing to some of those voters,” says Wuthnow.
“The difficulty is that the messaging on the Trump side is so disconnected from anything in the real world that he can make lots of arguments about inflation or the threat of immigrants coming in and taking away jobs, and probably have quite a bit of mileage.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris poses for a picture with Jordynn Dudley, soccer player at Florida State University, Lynda Tealer, senior vice president of championships at NCAA, and members of the women and men's National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Champion teams, in Kamala's first public appearance since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, on the South Lawn of the White House, Washington, U.S., July 22, 2024.
Generational showdown: How the youth and senior votes will influence the US election
“Holy shit. Biden’s out,” I heard an older man in front of me at the airport say on Sunday, July 21. At JFK’s Terminal 4 – where people don’t even stop to tie their shoes – Joe Biden’s announcement of his withdrawal from the presidential race stopped travelers in their tracks.
In the week since, Biden’s move seems to have breathed new life into the campaign, with Democrats raising over $200 million in campaign donations in just a few days. Vice President Kamala Harris quickly won endorsements from the party’s senior leaders to become the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Election of the ages
Age dominated the conversation around this campaign from the beginning. Although Biden’s decades-younger replacement – Harris is just 59 – quells concerns that Dems and Republicans had about his ability to serve another four years, age remains a key factor in this year’s election. The success of both candidates, after all, depends on their ability to woo both the youth and the senior vote, which both appear to be in play as they mull decades-long political party preferences.
When Biden was running, election polls had turned conventional wisdom on its head about these voting blocs: Some showed young voters, who have long tended to align with the left, leaning Republican, and seniors, who have long favored Republican candidates, tilting Democratic. But reactions to Harris’s entrance suggest a return to more traditional trends, with her recovering lost ground among young voters but struggling to hold onto Biden’s lead with older voters.
Winning over youths
This year, there are 52.6 million eligible youth voters (aged 18-29), with particularly sizable presences in key swing states like Michigan and Minnesota, where youth voter turnout rates are the highest in the country. And while it’s hard to generalize, polls show the top issues for youth voters are the economy, immigration, abortion, and foreign policy.
“Kamala is brat.” In under a week, Harris’s youth campaign drummed up more support from young voters than Biden’s ever did – transforming Biden’s eight-point deficit into an 18-point lead for Harris among young voters.
Harris’s stances on two important youth issues are clear: She strongly advocates for abortion rights and is perceived as more critical than Biden of US involvement in Gaza. Both are expected to work to her advantage.
Her team has also been leaning heavily into the memes and buzz surrounding her on social media, making inroads with young voters. She has gained endorsements from youth voting groups like Voters for Tomorrow and Dream for America, as well as Gen-Z popstar Charli XCX, who tweeted “Kamala is brat” — a reference to her viral new album and a nod of approval to the new candidate.
But Eurasia Group Managing Director Jon Lieber questions the longevity of Harris’s momentum, citing her weak performance as both vice president and as a presidential candidate in 2020. “Is this election going to be about Harris, the person, versus Donald Trump, who Americans know and either love or hate very well?” he asks. “Or is it going to be about Kamala Harris, the meme, running against Donald Trump?”
While abortion, climate change, and foreign policy tend to dominate the conversation surrounding the youth vote, their importance is often overstated among this constituency. For voters of all ages, the most important issue is the economy. Inflation and the cost of living will impact the youth vote, and Harris’s association with the Biden administration’s struggles to keep both down may hurt her.
“Trump just does better on the top issues in this campaign, which are inflation, the economy, and immigration,” notes Lieber. Meanwhile, Harris as vice president, he says, was “kind of been relegated to a D-list of policy issues.”
Trump’s youth campaign, meanwhile, has centered largely on economic matters. He has focused on youth-oriented platforms and influencers, such as appearing on a podcast with Gen Z influencer Logan Paul, or launching a successful TikTok account that now has 7.5 million followers.
His team is also leveraging the power of youth organizations like Turning Point Action to energize young conservatives. Trump’s policy messaging to youth voters hasn’t been clear, but when he has targeted younger audiences, he has either spoken about the economy or bashed Biden – a strategy that’s now half-moot.
Turnout and third-party candidates
Youth voters are notorious for not showing up on Election Day. Historically, that has tended to hurt Democrats. For more than 10 election cycles, the youth turnout rate has been at least 10 points below the national average, but the 2020 election saw a record-high youth turnout of 51%.
Following Harris’s entrance to the race, 72% of people under age 30 report being very likely or certain to vote, up from 64% before Biden dropped out – a trend that the Generation Lab’s Cyrus Beschloss says could help Harris win an “Obama level” youth vote.
Third-party candidate RFK Jr., meanwhile, is polling overall at just 6% and stands no chance of winning the presidency, but he could play a spoiler. Some 8% of younger voters say they would pick him if the vote were held today. By pulling even a small percentage of the youth vote away from Trump or Harris, RFK Jr. could have a decisive impact.
Winning over seniors
The last election saw over 55 million citizens over age 65 cast their vote, making up over 30% of the electorate. Seniors are an outsized constituency in retirement-friendly, warm-weather, low-tax swing states like Arizona, Nevada, and Florida. Ninety-five percent of voters aged 65 and over say they are very likely, if not certain, to cast ballots in November.
The key senior issuesare the economy, immigration, and democracy. But “the economy” means something different to grandparents than to their grandkids, says Clayton Allen, a US politics expert at Eurasia Group. While younger voters worry about economic opportunity, older voters are asking, “Am I going to have the support I need to continue to live my life? Are you going to cut Medicare or Social Security?”
Biden ran a very smart senior campaign that allowed him to turn the silver vote blue for the first time in 20 years. Biden and Kamala had been meeting seniors on the pickleball court and at bingo game nights as a part of his “Seniors for Biden-Harris” initiative, which has helped them touch base on issues like lowering prescription drug costs, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and capping insulin prices.
But Harris, who seemed poised to inherit Biden’s lead among seniors, is now polling two points behind Trump with this demographic, 49% to 47%. If she can’t keep the margin close in November, Harris could be in trouble.
The reason for seniors’ return to the Republican Party isn’t clear yet, and polling will take a week or two longer to start returning more reliable information. NYTimes/Siena’s latest survey shows a majority of older voters believing Trump would make a stronger leader than Harris, 61% to 46%.
Still, AARP notes that Social Security is a key issue for 80% of senior voters. Currently, this seems to benefit Harris as she has worked as a co-sponsor of the Social Security Expansion Act and received the endorsement of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare – a group that also endorsed Biden. But in this election, it has become a battleground issue. “Social Security is really an up-for-grabs issue [as] Democrats only have a three-point advantage… so the parties are basically tied,” Jeff Liszt, partner at Impact Research, explains.
So far, this election season has seen 34 criminal convictions, a failed assassination attempt, and the presumptive Democratic nominee dropping less than a month before the Democratic National Committee. And there are still three months to go. We’ll be watching to see whether Harris can keep up her momentum with young voters and woo back some of the senior votes she’ll need or whether Trump manages to rewrite his playbook to take on Harris and win back some of the youth vote he’ll need to prevail.