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US WORKING CLASS ‘OVERWHELMINGLY TO THE LEFT’ OF THE RICH ON
ECONOMIC POLICY: SURVEY  
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Jake Johnson
September 16, 2024
Common Dreams
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_ The new research, said one union leader, provides Democrats with a
"clear roadmap to winning back" working-class voters. _

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Polling results released Monday show that working-class voters in the
United States are broadly more supportive of major progressive agenda
items than those in the middle and upper classes, offering Democratic
political candidates what one union leader called a "clear roadmap to
winning back voters we've lost to a GOP that's growing more extreme by
the day."

The survey
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over 5,000 registered U.S. voters was conducted last August by HIT
Strategies and Working Families Power (WFP), a sibling organization of
the Working Families Party.

The poll found that a majority of working-class voters either somewhat
or totally support a national jobs guarantee (69%), a "public
healthcare program like Medicare for All" (64%), a crackdown on
rent-gouging landlords (74%), and tuition-free public colleges and
universities (63%), landing them "overwhelmingly to the left" of
higher-income segments of the population.

Upper- and middle-class respondents were far less likely to support
the above policy proposals. Just 39% of upper-class voters surveyed,
for instance, said they completely or somewhat support "a nationwide
jobs guarantee" that would provide "stable, good-paying work for
everyone who needs it."

WFP found that the "differences between classes are much smaller on
social and cultural questions compared to economic fairness questions,
and they do not uniformly point to a working class that is more
socially and culturally conservative than the middle and upper
classes."

The poll results, said WFP, call into question the belief that "the
greater social and cultural conservatism of the working class explains
the working class' drift away from the Democrats and towards the
GOP.""The working class is not a monolithic group that wears a hard ha
t and hangs out in diners."Maurice Mitchell, national director of the
Working Families Party, said the new survey results underscore that
"the working class is not a monolithic group that wears a hard hat and
hangs out in diners."

"It's a multiracial, multigenerational group that isn't confined to a
single geography, and it includes a tremendous diversity of views,"
said Mitchell, suggesting that Democrats learn from the results to
defeat former President Donald Trump
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nominee, in November.

"We need our strategy and messaging to reflect that reality," he said.
"That's how we defeat Trump's MAGA movement and win back working-class
voters."

The new report identifies seven "clusters" within the U.S. working
class that it labels as Next Gen Left, Mainstream Liberals, Tuned Out
Persuadables, Anti-Woke Traditionalists, Secure Suburban Moderates,
Diverse Disaffected Conservatives, and Core MAGA—and the survey data
shows "large differences" between them that help explain disparate
voting behaviors. For example, just 30% of the Next Gen Left
cluster—which is disproportionately young and strongly
progressive—are homeowners compared to 75% of the Core MAGA cluster,
which has what WFP described as "down-the-line right-wing views."

The survey results were released in the heat of an election campaign
that has seen the GOP—spearheaded by Trump and his running mate,
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio)—cast itself
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working-class people." Democrats, whose 2024 White House ticket
is backed by major U.S. unions
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support [[link removed]] from
working-class voters in recent years while making gains among more
affluent segments of the population.

WFP said that its findings "do not contradict the widespread belief
that support for Democrats is stronger among middle- and upper-class
voters than it is among working-class voters," but they do "strongly
call into question the explanation most commonly advanced for those
political alignments, namely that the working class is simply more
socially and culturally conservative than the middle and upper
classes."

"Our study shows that the most salient differences in worldview
between classes revolve around questions of class, distribution, and
economic fairness, where the working class is well to the left of the
middle and upper classes, and regression analysis strongly suggests
that the further left a voter is on these questions of class,
distribution, and economic fairness, the less likely they were to have
supported Donald Trump in 2020," said WFP.

The new analysis was accompanied by
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the Working Families Party described as a "practical handbook to
winning the working class," which makes up roughly 63% of the U.S.
electorate.

Messaging that resonated most strongly across segments of the working
class, according to the handbook, emphasized class conflict and the
"need to elect Democrats who will fight for working people to keep the
money they earn by cracking down on price-gouging at the grocery
store, making wealthy tax cheats pay their fair share, and lowering
the costs of prescription drugs."

Derrick Osobase, vice president of Communications Workers of American
District 6, said in a statement Monday that Democrats must embrace and
act on the new findings if they hope to reverse their recent losses
among the nation's working class.

"During a time of record high corporate profits," said Osobase,
"Democrats need to show working-class voters that we have their backs
and will fight for an economy that works for all of us."

_Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams._

* Working Class
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* Progressive Economics
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