In 2002, The Emerging Democratic Majority book based its arguments on two key points: that the population of the United States was becoming less white, and that non-white voters voted for Democrats more often than Republicans.
Though the multiracial Obama coalition seemed to make their case. The Trump era has looked very different. In 2023, within the Biden presidency, Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini wrote “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP,” which looked prescient in November 2024.
Looking closely at the 2016 and 2020 elections, Ruffini argued that Hispanic, Asian and mixed-race voters were following voting patterns of immigrants before them. Very unlike Black American voters, and Native Americans too, with their distinct historical context, waves of immigrants often vote their liberal interest, then grower richer and vote a different interests.
The Emerging Democratic Majority rightly demonstrated how much more diverse the American electorate would get, but badly misunderstood how that more diverse electorate would vote. The 2024 election put this on full display: Democrats look like a party of rich, educated people, alongside Black supervoters; whereas Republicans look now like a multiracial populist coalition. This is so far from the Republican jokes that left-leaning voters told in the 2000s and 2010s. Whatever comes to pass, the book is rich with insight.
Below my notes for future reference.
My notes:
- From class divide to education divide: today’s Democrats are now a party of the highly educated
- Thomas Frank’s 2004 book What’s the Matter with Kansas?
- In 2016, education polarization started as a white phenomenon — and this why pollsters so misunderstood Trump. All the college educated Republicans in the beltway didn’t like Trump either
- White voters only understood as those with or without college degrees
- Tom Wood: From 1948-2012, higher income white voters always voted more Republican than lower income. That has changed since
- Table 1.1: Income No Longer Matters to White Presidential Vote Choice
- Published in 2002, The Coming Democratic Majority looked right in the Obama era but the key point that Trump overturned is that a more diverse country hasn’t meant a more Democratic one
- Post-2012 post-mortem (Romney loss), RNC advisers recommended a softer tone on immigration but Trump did the opposite and won
- ((Trump got the attention and authenticity))
- David Wasserman’s prediction of politics: the density of locations for Whole Foods versus Cracker Barrel
- In 2012, Charles Murray’s Coming Apart pinpoints 1960 as the beginning of white stratification, using Belmont versus Fishtown
- Elite universities in 1950 were hereditary
- “This new elite is becoming just as calcified and self perpetuating as the old money elite it replaced”
- In the influential 2008 book The Big Sort: Up until 1980, college graduates were evenly distributed — but then tech hubs began accelerating the clustering of knowledge workers. That year companies began to move for talent rather than the reverse
- Richard Florida’s 2002 book Rise of the Creative Class: it was cultural amenities that first attracted that talent. His gay index, bohemian factor and tolerance index was predictive
- Charles Murray: superzips
- Virginia’s Loudon County “embodies perfectly” the shift: from George Bush in 2000 to Biden in 2020
- Elites are to the left of their base— which puts Democrats more extreme, and Republicans more moderate
- Ronald Inglehart in his 1977 book The Silent Revolution, introduces postmaterialism, or the idea that we move from physical goods to value, like autonomy and self-expression (what might be called “luxury beliefs“)
- Once an economic axis, politics is now on a cultural axis
- Morals as luxury goods, via Benjamin Enke: more rich liberals vote against their interests than poor conservatives
- David Shor in his New York Magazine interview: in the 1950s, college educated elites were just 4% of the population so they ran their parties but knew they couldn’t win on their issues. That started changing as college degrees became more commonplace and the George McGovern failed election in 1972 was a model of present Democratic politics
- That 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority was named after the 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority
- The Emerging Democratic Majority (Judis / Texeria) had three pillars of their argument: growing professional class in various “ideopolis”; growing gender allegiance and third was nonwhite support. The Obama coalition brought attention to the third but it wasn’t happening — and they argued Democrats had to maintain their white working class base but they lost it
- Nate Cohn’s data analysis for the New York Times six months after the 2012 election corrected a narrative: Obama won with more older white support than the initial exit polls suggested, setting up an over-reliance on a Millennial and diverse coalition that wasn’t enough later
- Liberals assumed demographics were destiny and so decided “the deplorables” weren’t worth winning over —so they didn’t try even after Obama had
- In 2012, Sean Trende wrote The Lost Majority: “The white working class and the upper middle class are two groups that will always be difficult to keep in the same coalition… Their interests are widely divergent, and policies that appeal to one group are likely to push the other group away”
- Yellowstone is much more widely watched than Succession but different by zip codes
- More than half of college graduates went to schools with graduation rates of 65% or less. More than 3 in 5 went to those with 81% or less. And many have dropped out . But in many elite circles you only are with elite college grads
- “The Acela Party” of fiscal conservative but socially liberal is defined by the CEO Howard Schultz and Michel Bloomberg, but it is a kind of neoliberal role that is the least popular.
- Author’s Echelon Insights survey data with Kristen Soltis does an annual survey of Americans that breaks out politics like a European multiparty coalition: the American labor party (fiscally liberal and socially conservative) polls best, but not widely accepted by the bubble of elites
- Rather than keeping out of bedroom and boardroom, more Americans prefer socially conservative and fiscally liberal
- Trump mapped to this: most who moved from Obama to Trump were in populist rank
- Political scientist Lee Drutman estimates that the American electorate is durably 23% conservatives, 39% progressives, 33% populists, 6% libertarians; consensus is 72% to left economically, 28% to the right; 56% to right socially and 44% left.
- “The center of gravity in American politics was neither liberal, conservative, nor the corporate moderation being served up by Schultz or Bloomberg. Through and through it was populist.”
- “Those in the middle are far more likely to be nonwhite” whereas whites are on either extreme
- Being in agreement on 75% or more issues is a threshold in which your vote is locked in
- “The majority of voters are in this ideological middle, and there are vast differences by race and education. Among Black Americans, 83 percent are non-ideological. Among Hispanics, 77 percent. Among Asian Americans, 69 percent. Among working-class whites, defined as those without a college degree, 58 percent fall in the ideological middle ground. There’s one glaring demographic exception: whites with a college degree, where just 38 percent are non-ideological. Alone among demographic groups, white college graduates are polarized on both sides, with 34 percent taking strongly liberal positions and 28 percent taking strongly conservative positions. The image we have of ourselves as a country hopelessly divided, with private spaces endlessly polluted with partisan politics, is mostly only true of one demographic cul-de-sac: well-educated whites. They are 26 percent of registered voters, but majorities of cable news viewership, online news readership and political Twitter.”
- “When we adjust our definition of the originally ideological to include only the hyperpolarized who agree with one side 90% of the time or more, these groups are 82% white on the left and 89% white on the right.” Compared to those in the 40th-60th percentile which are just 55% white
- Political scientist Matt Grossman: 1952-2004, Democrats viewed as working class and Republicans viewed as big business and upper class
- Irish immigrants went Democratic everywhere except Philadelphia; Italians followed after and both went through waves of insulting rhetoric. Hispanics are following them more than Black voters
- Benjamin Elbers: residential segregation declining
- Brookings William Frey: segregation ranges by city: northern and midwestern more segregated
- Raj Chetty: Hispanic pacing toward white economic outcomes but Black residents aren’t (similar to Native Americans)
- Black-white household divide of income is 13%, but just 5% at individual level — black women nearly at white women parity but black men lag far behind white men
- Black men and income integrated neighborhoods help black boys most
- Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg, through their analysis of the American electorate, particularly in their book “The Real Majority,” observed and explained the rise of social issues in the 1960s as a significant factor in shaping political discourse and voter behavior. The “Social Issue” vs. the “Economic Issue”: They argued that while the Democratic Party historically focused on and “owned” the “Economic Issue” (like Social Security and employment), the Republican Party increasingly focused on and “owned” the “Social Issue.”
- In his 1964 presidential campaign, Barry Goldwater marked the beginning of ideological voters rather than ethnic coalitions (Republicans and Democrats both previously had liberal and conservatives within their party coalitions)
- William Gavin: street corner conservative — the white ethnic shifting in the 1960s (child of immigrants who thought progressives overstepped)
- Everett Carll Ladd’s 197 paper Liberalism Upsidedown: anti counterculture drew working class to Republicans over 1960-1972, while upper class voters also began to be more professionals rather than just deregulation business types
- The 1960s and 1970s created a middle class that had seen wealth rise but was risk averse about losing or sharing it (including their homeownership)
- College deferment made Vietnam a working man’s war: James Webb noted the U.S. government failed to ask the men of Harvard to stand alongside the men of Harlem — different than the world wars
- Hardhat riots
- Cubans and Puerto Ricans vote differently and by certain generations and locations where they settled; Vietnamese vote Republican
- “New voters are, in relative terms, a positive force for Democrats among white people and a negative force for non-white people,” says Democratic super analyst David Shor. “Working class non-white voters really do not agree with us on a very meaningful set of things. If Democrats ignore that, they will vote for someone else. It’s not like the old African-American super voters. These people have very weak ties to the Democratic Party and it won’t take much to turn them off.”
- Factions of Rio Grande Valley work across party lines. For many the Democrats are the party of the poor but Hispanic incomes are surging faster than any group
- Leslie Sanchez: 2007 Los Republicanos
- Ironically the Civil Rights Act was opposed by a higher percentage of Democrats (southern wing) than Republicans but the 1964 presidential elections shaped the reputation: LBJ was one of the only southern Democrats to support and Barry Goldwater was 1 of only 6 senate Republicans to oppose
- Pennsylvania’s Jon Fetterman named as an example of a Democrat that pulled white working class but saw relative declines in black voting (Fetterman’s standing in recent years has waned)
- Michael Dawson “linked fate” of black voters explains their relative inelasticity in voting for democrats — turnout is the deciding factor, though subtly shifting they are different than Hispanic and Asian voters and all immigrants
- Tim Pawlenty: Republicans shifted from party of the country club to the Sam’s club
- Stranger than fiction
- Dostoevsky “I tell you solemnly that I have many times tried to become an insect.”