Elites moved toward democrats more than nonelites moved away: Income, education, and occupational class in US presidential elections, 1980–2020

By Karyn Vilbig & Paula England. 

"Recent work on partisan realignment has often highlighted shifts among the White working class. Examining elections from 1980 to 2020, we show that the partisan realignment of White voters has been primarily driven by higher status Whites—those with the highest decile household incomes, college degrees, and white-collar jobs—making large moves toward the Democratic Party. Working-class Whites, however, show no clear long-term trend. They have indeed become less Democratic since 2012, but these levels remain within historically observed bounds.

Recent discussion of voting in US elections claims a strong movement of White working-class voters away from voting for Democrats, with much discussion focusing only on elections between 2012 and the present. We examine longer-term trends from 1980 to 2020 in how more and less privileged White voters—measured by household income, education, and occupational class—moved toward or away from voting Democratic. We also explore how these movements changed the shape of the relationships between these three socioeconomic indicators and voting Democratic. We find little evidence of a long-term movement away from Democrats among voters with lower income, less education, or working-class jobs, although there is some evidence of this after 2012. The clearest long-term trend is that voters in the highest decile of income, college graduates, and white-collar workers moved steadily toward voting Democratic across the 40 y. Thus, the change from negative to flat for income’s relationship to voting Democratic, and from negative to positive for education’s relationship to voting Democratic comes less from a movement of less privileged voters away from Democratic voting and more from a long-term movement of those in the top decile of income, college graduates, and white-collar workers toward voting Democratic. Whether the post-2012 movement away from voting Democratic among voters without a high school degree and in working-class jobs becomes an enduring trend or is idiosyncratic to Trump’s candidacy is an important question for future research."

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See also Americans start caring more about deficits and the national debt when the party they oppose runs them up by John V. Kane of New York University and Ian G. Anson of The University of Maryland. Excerpt:

"In the past two decades, US budget deficits have skyrocketed, and the national debt is now over $22 trillion. But do Americans care about the size of deficits and the national debt? In new research, John V. Kane and Ian G. Anson find that people tend to care more about the deficits and debts when they are increased by presidents from the party that they oppose. Both Republicans and Democrats, they write, become less concerned about governments running deficits when their President is in charge."