One side of the argument contends that the Democratic coalition retains much of its low-to-middle-income white working-class core. The other side argues that this alliance has been fractured by the defection of working-class whites and that the traditional Democratic coalition is permanently gone.
Part of the problem is that different people mean different things when they are talking about the working class. Is this cohort made up of those without college degrees; those in the bottom third of the income distribution; or those in occupations described by the federal government as “blue-collar”? (The government’s list of blue-collar jobs includes “heavy mobile equipment mechanic,” “pipefitter,” “welder” and “food service” workers.)
Whites without college degrees have been steadily shrinking as a percentage of the electorate, but they remain a very substantial block: in 2008, they made up 39 percent of all voters
The current outbreak of hostilities within an all-star team of academics over the political allegiance of the white working class and even the definition of the white working class began with the publication on June 5 of an essay in the left-leaning British newspaper, The Guardian, “Why Working-class People Vote Conservative,” by Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Righteous Mind” and a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Unfortunately, as Haidt quickly acknowledged, he made the “careless mistake” of failing to specify that he “was talking only about the WHITE working-class.”
Before Haidt posted his correction, Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, posted a critique of Haidt on June 8 on Monkey Cage, a forum for politically-inclined academics. Gelman’s piece was titled, “Lamentably ignorant psychology researcher spews political platitudes without realizing that he’s trying to explain a phenomenon that does not exist.” Gelman included a link to his own blog with the intriguing headline, “Stop me before I aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.”
Gelman pointed out that:
Ronald Reagan did about 20 percentage points better among voters in the upper third of income, compared to voters in the lower third. The relation between income and voting since 1980 is about the same as it was in the 1940s.Gelman defines “working-class” as those in the bottom third of the income distribution. He is also including all races and ethnicities and not focusing on whites. This will prove important in the debate.
On June 17 Haidt amended his argument to refer specifically to white working-class voters. He broke white voters into four categories: those without college degrees who were working; those without degrees who were not working; those with college degrees and a job; and those with degrees but without a job.
Tracking Democratic and Republican self-identification among these four groups of whites, using findings from the American National Election Studies surveys conducted over four decades beginning in the 1970s, Haidt concentrated his attention specifically on employed whites without college degrees.
As a way of defining the white working-class, this category — whites without college who are working — has the advantage of eliminating students, the retired, those unable to work because of disability and those on welfare. The disadvantages of this definition include the failure to count unemployed blue-collar workers, who are certainly working-class, and the inclusion of highly successful businessmen who do not have college degrees. Bill Gates, for example, would be included in this category.
Nonetheless, Haidt’s results are striking. Democratic self-identification among employed whites without degrees (the red line) nosedives from roughly 37 percent to 25 percent over four decades.
Courtesy of Jonathan Haidt
Republican self-identification over the same period, among these same
voters, grows from roughly 21 percent in the 1970s to 30 percent in the
2000s:
Courtesy of Jonathan Haidt
After Haidt posted his amended analysis, Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Vanderbilt, weighed in on the debate, posting an essay on Monkey Cage on June 17 called “The Party of the American Working Man and Woman.”“How did a nice psychologist like Haidt wander into this minefield?” Bartels asked:
Ah, the white working-class, yet again. I wish some psychologist would study why this particular topic generates so much interest and emotion. Perhaps it has something to do with the resonance of the term ‘working-class’ — and with the flexibility of that term in successive iterations of the debate.Bartels went on to raise a key question: is the white working-class defection limited to the South, and primarily an issue of race, or is the defection national in scope, involving the broader social, cultural, and moral revolutions of the past 50 years.
Bartels produced the following graphic to argue that the defection is entirely southern:
Courtesy of Larry Bartels
“While southern working whites without college degrees have become more Republican in their presidential voting behavior (by 4.5% per decade), non-southern working whites without college degrees have become more Democratic (by 1.6% per decade),” Bartels wrote.Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist from Emory University who has written extensively about the changing composition of the two parties, countered Bartels in an e-mail to participants in the debate:
My view is that the single best indicator of ‘working-class’ status is occupation—white-collar vs. blue-collar. This excludes non-working respondents. And when you look at northern whites over time there is a very clear pattern — there has been a sharp decline in Democratic identification among blue-collar whites while Democratic identification among white-collar whites has remained stable.A similar trend is evident when it comes to House voting. When it comes to presidential voting, there is a lot of year to year variation, but blue-collar whites used to be much more Democratic than white-collar whites. Recently, however, they have voted almost identically.
Abramowitz produced the following two charts to show that the sharp movement away from the Democratic Party by white working-class voters occurred in the North as well as the South.
First, by party identification:
Party Identification by Decade
Northern Whites Blue-collar (green line) White-collar (blue line)
Courtesy of Alan Abramowitz
Second, in actual voting:
House Vote
Northern Whites
Courtesy of Alan Abramowitz
Enter Sam Best, of the University of Connecticut, and Brian Krueger, of the University of Rhode Island, political scientists who work with election day exit polls conducted by television networks and cable news stations. Best and Krueger provided exit poll evidence to The Times supporting the argument made by Abramowitz that white working class support for the Democratic Party declined across the board, but that it declined at a much sharper rate in the South than in the North. They show that in two election years, 1984, with Reagan at the top of the ticket, and in 1994, when Newt Gingrich loyalists gave the Republican party control of the House for the first time in 40 years, that Democratic House candidates took a beating in both the North and South. In the South, Democratic House candidates in 1984 lost the white non-college vote by 39.7 – 60.3, and by 35.6 – 64.4 in 1994. In the North, Midwest and West, the white non-college vote for Democratic House candidates was just 44 – 56 in 1984, and fell to 40.8 – 59.2 in 1994. Since 1994, according to the Best- Krueger data, Democrats have not been able to break 50 percent with either group, losing northern non-college whites by an average of 46.9 – 53.1 and southern non-college whites by 34.4 – 65.6.
Although this is an intra-academic dispute, the stakes are high. Differing stands determine competing interpretations of the past 40 years of American politics, conflicting analyses of the 2012 election, and alternative projections of the near-term future of American politics.
White working class voting trends are obviously of vital interest to key players in this November’s election. Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, noted that last year Obama’s already weak support among non-college whites was dropping. “Working-class white voters were a Republican opportunity,” Garin said in an interview with The Times.
In 2010 – the year of a decisive Democratic rout — non-college whites, North and South, cast only 33 percent of their ballots for House Democratic candidates, the lowest level in exit poll history.
With that constituency ready and waiting, “Republicans this year picked their worst possible candidate,” Garin argues, contending that Romney’s wealth and background provoke animosity to Republican elites among white working-class voters, partially counterbalancing the hostility of many of these voters to President Obama.
William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, published a study last month assuming three different scenarios for turnout and voting margins among whites and minorities in the upcoming November election.
In the first of Frey’s scenarios, 2012 will replicate the turnout and voting patterns of 2008 among both whites and minorities. “If that occurs, Obama wins with 29 states and 358 electoral votes,” Frey writes.
The second Frey scenario provides that both white and black turnout and voting patterns of 2004 are repeated in 2012. Under this Frey scenario, Romney beats Obama with 286 electoral votes in 30 states.
The third Frey scenario calls for white turnout and voting patterns to replicate those of 2004, and for minority turnout and voting patterns to replicate 2008 — “something closer to what this year’s election promises – strong partisan participation by both whites and minorities.” In this case, Frey writes, “results favor an Obama win – but barely.”
According to Frey’s third scenario, “Obama squeaks by with 292 electoral votes spread among 24 states,” but his victory depends on winning by very slim margins in four key states — Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Oregon — which together have 66 electoral college votes, far more than enough to tip the contest to Romney if they go the other way.
Frey’s analysis demonstrates a crucial fact about current presidential politics: that white voters (76 percent) and minorities (24 percent), despite making up vastly different percentages of the electorate, are both key to the outcome. Little shifts in behavior in either group matter.
In an e-mail to The Times, Bartels described the strategic choices facing both campaigns:
If the Democratic Party can do something to win one more non-college white vote, without alienating anyone else, it is exactly one vote closer to winning. If it can do something to win one more college white vote, or Latino vote, or Asian vote, without alienating anyone else, it is exactly one vote closer to winning. If it wins one more non-college white vote and loses one college white vote, or Latino vote, or Asian vote in the process, it is not any closer to winning. The interesting strategic questions have entirely to do with the marginal shifts in vote probabilities produced in different groups by different sorts of appeals, and their collateral political costs (whether alienation or opportunity costs).In other words, the white electorate remains central to the strategic choices of both the Romney and Obama campaigns, but so does every other significant slice of the population.
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