About those Working Class Voters

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by Dave in Fla

I’ve talked about Rich Baris previously. He is one of the few pollsters who is legitimately approaching polling as a data science and reporting accurate information. Again, he was the most accurate pollster in 2020 and was dead on correct on the Virginia Governor’s race.

Rich has just released the results of his national winter 2022 poll, and there are some very interesting and surprising results in the crosstabs.

Take a look at his polling for a Biden/Trump rematch (yes, I know the font is pretty small, you will need to zoom in). In this poll he polled for both race and education background to get a sense of the sentiments for the white and non-white working class.

Among whites with a high school education or less, Trump leads Biden 60.7% to 22.1%. That is almost a 39 point advantage. While not as large, Trump holds a 21 point edge with whites that have some college education, but don’t have a bachelor’s degree. Overall, combining the samples, white support for Trump among the working class is 54.0% to Biden’s 25.8%, a 28 point advantage.

The reason this is important is when you look at the swing states that determine the results of the general election. Below is a table I produced that looks at the swing states we always talk about. I also included some states like California and Massachusetts that are not competitive for comparison. What stands out is that the population of these states that is white and does not have a college degree is significant in most of the swing states.

Compare Wisconsin to Massachusetts. 59% of the population is white without a 4 year degree, compared to 43%. This is a rough measure of the working class in each state, and Wisconsin has about 16% more white working class than Massachusetts.

This is clearly not the entire picture, since both North Carolina and Georgia have high percentages of non-white voters. In those states cultural affinity for Trump and Republicans play a stronger role, with voters of higher education levels and more minority voters willing to vote for Trump and Republicans. But it is easy to see why Atlanta has such an outsized influence on Georgia voting.

Overall, this paints a pretty grim picture for the Democrat prospects in 2024.