Four decades of data show high-status voters, not the working class, are reshaping American politics

Recent political discussions often focus on working-class voters moving away from the Democratic Party, but a new analysis provides evidence that a different shift is actually driving modern political divides. Over the last four decades, high-income, highly educated, and white-collar White voters have steadily moved toward the Democratic Party. These findings were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers Karyn Vilbig and Paula England conducted this study to examine popular narratives about voting behavior in the United States. Following the 2016 presidential election, many political commentators suggested that Donald Trump won because the White working class abandoned the Democratic Party. Some analysts argued that Democrats lost these voters by failing to offer strong economic solutions for lost manufacturing jobs. Other commentators proposed that the shift was related to racial status threats following the election of Barack Obama.

Vilbig and England noticed that many of these past analyses only looked at recent elections and treated socioeconomic status as a simple binary concept. They wanted to evaluate a much longer timeline to see exactly which groups of voters had changed their political preferences. To do this, the researchers analyzed data from 1980 to 2020 to map out the voting habits of different socioeconomic groups over time. They aimed to see if the changing political gaps were caused by lower-status voters moving to the political right, or higher-status voters moving to the political left.

To investigate these trends, the scientists used data from the General Social Survey. This is a nationally representative survey that tracks the attitudes and behaviors of people living in the United States. The researchers restricted their analysis to White individuals who reported voting in the most recent presidential election, resulting in a sample size of 27,795 voters. They focused specifically on White voters because this demographic group has experienced the most notable political realignment in recent history.

The researchers measured socioeconomic status using three distinct variables, which included household income, education level, and occupational class. For income, they adjusted the survey data for inflation and household size. They then divided the voters into deciles, meaning they separated the population into ten equal-sized groups based on their earnings. Education was split into five categories, ranging from people with less than a high school diploma to those with advanced graduate degrees.

Occupational class was divided into three broad categories. The working class included manual laborers, like roofers, and lower-grade service workers, like cashiers. The intermediate class included nonprofessional self-employed individuals and supervisors of manual workers. Finally, the white-collar class consisted of professionals, managers, and higher-grade administrative employees, such as teachers and registered nurses.

When looking at household income, the researchers found very little evidence that the Democratic Party is steadily losing low-income White voters. The bottom five income deciles did not show any consistent, long-term trend of moving away from Democratic presidential candidates over the 40-year period. While some middle-to-low income groups showed a drop in Democratic support during the 2016 election, they often rebounded in 2020. For example, the lowest-earning ten percent of voters has remained fairly evenly split between the two major political parties since 2004.

Instead, the most consistent trend was a massive shift among the highest earners. In 1980, only 27 percent of White voters in the top income decile supported the Democratic presidential candidate. By the 2020 election, that number had grown to 61 percent. This upward trend happened in spurts, with noticeable jumps in support occurring around the 2008 and 2020 elections.

The analysis of education levels revealed a similar pattern. White voters without a high school diploma did move away from the Democratic Party recently, dropping from 49 percent support in 2012 to 26 percent in 2020. However, this specific group is a shrinking portion of the electorate, representing only 3 percent of all White voters in 2020. White voters with exactly a high school diploma also showed a recent drop, but their support for Democrats in 2020 was still higher than it was in the 1980s and 1990s.

At the higher end of the education spectrum, the data shows a massive shift toward the Democratic Party. In 1980, only 34 percent of White voters with advanced graduate degrees supported the Democratic candidate. By 2020, this figure had doubled to 68 percent. White voters with standard four-year college degrees also saw large gains, jumping from 36 percent Democratic support in 2004 to 53 percent in 2008, and remaining stable at those higher levels since then.

Finally, when evaluating occupational class, the researchers found that working-class White voters fluctuated up and down over the decades. Historically, this demographic tends to bounce between the two major parties depending on the election. Support for Democrats among the working class did drop from 47 percent in 2012 to 36 percent in 2020. Yet, this recent low point is very similar to previous historical lows observed in the 1984 and 2000 elections, meaning there is no consistent 40-year downward trend.

In contrast, white-collar workers exhibited a massive and sustained increase in Democratic support across the entire period studied. In 1980, only 32 percent of white-collar White voters supported the Democratic nominee. This number steadily grew to 54 percent by the 2020 election. The data provides evidence that the changing political gaps between different social classes are driven mostly by the steady leftward movement of affluent, highly educated professionals.

The authors note a few potential misinterpretations and limitations of their work. People might assume that lower-status White voters have not shifted to the right at all. Lower-status voters did indeed move toward the Republican Party in recent elections, but this shift only started around 2012. The researchers caution against assuming this recent dip is a permanent realignment, as it could just be a temporary reaction to Donald Trump’s specific political appeal.

Another interesting point is why political analysts might have misinterpreted these trends in the first place. The scientists speculate that many people who research elections belong to these higher-status groups. Because their own social circles gradually moved to the left, these analysts may not have noticed the change in their own demographics. Instead, they likely assumed the growing political divide was caused entirely by working-class people moving to the right.

Future research should continue to monitor upcoming elections to see if the post-2012 working-class shift becomes a permanent trend. Additionally, scientists should explore the difference between how people vote and how they personally identify. Supplemental data in this study suggests that lower-status White voters are abandoning the Democrat identity label at a faster rate than they are abandoning Democratic voting habits. Investigating the lag between party identification and actual voting behavior could provide deeper insights into modern political divides.

The study, “Elites moved toward democrats more than nonelites moved away: Income, education, and occupational class in US presidential elections, 1980–2020,” was authored by Karyn Vilbig and Paula England.