Ruy Teixeira is a political scientist and most famously coauthor of The Emerging Democratic Majority (2002), the thesis of which he has subsequently disavowed. Today he writes for Substack a column in which he summarizes polling data showing Republicans becoming the multi-racial party of the non-college working class. He writes (links in the original):
Democrats have generally comforted themselves that their poor performance among the working class was purely a matter of white working class voters, who they presumed were motivated by retrograde racial and cultural attitudes. But since 2012, nonwhite working class voters have shifted away from the Democrats by 18 margin points, with a particularly sharp shift in the last election and particularly among Hispanics.
In a just-released Morning Consult/Politico poll, voters were broken down into three categories: noncollege, Bachelor’s degree only and postgraduate. Biden’s approval rating was just 37 percent among all working class voters, but 55 percent among the BA group and 63 percent among the postgraduates.
A recent Data for Progress poll shows this pattern extending to the generic Congressional ballot and a hypothetical rematch between Biden and Trump in 2024.
After all, what is the point of a left party that cannot command the loyalty of the working class and therefore plausibly claim to represent its interests?
The conclusion Teixeira fails to draw is that the Democrats have become a party driven by the values and policy choices of left-leaning college alumni, which are often antithetical to the interests of the working class.
Personal aside: Not all college alumni lean left, the Politico poll noted above found 45% of BA holders and 37% of those with post-graduate degrees don't approve of Joe Biden. The DrsC are proud members of this latter embattled minority.
