New study upends decades-old narrative about Democrats and the white working class

A new study published in Political Research Quarterly casts doubt a widely accepted view of American political history. For years, scholars and pundits have argued that the Democratic Party once held the strong support of the white working class—only to lose it starting in the 1960s due to the party’s embrace of civil rights and liberal social issues. But political scientist Jeffrey M. Stonecash finds that this story doesn’t match the historical data. His analysis suggests the white working class was never a consistently solid base for Democrats after the 1930s, and that its shift toward the Republican Party started much earlier than many assume.

Stonecash undertook this study after encountering surprising results during research for his recent book The Transformation of the Republican Party. While exploring how Republicans gained political strength in the postwar era, he tested the popular belief that Democrats lost the white working class in the 1960s and 1970s because of racial and cultural backlash. Expecting to find evidence for that theory, he instead discovered that white working-class support for Democrats had already eroded by the late 1940s. That contradiction led him to a deeper investigation using data from Gallup surveys, the American National Election Studies, and historical voting records.

“This focus on the voting of the white working class emerged as of result if research on another issue. I was writing a book on how the Republican Party has changed over time,” said Stonecash, distinguished professor emeritus at Syracuse University. “A conventional explanation of their resurgence in presidential and congressional elections is that they drew the white working class away from the Democratic Party after the 1960s because Democrats became too liberal on race and social issues.”

The dominant narrative in political science and media describes a dramatic realignment that began in the 1960s. According to this view, white working-class voters in northern cities had long been a bedrock of Democratic support thanks to the New Deal programs of the 1930s. But as the Democratic Party shifted toward civil rights, feminism, and other progressive causes, the story goes, those voters felt alienated and began voting Republican. Political shifts under presidents like Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan are often described as pivotal turning points in this transformation.

“To verify that, I ran the American National Election Studies time series and was most surprised to find it remarkably inaccurate,” Stonecash explained. “I ran the analysis multiple times because the results are so at odds with the standard explanation. I then acquired Gallup poll data and realized Democrats received strong white working-class support only in 1936 and 1940 and then it faded.”

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To investigate, Stonecash began by reexamining the supposed baseline of Democratic support: the New Deal coalition of the 1930s. Using Gallup polls from 1936 to 1948, he tracked how white working-class voters outside the South supported Democratic presidential candidates. The data showed a surge in 1936 and 1940, but that support fell steadily over the next decade. By 1948, only about half of white lower-class voters were backing Democrats, and that number remained flat in subsequent decades. The idea that Democrats had solid working-class backing through the 1950s and then lost it in the 1960s simply didn’t hold up.

Stonecash also analyzed long-term voting trends from 1952 to 2020, focusing on presidential and House elections. He defined the white working class using three measures: education (those without a college degree), income (those in the bottom two-thirds of earners), and self-identification as working class. Across all indicators, Democratic support was modest—typically hovering around 50 percent or lower. Contrary to the belief that the white working class abandoned Democrats after 1964, the data show that Democrats only won a majority of their votes in one presidential election: Lyndon Johnson’s landslide in 1964.

For House elections, Democrats performed slightly better, with white working-class support reaching or exceeding 50 percent in many years. But the patterns showed no dramatic drop tied to race or cultural issues in the 1960s or 1980s. Instead, white working-class support for Democrats was already soft by the early 1950s and remained relatively stable until a sharper decline occurred after 2008.

“The basic findings are a great surprise,” Stonecash told PsyPost. “There is a voluminous literature focused on how race and social issues transformed American politics. They have been important, but it is not as simple as portrayed. It also means that the portrayal of the white working class as reactionary is too simple.”

Stonecash also examined party composition to see whether the Democratic Party had historically depended more on the white working class than the Republican Party. Using presidential election data, he calculated what share of each party’s vote came from non-college white voters or low-income whites. In the 1950s and 1960s, both parties drew similar portions of their support from the white working class. Over time, Democrats became less reliant on these voters, not because they defected in large numbers, but because the party grew its base among nonwhite voters and college-educated whites. Republicans, by contrast, remained anchored in white working-class support.

The study highlights a key methodological point: party identification can lag behind actual voting behavior. For decades, many white working-class voters continued to call themselves Democrats even as they voted Republican in presidential elections. Stonecash argues that relying on identification rather than actual votes can distort assessments of partisan change. His data show that defections—Democrats voting for Republican presidential candidates—have been a persistent feature since the 1950s.

“Two matters are important,” Stonecash explained. “First, Republicans have been winning a majority of the white working class in presidential elections since 1952. The story that the rise of racial and social issues pushed the white working class to Republicans has problems. We need a serious reexamination of the consistency of white working-class support for Republicans.”

“Second, Donald Trump did not engineer a dramatic shift of the white working class to Republicans. A majority was already supporting Republicans. He attracted roughly five percent more support than recent candidates but not more than Reagan. He is less the transformative vote attractor than many have suggested.”

At the same time, Stonecash acknowledges the limits of his analysis. Aggregating white working-class voters into a single group obscures important differences among them. While some may vote Republican for cultural or religious reasons, others might prioritize economic concerns. Unfortunately, political surveys often provide little insight into how this group thinks about the economy and how they view their long-term prospects.

“Focusing on the white working class as an aggregate, even as I do in these comments, is too simple,” Stonecash noted. “They are a diverse collection of people and the bases of their support for Republicans differ. Some is due to conservative positions on social issues. But we do not know enough about how the white working class thinks about economic issues and how they can survive and prosper in society. We have lots of survey data about racial and social issues, but nearly enough about how they think about the economy and how they should function. I hope this work sets off more research about that.”

He also cautions against using outdated assumptions to guide political strategy or public discourse. Both major parties have used the narrative of working-class realignment to advance competing moral arguments—either celebrating their support as a sign of authenticity or blaming progressive activists for electoral losses. But if that foundational story is flawed, the conclusions drawn from it may be misleading.

“There is much research necessary expand on the issue of white working class voting,” Stonecash said. “To analyze it more, I have spent the last year or so working on a book entitled The Myth that Democrats Lost the White Working Class. t is an effort to build on the article and ask how did a conventional wisdom develop if the data do not support it and what do we make of all the theories and analyses about how race and social issues moved people to the Republican Party. I also make a stab at trying to explain why a majority of the white working class has voted for Republican presidential candidates.”

“I have always been fascinated by how conventional wisdoms develop that are inaccurate,” he concluded. “I have researched some prior ones. This issue demonstrates how powerful a conventional wisdom can be in structuring how we think about change in American politics.”

The study, “The Democrats Loss of the White Working Class: Another Look at the Evidence,” was published September 26, 2024.