The Daily Signal - GOP Emerges as Working-Class Party

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Patrick Ruffini is a Republican pollster with a reputation for deciphering data and spotting trends. His new book, “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP,�� takes a deep dive into one of the biggest political realignments of our lifetime. Ruffini spoke with The Daily Signal about the demographic changes that are rapidly transforming America’s two biggest political parties—and what it means for the 2024 presidential election and beyond. “When I first started in politics, Republicans had this reputation as being the country club party,” Ruffini said. “Democrats had this reputation as being the party of the people, the party of the working class.” He added, “Flash forward almost 20 years, and that trend has completely almost reversed.” Recent election results show the GOP’s gains with working-class voters were not an aberration or confined to one candidate. Republicans today are increasing their support among non-college voters—the type of working-class American who once loyally supported Democrats. “The parties used to be defined by income and now they’re defined by education,” Ruffini said. “I argue that that's good news for Republicans in the sense that you have many more working-class, non-college voters in the country than you have college-educated voters.” The breakdown for 2024, according to Ruffini, is about 60% non-college voters compared to 40% who have a college degree. This, he surmises, will provide the GOP with an advantage in upcoming elections. Factor in Republican gains with Hispanic and black voters, and you have a different GOP than the one of yesteryear. Most surprising to Ruffini, however, is how the political alignment happened. “I did not expect Donald Trump to be the one who was able to pull this off, but my credit goes to him for getting us to this point,” Ruffini said. “The fact that he was able to expand the Republican coalition first to include the Rust Belt states and dramatically expand Republican performance among working-class voters in 2016, and then in 2020, almost defying the odds and winning re-election with the help of more Hispanic voters and continued progress among black voters,” he added. “It really has upended what we think the two parties are about.” Ruffini began writing “Party of the People” after observing the trends of the 2020 election, and he hopes it serves as a helpful guide for readers to understand the realignment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The trends are so strong. And by the way, the trends are not just in America. They're happening in throughout the Western world. So you see this realignment along class lines that it's happening in elections, really around the world. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, November 7th. I'm Rob Blewey. And those were the words of Patrick Rafini, author of a new book on Sale Today, Party of the People, Inside the Multiracial Populous Coalition, remaking the GOP. Today is Election Day in America, and what better topic to discuss than polling. Rafini closely follows the political trends at his firm Eschelon Insights, and with his new book, he offers readers a deep dive about the new coalition that's remaking the Republican Party. We discuss what it means and why it's one of the biggest political realignments of our lifetime. Stay tuned for today's interview, and remember to vote today. It's your opportunity to have a say in the future of our country.

This is Mike Althe Harwich Foundation. I know how the left and the deep state operate, because I've seen it from the inside. When I was working for the Trump administration, I learned how the left made our lives miserable and how they continued to think they could play by their own rules. Well, now we're taking all these tricks and tactics that were deployed against the Trump administration and turning them against the Biden regime. Through the work of the oversight project, we're exposing the left for what they are and embarrassing some actors responsible.

We're using strategic foias and fearless litigation, to force these bureaucrats to deliver documents they'd prefer to never see the light of day. But for our work to be successful, we need patriots like you to stand with us. You can take action now. Visit heritage.org slash oversight to learn more. There's no time to waste. Patrick Rafini is a Republican pollster who has developed a reputation for deciphering data and spotting trends. So when Patrick shared a copy of his new book with me, I knew it was worth paying attention to. The book is called Party of the People Inside the Multiracial Populous Coalition,

remaking the GOP, and it's on sale today, perfectly time for Election Day, 2023. Patrick, we're delighted that you would be with The Daily Signal today on such an important day for you. Congratulations on the new book. Thanks, Rob. It's great to be here. Well, your work with the Republican Party goes back a couple of decades, and you have certainly had a transformational effect, not only on the party's apparatus and thrust into the digital age, but now in when it comes to polling. But I have to ask, did you ever expect to be writing about the multi-racial populist

coalition that's remaking the GOP when you first entered into politics all those years ago? Not in this way. And how I would explain that evolution was I started out in Republican politics, maybe a little bit kind of an establishment style Republican. And I was as surprised as anyone by Donald Trump's victory in 2016. And the fact that he was able to expand the Republican coalition first to include the Rusbell states and dramatically expand Republican performance among working class voters in 2016, And then in 2020, almost defying the odds and winning re-election with the help of more Hispanic voters and continued progress among black voters and really kind of showing that this shift towards a

multiracial populist politics is really happening. And it really has upended, really, what we think the two parties are about. So when I first started in politics, Republicans, had this reputation as being the country club party. You had polling that continually reinforced that this was a liability for Republicans and Democrats had this reputation as being the party of the people, the party of the working class. You had the book by Thomas Frank in 2004 talking about how could it be that Republicans are starting to win working class voters because they're voting against their economic interest. Flash forward almost 20 years. And that trend has

completely almost reversed. Who is supporting the two political parties where Republicans are really consolidating and gaining support among non-college voters who I think define the working class today. And that's also a shift. The parties used to be defined by income and now they're defined by education. And I argue that that's good news for Republicans in the sense of you have many more working class non-college voters in the country than you have college educated voters. So I did not expect Donald Trump to be the one who was able to pull this off, but my credit goes to him for actually getting us to this point. I want to go back to Trump's election in 2016, but stay on that point that you just mentioned because you in the book document the numbers.

Pretty clearly for readers to see, why do the non-college voters matter so much to whichever party is able to attract them and retain them as loyal to them? So one of the numbers I really mentioned early on in the book is that about 70% of voters belong to groups that have been shifting Republican in the last two presidential elections. And the way that's defined is you have white working class voters and you have voters who are non-white as a whole. And that holds whether or not they're college or non-college. The only group that has been shifting to the left have been white voters with a college degree. So already you're starting to see Republicans becoming a just much more broadly based party in terms of the new support they're attracting. And yeah, that doesn't mean that all these voters are voting Republican right now.

What that means is things are changing, right, in that direction. And as a pollster, I really am mostly concerned about change off the existing partisan baseline. So what new people can we attract? What new people can we add to the coalition to get to 50% plus one? And those voters are mostly unified by common life experiences that transcend their racial background. And primarily today, that is graduating from college or not graduating from college is the primary dividing line. And what continues to be true, despite, I think, predictions to the contrary, is that non-college voters remain a strong majority of the country with at least 60% of the adult population having never graduated

from college. And that number isn't really shifting. You've seen during the pandemic, people not enrolled in college as much. So I think the political party with the initiative among that majority of voters is going to be the one that has a powerful advantage going into 2024 and beyond. Thank you for that answer. And take us back seven years ago to election day 2016. Was that the point where you began to see this trend emerge? Or were there signs even predating that that there was maybe some opportunities for Republicans to make inroads? So it was clear that Republicans would make inroads heading into 2016 among working class voters. The difference was the belief that they would be more than offset by losses among college graduates or more

than offset by losses, especially among minority voters. And the losses among non-college graduates were actually pretty significant in a lot of places. The issue, though, and why they didn't end up mattering as much is that they were concentrated in states that did not matter as much in the electoral college. So think about the coasts in California, New York. Our places with a lot of college graduates, but they don't matter much because they always vote Democrat, no matter. what in elections. The states with a lot of college graduates were places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that really mattered a lot. So it was uneven how that shift played out. But the other thing that didn't also happen that I think many people, including myself, expected to happen, is that Trump

really didn't lose any ground among minority voters. He didn't really lose very much ground to actually gain some ground among African American voters. Evidence is mixed on the Hispanic vote, but didn't really lose much ground there. And he made pretty significant gains. And so I think that that speaks to the fact that white working class voters and minority voters, the members that the sort of mainstay of the Republican coalition, this mainstay of the Republican coalition and these mainstay of the Democratic coalition have a lot more in common than people think in terms of how they vote, in terms of how they process information and think about the issues that are before them. It is a I think practical. I mean, they are very pragmatic, practical about their choices. They care about

the performance of the political parties, and they care right now about the performance of the current administration when it comes to inflation and the rising costs of basic necessities. And I think that that is really what's driving this trend forward. We are talking with Patrick Grafini, author of The New Book, A Party of the People. Patrick, you did a a preview of the book for Politico magazine, which focused on how Democrats lost this working class vote. Share with us more about this political realignment, particularly with somebody in the White House who really has, at least from my perspective, made an effort to reach working class voter showing up, for instance, recently on the UAW picket line, emphasizing his

roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Does this come as a surprise to you at all? I think that it shows that the trends are so strong. And by the way, the trends are not just in America, they're happening in throughout the Western world. So you see this realignment along class lines that it's happening in elections really around the world. So I think that Biden can only do so much to mitigate. I think the effect, the fallout from these trends that are unfolding and have been unfolding for decades, really. I mean, going back to the 1960s, when you had Richard Nixon really trying very hard in 1972 to appeal to the hard hats to these union members and ultimately succeeding in that and succeeding in a way that we haven't seen until Donald Trump in 2016.

But these trends have really been unfolding over a really long period of time. And so that's why I argue they're going to be hard to reverse. Like you might see in a future election maybe things go back to quote unquote normal. but having come myself, sort of my personal journey, having come from the more started out my career in the more establishment, let's say, wing of the Republican Party and of the conservative movement, I would say we're not going back to that. We're not going to be going back to a period in time where Republicans and conservatives are counting sort of upper income people as core members of the coalition, which was the case as recently as 2012. that things have fundamentally changed. They have shifted. And that means our policy priorities as well need to shift to reflect that. Let's also talk about two other important groups where we're seeing Republicans make gains.

That's Hispanic voters and black voters. What can you tell us about this change? And why do you attribute this improvement, particularly since Republicans historically have struggled with these minority groups? It was a surprise, right? I mean, it was a surprise in both 2020. It was a surprise in 2020. 20 to see the gains that Trump made with Hispanic voters, but nobody thought he could. How could somebody who talks about the border the way Trump does?

And it turns out Hispanic voters in particular, they care just as much about border security as other voters do. I mean, that is a myth that, you know, they don't care. And I think in some ways, they don't, the current wave for the, at least the Hispanic voters who vote, right, are Hispanics who came here legal. to the United States. And so that's a big difference, right? When you when you see these waves and this news footage of illegal immigration at the border, in the polling I've done close to the border, you see those Hispanic voters, especially more so than others, are more concerned about what's

happening down there. So it's a myth. It turns out to be a myth that Trump and Republicans had alienated Hispanics with that issue. So I think that essentially the issue set did change in in 2020. It became more about the economy. This is a very economically focused voting group, more so than maybe even a focus on social issue. They're very economically focused and focused on getting ahead in America, making it in America. And I think they're responding to some degree to the policies that they're seeing come out of both the Democratic and the Republican parties. And concluding that at least the Republican policies, when you look at a place like South Texas of supporting oil and gas, that those are the things that they understand that are actually seeing in their lives that are helping them get ahead and get good jobs.

And so that is really, I think, the trends we're seeing play out. You see it in South Texas. You see it in places like South Florida. In the Cuban American community, you see it in Orlando with Puerto Ricans. I mean, it's across the board. we're seeing this. Over the weekend, Patrick, the New York Times revealed its latest polling results in key swing states for the 2024 presidential election with Donald Trump, besting Joe Biden in five

of those six states. What trends are you watching in those places in particular? Obviously, they will be the deciding factor with the Electoral College. What should our listeners be paying attention to that's on your mind? Those polls showed the arrival of this coalition, what I call the multiracial populist coalition. And it really is about the fact that in this poll, Trump was getting 22% of the African-American vote. He was losing Hispanic voters by just eight points. He was within one point among voters under 30.

So if any version of that, even a more mild version of that materializes on election day one year from today, I think we can say this coalition has arrived. It has really delivered and is really changing. I think the makeup of the two political parties. Now, it's still early, but I do think that the reason why we are seeing Biden having such trouble, I think, is primarily due to these voters. and the core pillars of who have been to date, some of the core pillars of the Democratic coalition, who are abandoning, abandoning him for Trump. And it's not just like they're not voting.

It's that they're actively, when you have 22 percent of black voters saying, not just we're maybe going to sit the election out, but we're actually going to go cross over and vote for Trump. That is historically unprecedented for a party that has really struggled to gain. even 10% of a black vote. Now, we're obviously operating under the assumption that Joe Biden does, in fact, win the Democratic nomination and run for reelection. When you remove him from the scenario, though, are there any warning signs that you think

conservatives or Republicans should be mindful of from either this New York Times poll or your own studies at Echlein Insights? Yeah, so they ran a number of different scenarios. And it turns out if you remove Trump, a generic Democrat would beat Trump by 8. points. Now, he would still do better among some of these voter groups, but it really just shows you the extent to which Biden has become a drag on the ticket on Democrats, specifically. And I believe that I think obviously Trump is running again. He has an opportunity to recreate and expand this coalition in many ways he brought it about. He accelerated the trend that I think was already happening.

was already unfolding, but I think his message really pushed it forward. But now that we've had, Republicans have had a couple of elections with Trump as the standard bearer, voters have realigned. I don't think we're going back to the old coalitions. So I think other candidates too certainly have the opportunity to carry that coalition forward. As we've seen in elections, I think we saw that in New York, in Florida, in some of the positive results that came out of the mid-term. terms. You're seeing other candidates win with Trump's coalition. Let me ask you this. A great segue to this next question. The next Republican presidential debate will take place in Miami Wednesday night. Those candidates are obviously all well below Trump when it comes to polling, including in some of the

key early states. Do any of them have an opportunity to expand on this coalition that you and I've been talking about here on this interview and make the same sorts of gains among the multiracial populist coalition the Trump has? I mean, I think you saw DeSantis do it in Florida, actually do it in Florida. You saw, and I think Nikki Haley certainly personally represents the fact that that somebody who is a minority is not automatically a Democrat, right? I mean, I think she would have a very personally powerful message around that. Tim Scott also brings. He is also a different face, a different kind of face. But I don't think, I don't think Republican voters are going to be the diversity police here, right? I think they're going to decide this race on the merits. But what I do think

that this coalition has staying power, right? I think that this is a coalition that ultimately kind of just is the coalition that kind of sees the world as it actually is and not as this liberal utopia, right? I think that's really what unites them and defines this multiracial populist coalition, whether you're a member of a minority group, or whether you're working class. You're somebody who had to fight hard for everything they've gotten, didn't have anything handed to you, and is not taken by, let's say, these academic theories and the things and all the craziness we're seeing on college campuses right now. Even if maybe they vote a Democrat in other elections, it's just a much more practical,

level-headed, I think, type of voter that is gravitating towards the Republicans right now. Patrick, are there any final words you want to say about your new book or any other things that you're observing right now? I'm very excited to share this in this book with folks. It's been a long time coming. I started right after the 2020 election. And I'm even surprised myself at how well this seems to have held up even heading into the 2024 election. So I hope it can be a lasting contribution, I think, to our understanding of

where we are in our politics right now and what really defines these two political parties. Patrick Grafini, I think it will be a lasting contribution. Again, the book is called Party of the People Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition, Remaking the GOP. We thank you for joining the Daily Signal and best wishes as you promote the book. Thanks, Rob. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. Be sure to check out our evening show right here in this podcast feed, where we bring you the top news of the day.

Also, make sure you subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you prefer to listen and help us reach more listeners by leaving a five-star rating and review. We appreciate all of your feedback. Thanks again for listening. Have a great day. And don't forget to vote. We'll be back with you at 5 p.m. for our top news edition. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation.

Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheris. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.