Until recently, class has also been a predictor of voting behavior, with most working-class voters consistently voting for Democratic candidates. However, beginning in 2016, and culminating in the 2024 election, the working class has switched their vote, with a majority of working-class voters choosing Republican candidates.

Democrats’ support of the working class goes back to the1930s New Deal legislation that created the social safety net and provided workers with the right to unionize. From the 1930s to 1970s, the Democratic Party was built on a working-class base, reinforced by traditional ethnic and regional loyalties. (1) This Left-Labor Alliance continued in the following decades, resulting in the Democrats being perceived as the party representing the interests of the working class, while the Republicans were increasingly perceived as representing corporations and the more affluent. So, why is the working class switching their political allegiance now? The answer centers on large-scale economic and social processes that began decades earlier.

With conservatives coming to power in the 1980s in the United States and the United Kingdom, the new economic orthodoxy of free trade and “small government” began to replace Keynesian economic policies based on the active role of government and the protection of national markets. While Ronald Reagan, a Republican, was the first U.S. President to embrace free trade and deregulation of business, it was Democratic President Bill Clinton’s policies that further undermined labor interests. In 1994, Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. In 1999, he liberalized the financial sector with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1934. While Clinton’s legacy included important social legislation (Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, for example), it also included the 1996 Welfare Reform bill that cut welfare to the poor by billions of dollars. Clinton’s free trade policies that led to job outsourcing and his fiscal policies that centered around balancing the federal budget hit the working class hard. The income inequality in the United States that exploded during Reagan grew even more under Clinton and all administrations that followed.

While globalization benefited the U.S. economy, with the GDP per capita increasing from less than $15,000 in 1983 to more than $81,000 in 2023, (2) this tremendous economic prosperity did not benefit all Americans. While the bottom 20 percent of workers saw their national income share decline from an already measly 4 percent in 1983 to 3 percent by 2022, the top 20 percent of income earners saw their share of national income soar from 45.1 percent to 52.1 percent in the same time. (3) The middle-income earners were losing ground to the top income earners as well, with the income shares of the second and third quintiles declining in the same time period. (4) In fact, while the already disproportionally high income share of the top 20 percent of earners increased by 7 percent between 1983 and 2022, the share of the bottom 60 percent of workers declined by more than 5 percent in the same time, (5) leading to the phenomenon of the “disappearing middle class.”

The winners of globalization were those at the top of large corporations—the CEOs and large investors—and workers in professional occupations. The losers were the millions of industrial workers whose wages were cut and whose jobs disappeared due to outsourcing. The losing camp included “precariat,” or the new class of low-wage, part-time workers without job security located in the growing service sectors of the economy. Corporate mobility (actual or threatened) has further eroded the power of labor and undercut the ability of unions to bargain for higher wages and better working conditions.

Not surprisingly, the working class began to feel less secure. In the post-WWII decades, the middle-class jobs that offered high school graduates of the postwar decade a stable and comfortable standard of living were no more, halting the postwar trend of upward mobility from the working class to the middle class. They were replaced by insecure, low-pay jobs at the time when the upper and the upper middle class’s incomes and wealth began to skyrocket, giving rise to a huge income gap. Since 1978, the average CEO pay in the top 350 U.S. firms (those connected to the global economy) increased 1,322 percent by 2020, with a CEO taking home $24.2 million on average. (6) The ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation went from 21 to 1 in 1965 to 351 to 1 by 2020. (7) Not surprisingly, the working class felt betrayed and left out.

More recent data on subjective class identification confirms the perception that members of the working class were aware that they were not moving up on the socioeconomic ladder. Indeed, between 2002 and 2022, the percentage of Americans self-identifying as middle class declined by 8 percent. The decline was even steeper among workers in the bottom one third of income distribution and among workers without college education (11 percent decline). (8) The authors behind the survey concluded that “many working Americans today don’t see their work efforts as yielding sufficient income for them to believe they have achieved middle-class status.” (9)

To complicate things further, the working class were less likely to possess what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls “social capital,” or connections to networks of people and institutions that would help them move up. A recent national study that traced changes in social capital by education between 1990 and 2024 concluded that as the social capital of the working class declined, the social capital of the middle-class, college-educated workers increased. The survey found that, unlike those with less education, college graduates have robust civic attachments, large friendship circles, and deep social networks, all of which help them achieve and maintain middle-class status. (10) Working-class individuals lag on social capital indicators and, not surprisingly, feel left out.

The cost of feeling left out on the part of the working class resulted in less civic engagement and increased alienation and resentment. With politicians and the mainstream media writing off the working class and their struggles as irrelevant to their bottom line, (11) many working-class voters withdrew from participation in politics. In the 2024 presidential election, nearly 90 million Americans, many of working-class background, did not vote, and a large share of working-class voters turned away from the Democratic Party and embraced populist demagoguery.

Ironically, the anger and resentment that working-class voters expressed was directed toward those of similar class position—immigrants and racial minorities. The division of the working class along racial/ethnic and native/foreign born identities has been fueled by the media and campaign discourse of the political elites. Together with the working-class retreat from politics in general, this has not only increased the power of the capitalist class vis-à-vis the workers, but also diminished the working class’s historical role as a force for progressive social change and social mobility.

Discussion Questions

  1. Can you think of other ways to distinguish among social classes that go beyond the economic dimensions of income and wealth? (Hint: think about lifestyles, leisure activities, sports, food, education, hobbies, way of speaking and thinking, clothing, home décor, etc.)
  2. What are the reasons that many working-class voters started voting for Republican candidates?  What campaign massages of each party resonated (or did not resonate) with workers?
  3. Has the Democratic party abandoned the working class? What forces keep Democrats from proposing policies to benefit the working class?

Max Weber argued that social class position affects individual’s “life chances,” or the ability to obtain the good things in life. How does social class reinforce social inequality and affect people’s access to good schools, health care, housing, material comfort, or political power?