Rust Belt states gave the former president his win margin in 2016. won by well under 100,000. Joe Biden won them back in 2020, but not by enough. American Family Voices released a poll days ago that examines Democrats’ strengths and weaknesses in those places.
We know by now that there is plenty of grievance to go around and for Republicans to play to. Some of it is economic. Some is a more generalized sense that America’s middle class is losing ground. Men like Donald Trump find it easier to give the aggrieved someone to blame than to address less tangible economic and political forces behind the slippage.
In my state, a Roy Cooper can still win the governorship on the strength of Democratic turnout in the cities. Then he moves into the governor’s mansion to find himself facing down an inplaccable Republican legislature elected in rural areas Democrats consistently lose. Gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, and other noxious legislation follow. Nationally, it is similar, even accounting for our Rube Goldberg method for electing presidents. Ask Joe Biden about BBB.
American Family Voices examined voting patterns in five key states: Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. They found that Democrats in 2020 increased their margins in big cities, big city suburbs and in college towns. Yes, there’s a but, writes Mike Lux (emphasis mine):
But where Democrats got totally hammered was in the counties where the manufacturing sector was heavier than average. In those midsize manufacturing counties (think Scranton, PA; Youngstown, OH; or Dubuque, IA), where Obama in 2012 had actually won by over total 100,000 votes, our net loss in margin by 2020 was almost 800,000 worse than in 2012. And in the smaller manufacturing counties, our net loss of margin from 2012 to 2020 was almost 1.9 million votes, totally swamping all the gains in big cities, suburbs, and college towns combined.
The way to reclaim those areas is to focus on “the rising cost of living, jobs, and the economy, the rising cost of health care,” all of more concern in these states, the poll found, than Republican culture war issues.
Rising prices are a serious concern Republicans will blame on Joe Biden and Democrats rather than less tangible economic forces. AFV finds that voters it polled “are fiercely anti-Big Business, strongly believe that the rules get rigged to benefit those at the top and are angry at their jobs having been moved overseas.” Voters need to know — need to be told and told and told — the real source of inflation is corporate greed.
“Given those feelings,” Lux writes, “a message about corporate profiteering and price gouging causing rising prices will resonate.”
We should also lean into populist messaging on health care. Nothing has been inflationary for longer than health care costs; nothing has hurt working families more than those price increases. If we lead with stopping the rising cost-of-living discussion with health care, it will make voters feel like we are taking on inflation in general.
It’s not that Republicans are that much more popular in factory towns and rural places. It’s that Republicans are quicker to offer voters someone to blame than solutions to their problems. Just not the real sources of of their pain.
A majority of Factory Town voters say they or a family member has suffered from a chronic health condition, and have had personal experience with job loss, mental health issues, addiction, and disabilities. These folks, many of whom used to have decent jobs, pay, health benefits, and a pension, are having a hard time making it. They blame the politicians of both parties for ignoring their problems and leaving them behind, but mostly they blame Big Business, CEOs, and the top 1%.
The thing they blame the most for their economic hardships are corporations moving jobs overseas, followed among Democratic and Independent voters by the issue of the top 1% rigging the rules to take more wealth from the rest of us (Republicans in these counties also heavily blame high taxes and government spending, enough that it ties the top 1% issue for second in the list of things causing hardship.) Other issues causing hardship mentioned by significant numbers of people include bad trade deals, too much spending on overseas wars, and a lack of support for family farmers and small businesspeople.
The three most unfavorable ratings in the poll are the corporate media (-45), wealthy corporations (-36), and corporate CEOs (-34).
One other point here: the most salient argument against Republicans, and the thing voters are most negative about them on, is the perception that Republicans are too tied to wealthy, the elite, and Big Business. Republicans are also not rated highly on understanding regular people’s lives.
If you are seeing a trend here, you are right: anti-big corporation economic populism is the path to reaching these voters.
Democrats are no longer viewed as caring enough about these issues among voters they’ve lost in these states. Republicans hammering culture war issues reinforce that in a way that pushing back on culture war issues does not remedy. Democrats have to be seen and heard fighting for them, fighting to stop the outsourcing of jobs and fighting for “Made in USA” again, not just playing defense against the GOP’s wedge issue du jour. It makes Democrats look weak, and that’s just how Republicans like it.
Lux concludes:
Democrats have dug themselves a hole in small and midsize Factory Town counties, the constituency that swung the biggest and hardest against the Democrats from 2012 to 2020. The party brand is weak there, with some big negatives. But these voters are not the cautious, small ball changes kind of swing voters that many DC pundits imagine swing voters to be. Their biggest critiques of the Democratic Party are that they are ineffective, weak, and lack the kind of economic plan that will bring major change to these voters’ lives. What Democrats need to do to win Factory Town voters back is to deliver real economic change.
The good news is that this poll shows there is a clear path forward for Democrats. Republicans have big negatives as well, and they revolve around the economic issues people in these counties care the most about right now: Republicans are seen as the party of big corporations and the top 1%, which these voters strongly dislike.
Democrats tend to assume they don’t need to tell voters what they assume voters already know. Um, no. They need to hear Democrats reflect back their views on these issues if voters are to identify and vote with them.
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