So much for 'progressive centrism' (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Ever since Joe Bidenās election, the media has displayed an almost obsessive interest in the Democratic Partyās dwindling popularity among the working class, and its booming support among affluent professionals. The trend has been so dramatic that some Republicans have sought to rebrand the GOP as the party of the āmultiracial working classā.
But will this strategy work? To truly understand the gentrification of the Democratic Party, we need only observe how the class composition of the Democratic presidential primary electorate shifted between 2008 and 2020. Looking at the 16 states that voted in both 2008 and 2020 before the winner was all but decided, the trend is the same: poor and working-class voters are shrinking as a share of the Democratic electorate, while middle-class and affluent voters are growing.
In these 16 states, counties where the median household income (MHI) is under $60,000/year went from contributing 35.3% of the presidential primary vote in 2008 to just 28.6% in 2020. By contrast, counties where the MHI is over $80,000/year rose from 24.5% to 30.7%, with about half of that growth in counties where the MHI is over $100,000/year.
In some states this transformation was particularly astonishing. In Virginia, for instance, counties where the MHI is under $60,000/year accounted for 32% of the vote in 2010, while counties where the MHI is over $100,000/year accounted for 34.4%. Ten years later, the stateās poorest counties contributed just 25.3% of the presidential primary vote, while the richest counties contributed 41.4%. During the same period in South Carolina, the electorate shifted away from poor and working-class counties and toward middle-class counties by 20%. In North Carolina, the shift was 11%; in Florida, it was 9%.
These changes have occurred not only because the party is growing in prosperous areas, but because itās also collapsing in struggling ones ā a trend that has been most dramatic in the South. Middle-class counties in Tennessee, for instance, grew as a share of the Democratic electorate from 30% to 37.3%, and their raw vote shot up by more than 50,000. But at the same time, poorer counties went from representing 65.9% of the electorate to 56.3%, and their raw vote plunged by over 120,000.
What accounts for such profound changes to the Democratic coalition? Some argue the cultural aesthetic of liberal professionalsĀ has become toxicĀ among voters without a college degree. Others believe the party hasĀ squandered its credibilityĀ with working-class voters by failing to pursue a robust economic agenda. The former perspective counsels Democrats to move to the centre on culture; the latter urges them to move Left on economics. Ideally, Democrats should do both. But the truth is that these problems have been brewing for decades, and itās unclear if they can be reversed.
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