The WWC at a
national level has long been a large voter base for the Republican Party at the
Presidential Level, certainly from 1980 onwards, and arguably in '68 and definitively in '72....
What is often lost in these discussions is the
regional shifts in support levels for Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates among WWC voters has shifted with time.
Depending upon definitions of the WWC there will be some variances when we look at both national and regional level of support for Presidential Candidates by Party in the General Election.
The three typical methods involve one, two, or all of the following:
1.) Educational Attainment
2.) Occupational Data
3.) Income Data
(This is why when I pull City/Precinct breakdowns, etc I try to pull all three data sets to include in my posts, which can help provide context especially in heavily WWC states such as Oregon)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/22/who-exactly-is-the-white-working-class-and-what-do-they-believe-good-questions/?utm_term=.906e8beb287ehttps://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/04_demographics_teixeira.pdfNationally the results look something like this among WWC voters over time:
1960/1964: 55% Democratic
1968/1972: 35 % Democratic (Much of this a result of the loss of support among Southern Whites)
1980/1984: 35% Democratic / 61% Republican
1992/1996: +1% Clinton Plurality among WWC voters
2000: +17% Republican wing among WWC voters
2004: +23% Republican wing among WWC voters
So to go back to the National/Regional point towards the beginning of my post, the loss of Southern WWC support goes way back, but despite that various Democrats Carter in '76/'80 and Clinton in '92/'96 (In a 3-Person race) where able to hold their own relatively speaking....
If we shift to
New England, we haven't seen anything resembling that trend over the past few decades, with the exception of the Northern Congressional district of Maine in '16.
Upstate New York... similar gig historically speaking....
We take a peak at WWC voters in the
West Coast, we can definitely see some major trending in traditional timber country and mill towns of Oregon, compared to '88, as well as places in Eastern and SW Washington State.... WWC voters in the cities of the Pacific Northwest have been swinging equally hard towards the Democratic party during that same time....
Flip to the
Great plains (The Dakotas, NE, KS, Eastern Montana, etc....) there has been a big shift towards the Pubs in rural and small town parts of these states for quite some time now... "What's the Matter with Kansas" fame areas....
If we look at the
"Rust Belt", which is not necessarily my favorite term to describe a dynamic and extremely varied region of the country, this definitely does fit the definition of the classic WWC "Swing Voters" that determines elections....
It's pretty clear that the dramatic decline of Clinton support in the rural areas and small towns of
Wisconsin, where dairy and paper mills are a key part of much of the local economy in a majority of these counties was the major reason loss of WI, despite improving on the margins in WOW and with slightly depressed and increased 3rd Party support in heavily Democratic Milwaukie County.
However, these same areas have been flipping back and forth since 1988....
Michigan.... Obviously the reason that the state flipped in 2016 was Macomb County and rural/small town margins "upstate"....
Ohio---- This case is much more obvious---- Gore lost it by 3.5% in 2000, including getting creamed in SE Ohio, which is not a necessary precondition for a Dem "W" in OH, but certainly plays on the margins in a close election.... Kerry was able to make it a bit closer, partially as a result of increasing Dem % in SE OH, holding the 2000 margins in WWC MFG NE areas of the State, and increasing Dem % numbers in '08....
This is an extremely complex state to understand in terms of political-demographics, considering it is essentially a tale of 5-6 separate states, where two of the largest internal domestic migrations of the past 50-60 years (Migration of African-Americans from the Deep South leaving behind the legacy of Jim Crow and White Supremacy and migration of Appalachian-Americans fleeing rural poverty and automation of the Coal Industry, with both populations seeking decent paying union jobs in the manufacturing sector) have created it as ground zero in changing social demographics from 1950-1980.
OH has always been one of the tougher state for Dems to crack among WWC voters, and the concept that Obama's personal support and favorable image was transferable to HRC was always a sketchy proposition at best....
Still, even if you look through County level '08 results in some of the most traditionally Republican parts of the state, that are more rural and agricultural, but still dotted with manufacturing towns and commercial centers, even in traditionally heavily Republican areas in NW and Central Ohio, Obama actually performed exceptionally well...
Shoot, even if you roll into 2012, Obama's numbers held up extremely well in these same overwhelmingly WWC parts of the state.
Pull up the 2016 county map and start scrolling through these same counties in Western and NW Ohio....
Just take a look at places like Allen County, Licking County, etc....
The collapse of Democratic support in the traditional heartland of the Labor Movement in NE-Ohio is obviously extremely concerning, along with the cratering of Democratic support among the traditionally swing 3 CD's of Appalachian-American Ohio that border the Ohio River Valley, which for anyone who has never been there is actually a heavily industrialized working River, where Democrats, even in very recent years have been able to play extremely well in an overwhelmingly WWC part of the state....
Now---- to once again resurrect a pet peeve of mine among multiple Atlas Forum members with both Democratic/Republican/Pink/Libertarian/Tie-dyed avatars alike, is the picking on Appalachia and Appalachian-Americans, which is basically an extension of some internal "Redneck Joke" that they think the rest of the world will find absolutely hilarious and entertaining....
Given me a Jeff Foxworthy cassette tap (Oops- showing my age, and already have one in storage), or Youtube a Larry the Cable guy funniest self-deprecating Redneck jokes ever, fine....
Now, getting back to real business---- most people that have never ever set foot in Ohio actually
don't realize the extent to which discrimination against Appalachian-Americans in Ohio has shaped the mindset of an entire population where discrimination in housing and employment were rife well into the 1970s, and even beyond.
Clinton's widely publicized gaffes on Coal Country, resonated among those of Appalachian-American background not only in SE-OH, but also in the factory downs of Dayton, Springfield, and even Toledo, as well as many other areas in SW and Western Ohio.
25% of the residents of Cincinnati are still Appalachian-Americans.... In 1993, when I was living a few miles down the road in college, the City became the first in the Nation to adopt an Anti-Discrimination clause to protect this population from rampant discrimination.
http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-9-spring-1996/feature/mountain-legacyhttp://articles.latimes.com/1994-03-29/news/mn-39810_1_urban-appalachian-council/2https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/the-original-underclass/492731/So: The WWC has been a long time voter base for the Republican Party, and unless something changes dramatically soon in the near-future it will continue to be such.
Will the WWC voters of the
MidWest and Rust Belt become a long time voter base of the Republican Party? We have yet to see any such evidence, other than Trump's surprise wins in Wisconsin and Michigan, and a larger than expected win in Iowa and Ohio....
The bigger question was Obama's performance in Ohio an exception, or was Trump's performance in Ohio an exception? Or is it more that there is a large bucket of voters up for grabs that will shift the opposite direction every eight years at the Presidential level?
Poll
