There is no shortage of interest in the voting patterns of the white working class. Of particular note is how this group – especially since the sea change of the 1960s – finds themselves so consistently on the wrong side of progressive politics. The national preoccupation with the white working class’s affinity for rightwing conservatism has propagated countless bestselling books, long reads and think pieces that are often mawkish or condescending or both. Their almost exclusively centrist white elite authors plead for us to understand how those in the white working class feel “left behind”, and that they turned hard right because Democrats didn’t tend to their economic anxieties. These pieces pose questions like “Why is the working class leaving the Democratic party?” and equate the term “working class” with whiteness, ignoring any explanation for why the Black working classes – which suffered far more economic angst and Covid-related disparities in the last decade – continue to vote solidly blue.
But after three presidential elections in which non-college-educated white voters (the most functional definition we have for this group) have overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump, journalists and researchers are now questioning if these voters will go Maga again in the 2026 midterms. Pollsters speculate that they are breaking with Trump: his approval ratings have recently dipped below 50% with non-college-educated whites, as their economics are no better off under Trump 2.0 – down 14 points in the last 15 months.
This handwringing about the marriage between Trump and his least affluent white voters blindly looks towards changing economic tides to explain past voting and forecast upcoming elections. It’s a historically misguided assumption, however, that the downturn drove the white working class into Trump’s arms, and that his failure to redress their conditions will be the cause of their potential breakup. Generations of voters in the US have proven that in times of expanding democracy and the perceived challenge to their resources posed by other races, the white working class had the choice to side with the conditions of all working people but repeatedly aligned with white elites who shored up their racial anxieties with state-backed force against their perceived competition. That’s because, as past politics reveal, the white working class has repeatedly prioritized racial power as their political priority. Even when siding with conservatives has cost them the most economically, they continue to measure their gains racially.
