Since the 2016 election, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) has focused intently on what we believe is the Democratic Party’s overriding political imperative: Regaining the allegiance of working Americans who don’t hold college degrees. The party has suffered severe erosion among non-college white voters, and is losing support among non-college Black, Hispanic, and Asian American voters.
Non-college voters account for about three-quarters of registered voters and about two-thirds of actual voters. Basic math dictates that Democrats will have to do better with these working-class voters if they want to restore their competitiveness outside urban centers and build durable majorities. The party’s history and legacy point in the same direction: Democrats do best when they champion the economic aspirations and moral outlook of ordinary working Americans.
To help them relocate this political north star, PPI has commissioned a series of YouGov polls on the beliefs and political attitudes of non-college voters, with a particular focus on the battleground states likely to decide the outcome of this November’s national elections. This poll, taken April 26 to May 31, is the second in the series.
In addition to illuminating where Democrats stand with non-college voters, these three surveys inform the work of PPI’s new Campaign for Working America, launched this year in partnership with former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio. Its mission is to develop and test new themes, ideas, and policy proposals that can help center-left leaders make a new economic offer to working Americans, find common ground on contentious cultural issues like immigration, crime, and education, and rally public support for keeping America strong and engaged in the defense of freedom abroad.
YouGov sampled a total of 6,033 working-class voters, including 902 working-class voters in a national sample, 843 in Michigan, 833 in Pennsylvania, 816 in Arizona, 812 in Georgia, 803 in North Carolina, 520 in Wisconsin, and 503 in Nevada. Each sample was weighted separately, with some respondents from the national sample pooled into their respective state samples for those separate weights.
Our respondents, like working-class voters in general, are disproportionately conservative and Republican in their political habits. Donald Trump won them in our national poll 47-41. Trump won working-class voters in each state in this sample by 7-10 percentage points. This includes a small but consistent gender imbalance, with Trump’s vote margin consistently 2-4 percentage points higher among men than women.
About 36% of this sample is Democratic, 38% Republican, and 26% Independent — in other words, considering Trump’s electoral fortunes among this population, this survey includes independents and Democrats who are much more likely to support Trump than voters with these partisan inclinations would be among the general population.
About 14% of the sample is Black, 13% of the sample is Hispanic, and the rest is white. Less than 2% of the sample is Asian or Middle Eastern. While Trump likely won less than 10% of Black voters overall in 2020 and just over one-third of Hispanic voters, this poll shows him winning almost 13% of working-class Black voters and about 40% of working-class Latino voters. These non-white Trump voters are disproportionately male, with Trump winning almost twice as many Black and Latino men as Black and Latino women.
