The “Emerging Democratic Majority”

Abstract Since 2016, there has been a renewed debate among scholars over the definition of postindustrial class divisions (especially with respect to education and occupation) and their relationship to the growth of populism. Similar disputes have emerged among elites within and between major parties in multiple Western democracies. On the left and right, party factions increasingly divide over the preferred social bases of their coalitions and how to adapt the party’s rhetoric or policies to capture them. In the United States, the Republican Party is divided between candidates eager to expand on growing support from traditionally Democratic, non-college-educated workers attracted by Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, and those who wish to restore the party’s earlier focus on so-called fiscal conservatism—probusiness, free market–oriented policies. Similarly, since 2020, figures with ties to the Democratic Party have been debating what role progressive, college-educated voters should have on the party’s identity and political future, or whether the party needs to reorient itself to recapture non-college-educated workers moving toward the Republicans. The ideological tendencies, identified by Democratic strategists with college-educated voters, have shaped the party’s response to worsening social and economic conditions among their former, working-class base. Specifically, meritocracy became more central to Democrats’ framing of economic decline as the party embraced more neoliberal policies on trade and the “New Economy.” These trends on the Democratic side help clarify the terms on which right-wing populists are garnering increased support from a multiracial cohort of non-college-educated voters.