Introducing the CWCP Newsletter
Introducing the CWCP Newsletter
A new way to promote the latest research and writing from the Center for Working Class Politics.
Welcome to the new CWCP newsletter.
For those unfamiliar, The Center for Working-Class Politics is a research institution focused on studying and understanding working-class voters and their political behavior. The Center sponsors surveys of working-class voters to gauge attitudes about progressive political messages, candidate appeal, and policy proposals.
Our work has been featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Nation, The New Republic, and more. Our work is made possible thanks to generous contributions from individual donors and the support of Jacobin magazine.
You can learn more about the Center and our work by visiting our website. If you would like to donate please click here.
In the coming weeks we will release more of our original findings on this platform. If you’re interested in receiving updates about our work please subscribe.
New CWCP/YouGov Poll Tests Harris’s Strength Among Pennsylvania’s Working Class
Jacobin magazine released the results from a new poll designed by CWCP and fielded by YouGov.
We tested Harris’s strength across occupation, income, and education to give a fuller picture of working-class political preferences. We found that:
Among manual workers, 55.9% prefer Trump and only 36.2% prefer Harris. Among service and clerical workers, Harris has the edge with 47.7% support to Trump’s 42%. Among professionals, Harris leads with 47.3% support to Trump’s 44.9% support. The candidates are in a dead heat among managers and business owners: Harris has 46.4%, Trump has 46.4%.
Among voters with a four-year college degree or more, Harris commands a sizable lead (51.1%) over Trump (40.4%). Voters with some college education, an associate degree, or vocational education also prefer Harris (49.6%) over Trump (42.3%). However, voters with a high school diploma or less prefer Trump (49.6%) over Harris (41.8%).
Among current and former union members, Trump leads with 47.1% support compared to Harris’s 43.2%, while Harris has the advantage among nonunionized Pennsylvanians, with 48.2% of the vote compared to Trump’s 43.2%.
But perhaps most interesting were our findings regarding workplace insecurity:
[A]mong workers who report having recently “experienced a job loss due to unfair firing,” 52.6% support Trump and only 37.4% support Harris, while 47.1% of workers who have not reported such a job loss prefer Harris and 45.3% prefer Trump. Among workers who report working a “very or somewhat insecure job,” 58.3% prefer Trump while only 32.6% prefer Harris. Those who work a “very or somewhat secure job,” however, prefer Harris (47.5%) to Trump (44.5%).
These findings, which suggest that economically precarious workers find Trump particularly appealing, shouldn’t be too surprising. Consider, as Jared Abbott, Executive Director of CWCP, recently showed:
Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was jobs and trade — and not immigration or any other divisive social or cultural issue — that had top billing in Trump’s 2016 rhetoric. On average, Trump invoked jobs and trade (“jobs,” “manufacturing,” “unfair trade deals,” etc.) 10.3 times per statement or speech, compared to the 8.3 times he invoked immigration (21 percent fewer average mentions) and the less than one time per statement or speech he referenced controversial social issues (excluding immigration), from abortion to trans rights and Black Lives Matter.
Moreover, as Abbott continues:
Trump’s discussion of jobs and trade focused on three key themes: mass job loss due to bad trade policies, life getter harder and harder for American workers, and blaming elites for doing nothing to stop the decline of the working class.
You can read the full results of our new poll here.
NEXT UP: A New CWCP Report “Can Populism Help Kamala Harris Win Pennsylvania?” to be released by Jacobin magazine in the coming week.
Additional analysis and commentary on that report to be released through this newsletter. Be sure to subscribe and tell your friends.