Since our founding in 2021, the Center for Working-Class Politics has provided rigorous original research and analyses built on a fund of intelligence and enthusiasm but dramatically short on money.
We remain, as far as we know, the only independent research center exclusively devoted to surveying and analyzing working-class socio-political attitudes in the United States. We’ve released a range of reports based on our original research. We’ve built a unique database of candidate messaging and demographic characteristics comprising over 10,000 Congressional candidates between 2010 and 2022. Our team has produced dozens of articles for various magazines and newspapers. And original scholarship by our researchers has appeared in the pages of prestigious academic journals like Electoral Studies.
Our research and analyses have received widespread attention, featured in Al Jazeera, BBC Radio, City Journal, Jacobin Magazine, Newsweek, NPR, NY Daily News, Politico, Slow Boring, The American Prospect, The Atlantic, The Boston Review, The Democratic Strategist, The Guardian, The Hill, The Liberal Patriot, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Statesman, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Minnesota Reformer among others. Our work has also been directly reviewed and cited by state legislators and members of Congress, including Senator Bernie Sanders.
All this thanks to thousands of volunteer hours and a wealth of intellectual energy contributed by our researchers.
Still, our influence is limited. To grow, we need your support.
A small donation to the Center can make a big impact. Please consider making a donation at workingclasspolitics.org/donate. Or by becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter.
Your contribution will enable us to:
Design and commission new original surveys, focus groups and other research projects: We devote most of our resources to designing and fielding original high-quality surveys. Funding these surveys makes up the single largest line-item in our budget. That’s because we partner with trusted polling firms to ensure the highest quality data. Meanwhile, our original survey designs are recognized by political scientists as applications of cutting-edge social science methodologies to the analysis of working-class attitudes and voter behavior. Our goal is to expand into focus group research over the coming years, but this depends on additional monetary support.
Analyze and interpret data: Our team of research associates meticulously analyze survey data from our extensive data collection work, as well as a wide range of additional electoral and demographic data to provide insights and actionable recommendations for improving progressives’ standing among working-class voters. And unlike many other research firms who outsource the interpretation of their data to media personalities and pundits, CWCP offers in-house original analyses that provide novel and relevant interpretations of our data for media and policymakers, but we are currently constrained by our limited capacity.
Build New Databases: Our team has built several novel large scale databases, collecting data on candidates and voter preferences across the country and across time. These resources allow us to spot long term trends and to understand, and even predict, shifts in the attitudes of working-class voters. But to keep them up to date and expand them to state-level candidates (currently our database only covers Congressional candidates) we need more financial support.
Disseminate our Findings: We share our findings through our reports, press releases, public forums, and this newsletter, but our impact would be much greater if we were able to devote more time to developing and implementing a concerted media and press strategy.
We have big plans for 2025 including novel experimental studies, focus groups, and major surveys. But in order to get these projects off the ground we need your help.