Erin Norman is the Lee Family Fellow and Senior Director of Communications Strategies at State Policy Network.

In December, the Liberal Patriot published an article with a headline you couldn’t ignore—Class Conflict and the Democratic Party. The engaging piece highlighted the transition of the Democratic Party as the party of the working class to one of professional elites.

In diving into the factions in the Democratic Party, the article says:

“The key schism that lies at the heart of dysfunction within the Democratic Party and the U.S. political system more broadly is between professionals associated with “knowledge economy” industries and those who feel themselves to be the “losers” in the knowledge economy – including growing numbers of working-class and non-white voters.”

Working-class voters and blue-collar workers, of all racial backgrounds, do seem to be leaving the Democratic Party but the characterization of those voters as seeing themselves as losers in the modern economy may be more media narrative than truth.

State Policy Network conducted a poll in December 2023 which included questions connected to this point including occupation industry and feelings about their place in society. We used occupation data to classify workers into members of the “creative-class” or “not creative-class,” borrowing from Richard Florida’s terminology. The creative class, as Florida describes it, is a growing group of jobs with the purpose of creating “new ideas, technology or creative content” that are largely intangible.

With different categories of workers defined, we looked at a few metrics to get a sense of demographic differences. First, it is true that non-creative class workers, which includes categories like retail, manufacturing, the trades and healthcare[1], earn less than members of the creative class. But they also require less formal education, which means less debt, and are slightly more likely to live in rural areas, which have a lower cost of living.

Furthermore, membership in the creative class may give people a degree of social status they incorrectly equate with financial stability. Creative class workers are more likely to rate their financial situation as excellent even when controlling for income. Workers in creative-class industries are less concerned about losing financial stability, even when accounting for overall income.

The SPN poll directly asked Americans how they felt about their place in today’s economy based on their education, experience, skills, and talent. Few said they felt like a loser—not an unexpected result given the existence of overconfidence bias. More to the point, the exact same proportion of the creative class and non-creative class workers responded they feel like they are losing out. Because such a small portion of the sample self-identified as losing out in today’s economy, deeper analysis is limited. We can see that this group is equally likely to identify as Republican, Democrat, or Independent and voted for Biden and Trump in roughly equal numbers (33 percent and 37 percent respectively) in 2020. A multivariate analysis shows that worker category has an insignificant effect on the likelihood of perceiving oneself as being on the losing end of the current economic structure.[2] 

The Democrats have increasingly shifted away from an issue set that appeals to working-class Americans and toward one aimed at getting maximum support from the highly educated creative class. This ideological shift has led to class conflict within the Democratic Party, in part because of framing that suggests being part of the educated creative class is the only way to succeed, despite significant evidence to the contrary. What the Democrats—and politicians as a whole—must realize is that both groups must exist in our modern economy, and therefore a long-term winning political strategy cannot maximize one group at the expense of the other.

Jobs in the non-creative class do include many lower-paying and less glamorous jobs. But the fact that the knowledge economy is growing does not eliminate the need for these jobs, many of which keep the knowledge economy infrastructure operational. Creative-class jobs will not escape technological advances that ultimately pare down the number of workers needed, much like the industrial boom did to manual labor. What then will a party focused only on the economic elites in society have to offer?

Economic policy that will capture voters over the long-term will focus on providing opportunities for upward mobility in all sectors of the economy and avoiding favoritism, such as student loan forgiveness programs that only apply to workers who need certain university-trained skills. Government must avoid picking winning and losing sectors through subsidies and burdensome regulation. The modern economy sits in a delicate balance—if policy or political attitudes shut out or discourage participation in certain sectors, we all end up losers.

As we head into the 2024 election season, campaigns that do not heed this advice are at risk of having a “deplorables” or “47 percent don’t pay taxes” moment —one that shows there is a massive disconnect between the views and values of a candidate and the voters whose trust they want.

[1] While doctors, researchers and other healthcare specialists are highly educated and employ a certain degree of creativity in their work, in the sheer numbers most healthcare workers to not fall into these categories and instead are health aids, nursing assistants or other positions often paid hourly. Furthermore, most healthcare work involves hands-on, in-person work which sets it apart from other types of creative-class work.

[2] The most strongly related variable is support for Trump in the 2020 election.