Understanding the White Vote

by Jack Metzgar

In the nine presidential elections since 1972, white folks have voted for Republicans over Democrats 59 to 39 percent on average. Democrats have done better among white voters in the last three elections, but have still been losing by an average of 53 to 42 percent. Constituting nearly four-fifths of all voters, white Americans, hard working and not, are the base of the Republican Party. Worse, given historical expectations, the white working class votes slightly more Republican than middle-class whites. Even if Democrats can dramatically increase the minority vote (black, Latino, and Asian), where Dems get large majorities, they still probably need to get upwards of 45 percent of the white vote to win a presidential election.

These basic racial demographics are essential to understanding all the attention that is being paid to the “white working class” during this election cycle. Despite some ugly embarrassments in the hands of the mainstream media, the focus on white working-class voters this time around is not simply based on the racial identity of Barack Obama. Rather, a good part of it comes from nearly a decade of work by progressive social scientists and journalists, political operatives and organizers who argue that the white working-class should vote much more Democratic than it does and that it would (or might) if Democrats presented an economic program broadly addressing the needs of production and nonsupervisory workers of all races and genders.

When Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers published America’s Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters in late spring 2000, they blew up a consensus vision of the electorate among political professionals that had grossly overestimated the education, income and occupational status of white voters, particularly those who live in suburbs. Teixeira and Rogers presented an analytic breakdown of the electorate that combined class, race, gender, and union household, and Teixeira has since used various versions of it to keep Democratic politicians and their staffs conscious of the importance of white working-class voters.

Their breakdown begins by separating racial minorities (assumed in 2000 to be secure and large Democratic majorities) from the white vote. Then the electorate is divided into a series of key couplets – men/women, union/nonunion households, and middle class/working class. If you have at least a bachelor’s degree, you’re “middle class”; if you don’t, you’re “working class.” Teixeira and Rogers are aware that this two-class model is woefully simplistic for most purposes, but by showing how tightly a bachelor’s degree correlates with income, wealth, and managerial and professional occupations, they made a strong case for using it as a key class marker.

Based on a study of exit polls Columbia political science professor Dorian Warren and I did in 2006 for the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University, here’s what the last three presidential elections look like using Teixeira and Rogers categories.

Class & Union Household	White Men	White Women
WC-UH	48%	54%
MC-UH	49%	61%
WC-nonUH	31%	43%
MC-nonUH	34%	48%

WC = no bachelor’s degree/ MC = bachelor’s degree or more
UH = at least one union member in household
nonUH= no union member in household

Probably the most important conclusion from this breakdown is that in general class is relatively insignificant compared to race, gender and being in a union household. White men in union households vote alike regardless of class, as do white men in nonunion households, but being in a union household increases white men’s Democratic vote by 15 to 17 points. Though similar dynamics are present among white women, class does make a difference in how they vote. Middle-class white women vote 7 points more Democratic than working-class white women if they’re both in union households, and 5 points more Dem if in nonunion households. But, holding class constant, being in a union household has a larger effect – 11 points for working-class and 13 points for middle-class white women. Likewise, gender gaps are larger than class gaps, with women being at least 6 points and as many as 14 points more Democratic.

Three kinds of action conclusions have been drawn from this Teixeira-style analysis:

* Decrease the white vote as a percentage of the electorate by registering and turning out more black, Latino and Asian voters. As Teixeira’s recent work with Alan Abramovitz has shown, whites are decreasing as a percentage of the U.S. population, but they still vote at substantially higher levels than minorities. Much get-out-the-vote work has been and is being done among blacks and Latinos, but even the most optimistic projections find Democrats still needing to get at least 45% of the overall white vote to win this Fall.

* Increase the Democratic majority among union household voters. The labor movement has done a terrific job in the last decade in turning out union household voters, who still constitute nearly a quarter of all voters despite continued declines in union membership. But these voters have been stuck at 59% Dem in the last three presidential elections, and as the table above shows, it wouldn’t be that high without the whopping majorities produced by black and Latino union households. This is the one place where the labor movement can have a direct effect on the white vote – among its own members and their households. Given the stakes and the black man leading the Democratic ticket this year, unions need to challenge more of their members to vote for their union instead of their whiteness.
* Rally nonunion working-class white women, what punditry shorthand now calls “waitress moms” or “Wal-Mart women.” Close to 20% of the electorate all by themselves, this group of women moved strongly against Democrats in the last three presidential elections – they gave Bill Clinton 47% of their vote, Al Gore 44%, and John Kerry only 38%. If that trend is not reversed, Obama is unlikely to be our next president. Getting these unionless women back to the 47% range of 1996, is do-able, however, since like other white women, they are more open to Democrats, more disposed toward active government, and even more favorable toward unions than white men.

The good news is that after much discussion of “Kansas” and “NASCAR dads,” not all of it fruitless, these three conclusions have been embraced by Democrats of all stripes, including Obama himself, and by large parts of the labor movement. Much of the Dem program, speechifying, and, most importantly, grassroots organizing is (or intends to be) focused on these three priorities.

Jack Metzgar is Emeritus Professor of Humanities and Social Justice at Roosevelt University, Chicago. This article originally appeared in the newsletter of the Labor and Working Class History Association.