DAfter Donald Trump’s swing state victories and popular vote victories, Democrats are wondering why economic pessimism is turning voters away from Kamala Harris, despite a “strong” economy. They are also desperately trying to figure out how President Trump was able to infiltrate working-class black and Hispanic communities.
Answering these questions will be critical to the party’s recovery in 2026 and 2028. But they miss the broader picture.
The 2024 election symbolized the slow consolidation of change in American party politics. In the mid-twentieth century, Democratic and Republican support was rooted in a particular combination of class politics and political geography, with the Democratic Party’s rising power centered on blue-collar areas, particularly the small cities and mill towns of the urban industrial north. Republicans have far greater success in middle-class suburbs. But over the next 75 years, the electoral map was slowly but inexorably reversed, thanks to changes in the American economy that opened the door to a cultural politics that drove the partisanship of the American people.
During the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic Party gradually became the party of the (primarily white) working class, who were the intended beneficiaries of his vast New Deal programs. This relationship was cemented by an economy rooted in the industrial production of goods in cities and the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, which gave industrial workers the right to organize. This combination meant that American workers became part of an organized and politically coherent working class majority. This also meant that new Democratic voters were geographically concentrated in industrialized cities and towns in the North.
The Democratic Party remained the major political party in the United States until the 1950s. After the passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which made commuting into the city possible, many middle-class, ideologically conservative whites “seized” inner-city neighborhoods and schools from the black population. I abandoned my attempt to protect my family and instead moved to the suburbs. This turned the suburbs into Republican strongholds, as issues like busing, school prayer, and sex education mobilized parents to support the Republican Party.
Read more: History reveals how Donald Trump took control of the industrial capital and the path forward for the Democratic Party
The result was perhaps the first class-based politics in the United States. But since its creation, the relationship between class, geography, and party politics has rested on two unstable foundations. First, black voters were disenfranchised and racial politics suppressed in the South before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Second, cultural issues such as abortion were not yet partisan, and many were not even political. Instead, they rarely discussed private matters. However, these 2 Two preconditions have been broken.
Then, during the 1970s and 1980s, the economic and organizational foundations of America’s class-based politics began to erode. Domestic manufacturing jobs began to disappear as companies increased their reliance on automation and moved production to countries with cheaper labor. Unions came under continued attack not only from employers but also from Republicans. As a result, many American workers, especially those without college degrees, faced a decline in the quality of available jobs. The percentage of workers receiving a “decent” wage (two-thirds of the average wage for American workers) ranged from 61.5% to 55% from 1979 to 2017.
However, even as the country cut manufacturing jobs, the economy witnessed tremendous growth in professional and technical jobs as part of the new “knowledge economy.” However, these gains and losses were not evenly distributed across space. While big cities benefited most from the jobs of the new knowledge economy, small towns dotting the industrial centers that were once the backbone of the Democratic coalition suffered.
In 2019, I visited three of them. Postindustrial cities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Indiana, all part of the white working-class New Deal coalition. Like many other cities once integral to the Democratic coalition, two of these cities are now solidly Republican.
The Minnesota town I visited was still grappling with the scars of economic decline. The area’s largest employer has functioned as a union shop since workers won a controversial labor battle in the late 1930s, but it suffered multiple bankruptcies and layoffs in the 1980s and 1990s. It eventually closed in the late 1990s. When good union jobs left, young people followed suit. As a result, the county has lost 20% of its population since 1980 and is aging much faster than the nation as a whole.
The loss of the mill meant more than just economic decline for the town. It also changed the structure of civil society in the community. The trade unions that represented workers at defunct companies still exist, but they engage in activism and politics to further protect the working class, as well as fight employers for workplace protections. It is no longer the political organization it was in its early days.
As a result, as elsewhere in similar places across the country, union organizing no longer equates to the political socialization of the working class that helps unite workers with the Democratic Party. As one interviewee from Indiana explained, unions are more like “insurance” in case something goes wrong on the job.
These changes have clear implications for contemporary politics. “When I was a Democrat, the Democratic Party belonged to the workers,” explained a man we’ll call Keith, a retired white labor union worker from a small town in Minnesota. “They’re gone, you know, it’s gone.”
Keith is one of the many people who pushed the community to the right in 2016 and has helped maintain it ever since. After witnessing the economic and civic foundations of their communities crumble, Keith and many others realize that their town is dying and that no one will do anything to help them. I started to worry that it wasn’t there.
By 2016, Republicans were capitalizing on this sentiment, holding residents like Keith accountable for the town’s plight on immigration and the pro-socialist Democratic Party. This ultimately drew many residents of this Minnesota town to the Republican side.
Read more: How President Trump weaponized the shame of white rural America
These post-industrial cities and towns explain why former swing states like Ohio are now solid red, and former Democratic strongholds like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have become the ultimate swing states.
If a shift to the right in America’s center had been the only change during this period, it might have spelled doom for the Democratic Party. But instead, countervailing forces have developed over the past three decades. Just as economic decline and cultural politics pushed industrial cities to the right, the rapid growth of the knowledge economy and cultural politics pushed suburbs to the left. This process began in some metropolitan areas such as Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago. More recently, residents of the southern suburbs have begun to migrate to the Democratic Party due to their distaste for Donald Trump’s politics.
Today, in the nation’s largest cities and their surrounding suburbs, the number of knowledge economy workers, people likely to support the socially liberal policies of the Democratic Party, continues to grow. One interviewee from the Bay Area suburb of Belmont, Calif., told me in 2022 that he is the classic “Bay Area liberal” who is “pro-choice,” but more “pro-choice.” He believes he has the potential to be “fiscally conservative.”
Taken together, the transformation in postindustrial communities like Keith and affluent suburbs like Belmont marks an almost complete reversal of the political geography and class politics that dominated mid-20th century American politics. Many of the same working-class towns and cities that once propelled Democratic coalition governments have now moved overwhelmingly to the right.
The opposite is true for many of the suburbs that were once Republican strongholds and are now the areas of greatest growth for Democrats. The rise of suburban liberalism has put Georgia, Arizona, and even North Carolina on the radar of Democrats. Just a few cycles ago, Democrats weren’t even running in Georgia. But as of 2024, the Atlanta suburbs were one of the few places where Democrats had made significant gains.
This basic political geography means Democrats may need to ask themselves broader questions as they seek to recover. Rather than asking what they could have done differently to win back the working-class votes needed to win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and by extension the Electoral College, the question is, what could they do differently? The question may be what kind of economy and civil society we need to build for this purpose. Do you want to change and expand your political map?
Stephanie Ternullo is an assistant professor of government at Harvard University. She is the author of How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Force Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics.
Made by History guides readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by expert historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
