Ruy Teixeira explores Vice President Kamala Harris’ electoral coalition.
These are heady days for Democrats. After a near-death experience with the fading Biden candidacy they have been revived by the Biden-Harris switcheroo. The presidential race has tightened considerably and, though Trump is still favored to win, they’re feeling mighty good about themselves. Inspired by their historic standard bearer, exuberant partisans proclaim the second coming of the Obama coalition, which will decisively sweep away Trump and his deplorable legions. They’re getting the band back together!
Or are they? In truth, the Harris coalition bears more resemblance to the Biden coalition…but without as many working-class voters. Or to the Hillary Clinton coalition…but with far fewer white working-class voters. Indeed, that people would analogize Harris’ emerging coalition to Obama’s shows how much they’ve forgotten (or perhaps never knew) about the Obama coalition and how little they understand about how the party has changed in the last 12 years.
Here are some facts about the Obama coalition (based on 2012 election data from Catalist):
1. In 2012, Obama carried both college-educated and working-class (noncollege) voters. And there wasn’t much difference in the margins; he carried the college-educated by 6 points and the working class by 4 points.
2. Obama carried the nonwhite working class by 67 points; overall he carried nonwhites by 64 points.
3. Obama lost both the white working class and college-educated whites, the former by a comparatively modest 20 points and the latter by 8 points.
All this is very far from the Harris coalition today and how it seems to be evolving. …
… Start with the working class. While Obama carried them by 4 points, four years later Clinton lost them by 3 points. Four years after that, Biden lost them by 4 points and, four years later, Harris in the Times poll is losing them by 15 points.
