politics

Just to be clear, saying you have humility was intended as a compliment.

College graduates, white people, suburban, and affluent people are four methods of categorizing people. One can belong to one, two, three, or all four of these groups. When we examine overall trends, it doesn’t make sense to only focus on a narrow time period, like two years from the past. Instead, if we want to understand trend projections, we need a longer range of data, ideally looking from 2014 to 2024. A smaller set of data can be misleading. For instance, if you looked at suicide rates between 1998 and 1999 in the U.S., you’d see a drop. But if you zoomed out from 1980 to the near-present, you’d see a clear and alarming upward trend. Focusing too narrowly risks missing the bigger picture. (The inverse is also true: if you looked at democrat's base over 200 years, you'd be including when the were the party of slavers.)

Over the last decade, we’ve seen a notable shift in the Democratic base toward white, affluent, and college-educated voters. Traditionally, Democrats were the party of the working class and people of color. However, support among those groups has been slipping, while wealthy, suburban, and educated voters—especially in urban areas—have increasingly embraced the Democratic Party, particularly on cultural and social issues. This shift became more pronounced during and after Trump’s presidency, as many educated, affluent voters were turned off by his populist, anti-intellectual rhetoric.

Looking ahead, the trend seems to be one where Democrats rely more heavily on white, college-educated, and affluent voters, while their historical support from working-class voters and people of color continues to decline. Democrats will likely gain ground in cities and suburbs where these voters are concentrated, but struggle in rural and less affluent areas. This is a significant realignment for the party, which might face challenges reconciling the economic interests of these affluent voters with the needs of its traditional base, even as social and cultural issues increasingly become the glue holding this new coalition together.

Again, that's not necessarily a problem in terms of the ability to get democrats elected. But it does present an unfortunate trend if you are concerned with your party representing those demographics. It also requires enough of the shifting composition to make up for the other declines in voters. Given how close almost all elections are these days, that's no guarantee. And, as I noted, it also might create issues where democratic policies and platforms may need to prioritize one group of supporters over the other -- though, arguably, that's already been occurring, and seems like part of the reason for the shifting composition of the base.