^A:The Oxford Companion to American Politics observes that the terms "progressive" and "liberal" are "often used interchangeably" in political discourse regarding "the center-left".[20]
TheDemocratic Party is one of the two majorpolitical parties in the United States. It was founded in 1828, making it the world's oldest active political party. Its main rival since the 1850s has been theRepublican Party, and the two have since dominated American politics.
The Democratic Party was founded in 1828 from remnants of theDemocratic-Republican Party. SenatorMartin Van Buren played the central role in building the coalition of state organizations which formed the new party as a vehicle to help electAndrew Jackson as president that year. It initially supportedJacksonian democracy,agrarianism, andgeographical expansionism, while opposinga national bank and hightariffs. Democrats won six of the eight presidential elections from 1828 to 1856, losing twice to theWhigs. In 1860, the party split intoNorthern andSouthern factions overslavery. The party remained dominated by agrarian interests, contrasting with Republican support for thebig business of theGilded Age. Democratic candidates won the presidency only twice[b] between 1860 and 1908, though theywon the popular vote two more times in that period. During theProgressive Era, some factions of the party supportedprogressive reforms, withWoodrow Wilson being elected president in 1912 and 1916.
Political parties' derivation in the United States. A dotted line denotes an unofficial connection.
Democratic Party officials often trace its origins to theDemocratic-Republican Party, founded byThomas Jefferson,James Madison and other influential opponents of the conservativeFederalists in 1792.[41][42] That party died out before the modern Democratic Party was organized;[43] the Jeffersonian party also inspired theWhigs and modern Republicans.[44] Historians argue that the modern Democratic Party was first organized in the late 1820s with the election of war heroAndrew Jackson[45] of Tennessee, making it the world's oldest active political party.[46][47][45] It was predominately built byMartin Van Buren, who assembled a wide cadre of politicians in every state behind Jackson.[46][45]
Since the nomination ofWilliam Jennings Bryan in 1896, the party has generally positioned itself to the left of theRepublican Party on economic issues. Democrats have been more liberal on civil rights since 1948, although conservative factions within the Democratic Party that opposed them persisted in the South until the 1960s. On foreign policy, both parties have changed positions several times.[48]
Background
Andrew Jackson was the seventh president (1829–1837) and the first Democratic president.
The Democratic Party evolved from theJeffersonian Republican orDemocratic-Republican Party organized by Jefferson and Madison in opposition to the Federalist Party.[49] The Democratic-Republican Party favoredrepublicanism, a weakfederal government,states' rights, agrarian interests (especially Southern planters), and strict adherence to the Constitution. The party opposed a national bank andGreat Britain.[50] After theWar of 1812, the Federalists virtually disappeared and the only national political party left was the Democratic-Republicans, which was prone to splinter along regional lines.[51] The era of one-party rule in the United States, known as theEra of Good Feelings, lasted from 1816 until 1828, when Andrew Jackson became president. Jackson and Martin Van Buren worked with allies in each state to form a new Democratic Party on a national basis. In the 1830s, theWhig Party coalesced into the main rival to the Democrats.
Jacksonians believed the people's will had finally prevailed. Through a lavishly financed coalition of state parties, political leaders, and newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the president. The Democrats became the nation's first well-organized national party ... and tight party organization became the hallmark of nineteenth-century American politics.[57]
James K. Polk was the 11th president (1845–1849). He significantly extended the territory of the United States.
Behind the platforms issued by state and national parties stood a widely shared political outlook that characterized the Democrats:
The Democrats represented a wide range of views but shared a fundamental commitment to the Jeffersonian concept of an agrarian society. They viewed the central government as the enemy of individual liberty. The1824 "corrupt bargain" had strengthened their suspicion of Washington politics. ... Jacksonians feared the concentration of economic and political power. They believed that government intervention in the economy benefited special-interest groups and created corporate monopolies that favored the rich. They sought to restore the independence of the individual—the artisan and the ordinary farmer—by ending federal support of banks and corporations and restricting the use of paper currency, which they distrusted. Their definition of the proper role of government tended to be negative, and Jackson's political power was largely expressed in negative acts. He exercised the veto more than all previous presidents combined. ... Nor did Jackson share reformers' humanitarian concerns. He had no sympathy for American Indians, initiating the removal of the Cherokees along theTrail of Tears.[58]
Opposing factions led byHenry Clay helped form the Whig Party. The Democratic Party had a small yet decisive advantage over the Whigs until the 1850s when the Whigs fell apart over the issue of slavery. In 1854, angry with theKansas–Nebraska Act, anti-slavery Democrats left the party and joined Northern Whigs to form theRepublican Party.[59][60] Martin van Buren also helped found theFree Soil Party to oppose the spread of slavery, running as its candidate in the1848 presidential election, before returning to the Democratic Party and staying loyal to the Union.[61]
The Democrats split over slavery, with Northern and Southern tickets in theelection of 1860, in which the Republican Party gained ascendancy.[62] The radical pro-slaveryFire-Eaters led walkouts at the two conventions when the delegates would not adopt a resolution supporting the extension of slavery into territories even if the voters of those territories did not want it. TheseSouthern Democrats nominated the pro-slavery incumbent vice president,John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, for president and GeneralJoseph Lane, of Oregon, for vice president. TheNorthern Democrats nominated SenatorStephen A. Douglas of Illinois for president and former Georgia GovernorHerschel V. Johnson for vice president. This fracturing of the Democrats led to a Republican victory andAbraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States.[63]
The Democrats benefited from white Southerners' resentment ofReconstruction after the war and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. AfterRedeemers ended Reconstruction in the 1870s and following the often extremely violentdisenfranchisement of African Americans led by suchwhite supremacist Democratic politicians asBenjamin Tillman ofSouth Carolina in the 1880s and 1890s, the South, voting Democratic, became known as the "Solid South". Although Republicans won all but two presidential elections, the Democrats remained competitive. The party was dominated by pro-businessBourbon Democrats led bySamuel J. Tilden andGrover Cleveland, who represented mercantile, banking, and railroad interests; opposedimperialism and overseas expansion; fought for thegold standard; opposedbimetallism; and crusaded against corruption, high taxes and tariffs. Cleveland was elected to non-consecutive presidential terms in1884 and1892.[65]
Agrarian Democrats demandingfree silver, drawing on Populist ideas, overthrew the Bourbon Democrats in 1896 and nominatedWilliam Jennings Bryan for the presidency (a nomination repeated by Democrats in 1900 and 1908). Bryan waged a vigorous campaign attacking Eastern moneyed interests, but he lost to RepublicanWilliam McKinley.[66]
The Democrats took control of the House in 1910, andWoodrow Wilson won election as president in 1912 (when the Republicans split) and 1916. Wilson effectively led Congress to put to rest the issues of tariffs, money, and antitrust, which had dominated politics for 40 years, with new progressive laws. He failed to secure Senate passage of theVersailles Treaty (ending the war with Germany and joining the League of Nations).[67] The weakened party was deeply divided by issues such as the KKK and prohibition in the 1920s. However, it did organize new ethnic voters in Northern cities.[68]
1930s–1960s and the rise of the New Deal coalition
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, the 32nd and 33rd presidents (1933–1945; 1945–1953), featured on a campaign poster for the1944 presidential election; note the rooster logo of the Democratic Party (seeNames and Symbols below)
TheGreat Depression in 1929 that began under Republican PresidentHerbert Hoover and the Republican Congress set the stage for a more liberal government as the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives nearly uninterrupted from 1930 until 1994, the Senate for 44 of 48 years from 1930, and won most presidential elections until 1968.Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected to the presidency in 1932, came forth with federal government programs called theNew Deal. New Deal liberalism meant the regulation of business (especially finance and banking) and the promotion of labor unions as well as federal spending to aid the unemployed, help distressed farmers and undertake large-scale public works projects. It marked the start of the American welfare state.[70] The opponents, who stressed opposition to unions, support for business and low taxes, started calling themselves "conservatives".[71]
Until the 1980s, the Democratic Party was a coalition of two parties divided by the Mason–Dixon line: liberal Democrats in the North and culturally conservative voters in the South, who though benefitting from many of the New Deal public works projects, opposed increasingcivil rights initiatives advocated by northeastern liberals. The polarization grew stronger after Roosevelt died. Southern Democrats formed a key part of the bipartisanconservative coalition in an alliance with most of the Midwestern Republicans. The economically activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has strongly influencedAmerican liberalism, shaped much of the party's economic agenda after 1932.[72] From the 1930s to the mid-1960s, the liberalNew Deal coalition usually controlled the presidency while the conservative coalition usually controlled Congress.[73]
1960s–1980s and the collapse of the New Deal coalition
Issues facing parties and the United States after World War II included theCold War and thecivil rights movement. Republicans attracted conservatives and, after the 1960s, white Southerners from the Democratic coalition with their use of theSouthern strategy and resistance to New Deal andGreat Society liberalism. Until the 1950s, African Americans had traditionally supported the Republican Party because of its anti-slavery civil rights policies. Following the passage of theCivil Rights Act of 1964 andVoting Rights Act of 1965, the Southern states became more reliably Republican in presidential politics, while Northeastern states became more reliably Democratic.[74][75][76][77] Studies show that Southern whites, which were a core constituency in the Democratic Party, shifted to the Republican Party due toracial backlash andsocial conservatism.[78][79][80]
The election of PresidentJohn F. Kennedy from Massachusetts in 1960 partially reflected this shift. In the campaign, Kennedy attracted a new generation of younger voters. In his agenda dubbed theNew Frontier, Kennedy introduced a host of social programs and public works projects, along with enhanced support of thespace program, proposing a crewed spacecrafttrip to the moon by the end of the decade. He pushed for civil rights initiatives and proposed theCivil Rights Act of 1964, but with hisassassination in November 1963, he was not able to see its passage.[81]
Kennedy's successorLyndon B. Johnson was able to persuade the largely conservative Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and with a more progressive Congress in 1965 passed much of theGreat Society, includingMedicare andMedicaid, which consisted of an array of social programs designed to help the poor, sick, and elderly. Kennedy and Johnson's advocacy of civil rights further solidified black support for the Democrats but had the effect of alienating Southern whites who would eventually gravitate toward the Republican Party, particularly after the election ofRonald Reagan to the presidency in 1980. Many conservativeSouthern Democrats defected to theRepublican Party, beginning with the passage of theCivil Rights Act of 1964 and the general leftward shift of the party.[82][76][77][79]
The United States' involvement in theVietnam War in the 1960s was another divisive issue that further fractured the fault lines of the Democrats' coalition. After theGulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, President Johnson committed a large contingency of combat troops to Vietnam, but the escalation failed to drive theViet Cong from South Vietnam, resulting in an increasingquagmire, which by 1968 had become the subject of widespread anti-war protests in the United States and elsewhere. With increasing casualties and nightly news reports bringing home troubling images from Vietnam, the costly military engagement became increasingly unpopular, alienating many of the kinds of young voters that the Democrats had attracted in the early 1960s. The protests that year along with assassinations ofMartin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential candidate SenatorRobert F. Kennedy (younger brother of John F. Kennedy) climaxed in turbulence at the hotly-contestedDemocratic National Convention that summer in Chicago (which amongst the ensuing turmoil inside and outside of the convention hall nominated Vice PresidentHubert Humphrey) in a series of events that proved to mark a significant turning point in the decline of the Democratic Party's broad coalition.[83]
Republican presidential nomineeRichard Nixon was able to capitalize on the confusion of the Democrats that year, and won the 1968 election to become the 37th president. He won re-election in alandslide in 1972 against Democratic nomineeGeorge McGovern, who like Robert F. Kennedy, reached out to the younger anti-war and counterculture voters, but unlike Kennedy, was not able to appeal to the party's more traditional white working-class constituencies. During Nixon's second term, his presidency was rocked by theWatergate scandal, which forced him to resign in 1974. He was succeeded by vice presidentGerald Ford, who served a brief tenure.
Watergate offered the Democrats an opportunity to recoup, and their nomineeJimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential election. With the initial support ofevangelical Christian voters in the South, Carter was temporarily able to reunite the disparate factions within the party, but inflation and theIran Hostage Crisis of 1979–1980 took their toll, resulting in alandslide victory for Republican presidential nomineeRonald Reagan in 1980, which shifted the political landscape in favor of the Republicans for years to come. The influx of conservative Democrats into the Republican Party is often cited as a reason for the Republican Party's shift further to the right during the late 20th century as well as the shift of its base from the Northeast and Midwest to the South.[84][85]
With the ascendancy of the Republicans under Ronald Reagan, the Democrats searched for ways to respond yet were unable to succeed by running traditional candidates, such as former vice president and Democratic presidential nomineeWalter Mondale and Massachusetts GovernorMichael Dukakis, who lost to Reagan andGeorge H.W. Bush in the1984 and1988 presidential elections, respectively. Many Democrats attached their hopes to the future star ofGary Hart, who had challenged Mondale in the1984 primaries running on a theme of "New Ideas"; and in the subsequent1988 primaries became the de facto front-runner and virtual "shoo-in" for the Democratic presidential nomination before a sex scandal ended his campaign. The party nevertheless began to seek out a younger generation of leaders, who like Hart had been inspired by the pragmatic idealism of John F. Kennedy.[86]
The Democrats lost control of Congress in the1994 elections to the Republicans, however, in1996 Clinton was re-elected, becoming the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second full term.[88] Clinton's vice presidentAl Gore ran to succeed him as president, and won thepopular vote, but after a controversial election dispute over a Florida recount settled by theU.S. Supreme Court (whichruled 5–4 in favor of Bush), he lost the2000 election to Republican opponentGeorge W. Bush in theElectoral College.[89]
In the wake of the 2001terrorist attacks on theWorld Trade Center andthe Pentagon as well as the growing concern overglobal warming, some of the party's key issues in the early 21st century have included combatingterrorism while preserving human rights, expanding access to health care,labor rights, and environmental protection. Democrats regained majority control of both the House and the Senate in the2006 elections.Barack Obama won the Democratic Party's nomination and was elected as the first African American president in 2008. Under the Obama presidency, the party moved forward reforms including aneconomic stimulus package, theDodd–Frank financial reform act, and theAffordable Care Act.[90]
2010s
In the2010 midterm elections, the Democratic Party lost control of the House as well as its majorities in several state legislatures and governorships. The 2010 elections also marked the end of the Democratic Party's electoral dominance in theSouthern United States.[91]
In the2012 elections, President Obama was re-elected, but the party remained in the minority in the House of Representatives and lost control of the Senate in the2014 midterm elections. After the2016 election ofDonald Trump, who lost thepopular vote to Democratic nomineeHillary Clinton, the Democratic Party transitioned into the role of an opposition party and held neither the presidency nor Congress for two years.[92] However, the party won back the House in the2018 midterm elections under the leadership ofNancy Pelosi.
Democrats were extremely critical of President Trump, particularly his policies on immigration, healthcare, and abortion, as well as his response to theCOVID-19 pandemic.[93][94][95] In December 2019, Democrats in the House of Representativesimpeached Trump, although he was acquitted in the Republican-controlled Senate.[96]
In the2022 midterm elections, Democrats dramatically outperformed historical trends and a widely anticipatedred wave did not materialize.[105][106] The party only narrowly lost its majority in the U.S. House and expanded its majority in the U.S. Senate,[107][108][109] along with several gains at the state level.[110][111][112][113]
Vice PresidentKamala Harris—who became Biden's replacement on the ballot after his withdrawal from the race—became the firstblack woman to be nominated by a major party, but she was defeated in the2024 election by Donald Trump. Harris lost theelectoral college 312–226 (including all seven of the anticipatedswing states) as well as the popular vote, becoming the first Democratic candidate to do so sinceJohn Kerry in 2004, amid what was a global anti-incumbent backlash.[117][118][119][120]
Current status
As of 2025, Democrats hold 23state governorships, 17state legislatures, 15 state governmenttrifectas, and the mayorships in the majority of the country's major cities.[121] Three of the nine currentU.S. Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democratic presidents. By registered members, the Democratic Party is the largest party in the U.S. and thefourth largest in the world. All totaled, 16 Democrats have served as president of the United States.[4]
Name and symbols
It has been suggested that mascots besplit out into another article. (Discuss)(August 2024)
"A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" by Thomas Nast,Harper's Weekly, January 19, 1870
The donkey party logo remains a well-known symbol for the Democratic Party despite not being the official logo of the party.
In use since 2010, the letter "D" enclosed in a circle has been one of the Democratic Party's main symbols.
TheDemocratic-Republican Party splintered in 1824 into the short-livedNational Republican Party and the Jacksonian movement which in 1828 became the Democratic Party. Under the Jacksonian era, the term "The Democracy" was in use by the party, but the name "Democratic Party" was eventually settled upon[122] and became the official name in 1844.[123] Members of the party are called "Democrats" or "Dems".
The most common mascot symbol for the party has been the donkey, or jackass.[124]Andrew Jackson's enemies twisted his name to "jackass" as a term of ridicule regarding a stupid and stubborn animal. However, the Democrats liked the common-man implications and picked it up too, therefore the image persisted and evolved.[125] Its most lasting impression came from the cartoons ofThomas Nast from 1870 inHarper's Weekly. Cartoonists followed Nast and used the donkey to represent the Democrats and the elephant to represent the Republicans.
In many states, the logo of the Democratic Party was a rooster, for instance, in Alabama: Logo of theAlabama Democratic Party, 1904–1966 (left) and 1966–1996 (right)[126][127]
In the early 20th century, the traditional symbol of the Democratic Party in Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Ohio was the rooster, as opposed to the Republican eagle.[128] The rooster was also adopted as an official symbol of the national Democratic Party.[129] In 1904, the Alabama Democratic Party chose, as the logo to put on its ballots, a rooster with the motto "White supremacy – For the right."[130] The words "White supremacy" were replaced with "Democrats" in 1966.[131][126] In 1996, the Alabama Democratic Party dropped the rooster, citing racist and white supremacist connotations linked with the symbol.[127] The rooster symbol still appears on Oklahoma, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginiaballots.[128] In New York, the Democratic ballot symbol is a five-pointed star.[132]
Although both major political parties (and many minor ones) use the traditional American colors of red, white, and blue in their marketing and representations, sinceelection night 2000 blue has become the identifying color for the Democratic Party while red has become the identifying color for the Republican Party. That night, for the first time all major broadcast television networks used the same color scheme for the electoral map:blue states forAl Gore (Democratic nominee) and red states forGeorge W. Bush (Republican nominee). Since then, the color blue has been widely used by the media to represent the party. This is contrary to common practice outside of the United States where blue is the traditional color of the right and red the color of the left.[133]
In 2025, a new logo was introduced, which incorporates a white donkey facing to the right instead of the left, with three blue stars in the center instead of four, on a blue background. The modified donkey design has been characterized by some as resembling apiñata.[134]
Jefferson-Jackson Day is the annual fundraising event (dinner) held by Democratic Party organizations across the United States.[135] It is named after PresidentsThomas Jefferson andAndrew Jackson, whom the party regards as its distinguished early leaders.
The song "Happy Days Are Here Again" is the unofficial song of the Democratic Party. It was used prominently whenFranklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for president at the1932 Democratic National Convention and remains a sentimental favorite for Democrats. For example,Paul Shaffer played the theme on theLate Show with David Letterman after the Democrats won Congress in 2006. "Don't Stop" byFleetwood Mac was adopted byBill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992 and has endured as a popular Democratic song. The emotionally similar song "Beautiful Day" by the bandU2 has also become a favorite theme song for Democratic candidates.John Kerry used the song during his 2004 presidential campaign and several Democratic congressional candidates used it as a celebratory tune in 2006.[136][137]
As a traditional anthem for its presidential nominating convention,Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" is traditionally performed at the beginning of the Democratic National Convention.
Structure
Democratic National Headquarters (2024)
National committee
TheDemocratic National Committee (DNC) is responsible for promoting Democratic campaign activities. While the DNC is responsible for overseeing the process of writing the Democratic Platform, the DNC is more focused on campaign and organizational strategy thanpublic policy. In presidential elections, it supervises theDemocratic National Convention. The national convention is subject to the charter of the party and the ultimate authority within the Democratic Party when it is in session, with the DNC running the party's organization at other times. Since 2021, the DNC has been chaired byJaime Harrison.[138]
Each state also has a state committee, made up of elected committee members as well as ex officio committee members (usually elected officials and representatives of major constituencies), which in turn elects a chair. County, town, city, and ward committees generally are composed of individuals elected at the local level. State and local committees often coordinate campaign activities within their jurisdiction, oversee local conventions, and in some cases primaries or caucuses, and may have a role in nominating candidates for elected office under state law. Rarely do they have much direct funding, but in 2005 DNC Chairman Dean began a program (called the "50 State Strategy") of using DNC national funds to assist all state parties and pay for full-time professional staffers.[139]
In addition, state-level party committees operate in the territories ofAmerican Samoa,Guam, andVirgin Islands, the commonwealths ofNorthern Mariana Islands andPuerto Rico, and theDistrict of Columbia, with all but Puerto Rico being active in nominating candidates for both presidential and territorial contests, while Puerto Rico's Democratic Party is organized only to nominate presidential candidates. TheDemocrats Abroad committee is organized by American voters who reside outside of U.S. territory to nominate presidential candidates. All such party committees are accorded recognition as state parties and are allowed to elect both members to the National Committee as well as delegates to the National Convention.
Major party committees and groups
Then-Senator Obama speaking to College Democrats of America in 2007
The DNC sponsors theCollege Democrats of America (CDA), a student-outreach organization with the goal of training and engaging a new generation of Democratic activists.Democrats Abroad is the organization for Americans living outside the United States. They work to advance the party's goals and encourage Americans living abroad to support the Democrats. TheYoung Democrats of America (YDA) and theHigh School Democrats of America (HSDA) are young adult and youth-led organizations respectively that attempt to draw in and mobilize young people for Democratic candidates but operates outside of the DNC.
This graph shows the real medianUS household income by race: 1967 to 2011, in 2011 dollars.[141]
The 21st century Democratic Party differs from othercenter-left parties around the world in its ideological orientation, in part due to itsheterogenous demographic composition. In particular, the Democratic Party's ideology derives from being supported by both racial minorities, particularlyAfrican Americans, as well as White voters with higheducational attainment.[142][143]
This makes the Democratic Party different, because it is abig tent party, neither aclassically liberal nor asocial democratic party ideologically. Its voting demographics are heavily educationally and racially-polarized, but not income polarized.[144] The Democratic Party is weakest among White voters without college degrees in the 21st century.[145] Higher educational attainment is strongly correlated with higher income and wealth, and also strongly correlated with increased ideological support for the Democratic Party's positions among White voters.[146]
This derives in part from unique regional characteristics of the United States, particularly theSouthern United States. Racial polarization is extremely high in the Southern United States, withBlack Southerners almost entirely voting for the Democratic Party, andWhite Southerners almost entirely voting for the Republican Party.[147][148] Also, White Southerners with college degrees are strongly Republican, unlike in most of the rest of the country.[149]African Americans continue to have the lowest incomes of any racial group in the United States.[141]
Since the 1990s, the party has at times supportedcentrist economic reforms that cut the size of government and reduced market regulations.[162] The party has generally rejected bothlaissez-faire economics andmarket socialism, instead favoringKeynesian economics within a capitalist market-based system.[163]
Fiscal policy
Democrats support a moreprogressive tax structure to provide more services and reduceeconomic inequality by making sure that the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes.[164]Democrats and Republicans traditionally take differing stances on eradicating poverty. Brady said "Our poverty level is the direct consequence of our weak social policies, which are a direct consequence of weak political actors".[165]They oppose the cutting of social services, such asSocial Security,Medicare, andMedicaid,[166] believing it to be harmful to efficiency andsocial justice. Democrats believe the benefits of social services in monetary and non-monetary terms are a moreproductive labor force and cultured population and believe that the benefits of this are greater than any benefits that could be derived from lower taxes, especially on top earners, or cuts to social services. Furthermore, Democrats see social services as essential toward providingpositive freedom, freedom derived from economic opportunity. The Democratic-led House of Representatives reinstated thePAYGO (pay-as-you-go) budget rule at the start of the110th Congress.[167]
The Democratic Party favors raising theminimum wage. TheFair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 was an early component of the Democrats' agenda during the110th Congress. In 2006, the Democrats supported six state-ballot initiatives to increase the minimum wage and all six initiatives passed.[168]
In 2017, Senate Democrats introduced the Raise the Wage Act which would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024.[169] In 2021, Democratic presidentJoe Biden proposed increasing the minimum wage to $15 by 2025.[170] In many states controlled by Democrats, the state minimum wage has been increased to a rate above the federal minimum wage.[171]
ThePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law by PresidentBarack Obama on March 23, 2010, has been one of the most significant pushes for universal health care. As of December 2019, more than 20 million Americans have gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.[172]
Education
Democrats favor improvingpublic education by raising school standards and reforming theHead Start program. They also supportuniversal preschool, expanding access to primary education, including throughcharter schools, and are generally opposed toschool voucher programs. They call for addressingstudent loan debt and reforms to reduce college tuition.[173] Other proposals have included tuition-free public universities and reform ofstandardized testing. Democrats have the long-term aim of having publicly funded college education with low tuition fees (like in much of Europe and Canada), which would be available to every eligible American student. Alternatively, they encourage expanding access to post-secondary education by increasing state funding for student financial aid such asPell Grants andcollege tuitiontax deductions.[174]
Democrats and Republicans have diverged on the seriousness of the threat posed by climate change, with Democrats' assessment rising significantly in the mid-2010s.[175]
The sharp divide over the existence of and responsibility for global warming and climate change falls largely along political lines. Overall, 60% of those surveyed said oil and gas companies were "completely or mostly responsible" for climate change.[176]
Opinion about human causation of climate change increased substantially with education among Democrats, but not among Republicans.[177] Conversely, opinions favoring becoming carbon neutral declined substantially with age among Republicans, but not among Democrats.[177]
A broad range of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been proposed. Democrats' support for such policies consistently exceeds that of Republicans.[178]
Acceptance of wind and solar facilities in one's community is stronger among Democrats (blue), while acceptance of nuclear power plants is stronger among Republicans (red).[179]
Democrats believe that the government should protect the environment and have a history of environmentalism. In more recent years, this stance has emphasizedrenewable energy generation as the basis for an improved economy, greaternational security, and general environmental benefits.[180] The Democratic Party is substantially more likely than the Republican Party to support environmental regulation and policies that are supportive of renewable energy.[181][182]
The Democratic Party also favors expansion of conservation lands and encourages open space and rail travel to relieve highway and airport congestion and improve air quality and the economy as it "believe[s] that communities, environmental interests, and the government should work together to protect resources while ensuring the vitality of local economies. Once Americans were led to believe they had to make a choice between the economy and the environment. They now know this is a false choice".[183]
The foremost environmental concern of the Democratic Party isclimate change. Democrats, most notably former Vice PresidentAl Gore, have pressed for stern regulation ofgreenhouse gases. On October 15, 2007, Gore won theNobel Peace Prize for his efforts to build greater knowledge about man-made climate change and laying the foundations for the measures needed to counteract it.[184]
Renewable energy and fossil fuels
Democrats have supported increased domesticrenewable energy development, including wind and solar power farms, in an effort to reduce carbon pollution. The party's platform calls for an "all of the above" energy policy including clean energy, natural gas and domestic oil, with the desire of becoming energy independent.[168] The party has supported higher taxes onoil companies and increased regulations oncoal power plants, favoring a policy of reducing long-term reliance onfossil fuels.[185][186] Additionally, the party supports stricterfuel emissions standards to prevent air pollution.
Like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has taken widely varying views oninternational trade throughout its history. The Democratic Party has usually been more supportive offree trade than the Republican Party.
The Democrats dominated theSecond Party System and set low tariffs designed to pay for the government but not protect industry. Their opponents the Whigs wanted high protective tariffs but usually were outvoted in Congress. Tariffs soon became a major political issue as theWhigs (1832–1852) and (after 1854) the Republicans wanted to protect their mostly northern industries and constituents by voting for higher tariffs and theSouthern Democrats, which had very little industry but imported many goods voted for lower tariffs. After the Second Party System ended in 1854 the Democrats lost control and the new Republican Party had its opportunity to raise rates.[190]
During theThird Party System, Democratic presidentGrover Cleveland made low tariffs the centerpiece of Democratic Party policies, arguing that high tariffs were an unnecessary and unfair tax on consumers. The South andWest generally supported low tariffs, while the industrialNorth high tariffs.[191] During theFourth Party System, Democratic presidentWoodrow Wilson made a drastic lowering of tariff rates a major priority for his presidency. The 1913Underwood Tariff cut rates, and the new revenues generated by thefederal income tax made tariffs much less important in terms of economic impact and political rhetoric.[192]
In the 1990s, the Clinton administration and a number of prominent Democrats pushed through a number of agreements such as theNorth American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[196]Barack Obama signed several free trade agreements during his presidency whileJoe Biden did not sign any free trade agreements during his presidency and increased some tariffs on China.[197][198]
During Republican Donald Trump's two terms as president, the Democratic Party has been more in favor of free trade than the Republican Party. The Democratic Party remains supportive of theUSMCA free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada.[199][200]
Social issues
Shirley Chisholm was the first major-party African American candidate to run nationwide primary campaigns.
The Democratic Party is a staunch supporter ofequal opportunity for all Americans regardless of sex, age, race, ethnicity,sexual orientation,gender identity, religion, creed, or national origin. The Democratic Party has broad appeal across most socioeconomic and ethnic demographics, as seen in recent exit polls.[204] Democrats also strongly support theAmericans with Disabilities Act to prohibit discrimination against people based on physical or mental disability. As such, the Democrats pushed as well theADA Amendments Act of 2008, a disability rights expansion that became law.[205]
The party is very supportive of improving "voting rights" as well as election accuracy and accessibility.[207] They support extensions of voting time, including making election day a holiday. They support reforming the electoral system to eliminategerrymandering, abolishing theelectoral college, as well as passing comprehensivecampaign finance reform.[208]
The Democratic position on abortion has changed significantly over time.[209][210] During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Republicans generally favored legalized abortion more than Democrats,[211] although significant heterogeneity could be found within both parties.[212] During this time, opposition to abortion tended to be concentrated within the political left in the United States. Liberal Protestants and Catholics (many of whom were Democratic voters) opposed abortion, while most conservative Protestants supported legal access to abortion services.[209][clarification needed]
In its national platforms from 1992 to 2004, the Democratic Party has called for abortion to be "safe, legal and rare"—namely, keeping it legal by rejecting laws that allow governmental interference in abortion decisions and reducing the number of abortions by promoting both knowledge of reproduction and contraception and incentives for adoption. When Congress voted on thePartial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2003, congressional Democrats were split, with a minority (including formerSenate Majority LeaderHarry Reid) supporting the ban and the majority of Democrats opposing the legislation.[213]
According to the 2020 Democratic Party platform, "Democrats believe every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion."[214]
Like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has taken widely varying views on immigration throughout its history. Since the 1990s, the Democratic Party has been more supportive overall of immigration than the Republican Party.[217] Many Democratic politicians have called for systematic reform of the immigration system such that residents that havecome into the United States illegally have a pathway to legal citizenship. President Obama remarked in November 2013 that he felt it was "long past time to fix our broken immigration system," particularly to allow "incredibly bright young people" that came over as students to become full citizens.[218] In 2013, Democrats in the Senate passedS. 744, which would reform immigration policy to allow citizenship for illegal immigrants in the United States. The law failed to pass in the House and was never re-introduced after the113th Congress.[219]
The Democratic position onLGBT rights has changed significantly over time.[224][225] Before the 2000s, like the Republicans, the Democratic Party often took positions hostile to LGBT rights. As of the 2020s, both voters and elected representatives within the Democratic Party are overwhelmingly supportive ofLGBT rights.[224]
Support for same-sex marriage has steadily increased among the general public, including voters in both major parties, since the start of the 21st century. An April 2009 ABC News/Washington Post public opinion poll put support among Democrats at 62%.[226] A 2006Pew Research Center poll of Democrats found that 55% supported gays adopting children with 40% opposed while 70% supportgays in the military, with only 23% opposed.[227] Gallup polling from May 2009 stated that 82% of Democrats support open enlistment.[228] A 2023 Gallup public opinion poll found 84% of Democrats support same-sex marriage, compared to 71% support by the general public and 49% support by Republicans.[229]
The 2004 Democratic National Platform stated that marriage should be defined at the state level and it repudiated theFederal Marriage Amendment.[230]John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, did not support same-sex marriage inhis campaign. While not stating support of same-sex marriage, the 2008 platform called for repeal of theDefense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of same-sex marriage and removed the need for interstate recognition, supported antidiscrimination laws and the extension of hate crime laws to LGBT people and opposed "don't ask, don't tell".[231][232] The 2012 platform included support for same-sex marriage and for the repeal of DOMA.[31]
On May 9, 2012,Barack Obama became the first sitting president to say he supports same-sex marriage.[233][234] Previously, he had opposed restrictions on same-sex marriage such as theDefense of Marriage Act, which he promised to repeal,[235] California'sProp 8,[236] and aconstitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage (which he opposed saying that "decisions about marriage should be left to the states as they always have been"),[237] but also stated that he personally believed marriage to be between a man and a woman and that he favored civil unions that would "give same-sex couples equal legal rights and privileges as married couples".[235] Earlier, when running for the Illinois Senate in 1996 he said, "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages".[238] Former presidentsBill Clinton[239] andJimmy Carter[240] along with former Democratic presidential nomineesAl Gore[241] andMichael Dukakis[242] support same-sex marriage. PresidentJoe Biden has supportedsame-sex marriage since 2012, when he became the highest-ranking government official to support it. In 2022, Biden signed theRespect for Marriage Act; the law repealed the Defense of Marriage Act, which Biden had voted for during his Senate tenure.[243]
Status of Puerto Rico and D.C.
The 2016 Democratic Party platform declares, regarding the status of Puerto Rico: "We are committed to addressing the extraordinary challenges faced by our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico. Many stem from the fundamental question of Puerto Rico's political status. Democrats believe that the people of Puerto Rico should determine their ultimate political status from permanent options that do not conflict with the Constitution, laws, and policies of the United States. Democrats are committed to promoting economic opportunity and good-paying jobs for the hardworking people of Puerto Rico. We also believe that Puerto Ricans must be treated equally by Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs that benefit families. Puerto Ricans should be able to vote for the people who make their laws, just as they should be treated equally. All American citizens, no matter where they reside, should have the right to vote for the president of the United States. Finally, we believe that federal officials must respect Puerto Rico's local self-government as laws are implemented and Puerto Rico's budget and debt are restructured so that it can get on a path towards stability and prosperity".[244]
Also, it declares that regarding the status of theDistrict of Columbia: "Restoring our democracy also means finally passing statehood for the District of Columbia, so that the American citizens who reside in the nation's capital have full and equal congressional rights as well as the right to have the laws and budget of their local government respected without Congressional interference."[244]
Legal issues
Gun control
U.S. opinion on gun control issues is deeply divided along political lines, as shown in this 2021 survey.[245]
The Democratic Party does not oppose gun ownership.[248] According to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, 20% of Democrats owned firearms, compared to 32% of the general public and 45% of Republicans.[249]
The Democratic Party's 2020 platform states its opposition to the death penalty.[250] Although most Democrats in Congress have never seriously moved to overturn the rarely usedfederal death penalty, bothRuss Feingold andDennis Kucinich have introduced such bills with little success. Democrats have led efforts to overturn state death penalty laws, and prevent the reinstatement of the death penalty in those states which prohibit it, includingMassachusetts,New York, andDelaware. During theClinton administration, Democrats led the expansion of the federal death penalty. These efforts resulted in the passage of theAntiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, signed into law byPresident Clinton, which heavily limited appeals in death penalty cases.In 1972, the Democratic Party platform called for the abolition of capital punishment.[251]
During hisIllinois Senate career, former PresidentBarack Obama successfully introduced legislation intended to reduce the likelihood ofwrongful convictions in capital cases, requiring videotaping of confessions. Whencampaigning for the presidency, Obama stated that he supports the limited use of the death penalty, including for people who have been convicted of raping a minor under the age of 12, having opposed theSupreme Court's ruling inKennedy v. Louisiana that the death penalty was unconstitutional in which the victim of a crime was not killed.[252] Obama has stated that he thinks the "death penalty does little to deter crime" and that it is used too frequently and too inconsistently.[253] In June 2016, the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee unanimously adopted an amendment to abolish the death penalty.[254]
The 2024 platform is the first since the2004 platform, that doesn't mention the death penalty, and the first since 2016 not to call for abolition.[255] However, on December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40federal death row inmates to life in prison without parole.[256]
Torture
Many Democrats are opposed to theuse of torture against individuals apprehended and held prisoner by theUnited States military, and hold that categorizing such prisoners asunlawful combatants does not release the United States from its obligations under theGeneva Conventions. Democrats contend that torture is inhumane, damages the United States' moral standing in the world, and produces questionable results. Democrats are largely againstwaterboarding.[257]
Torture became a divisive issue in the party after Barack Obama was elected president.[258]
Some Democratic officeholders have championedconsumer protection laws that limit the sharing of consumer data between corporations. Democrats have opposedsodomy laws since the 1972 platform which stated that "Americans should be free to make their own choice of life-styles and private habits without being subject to discrimination or prosecution",[251] and believe that government should not regulateconsensual noncommercial sexual conduct among adults as a matter of personal privacy.[261]
Foreign policy issues
The foreign policy of the voters of the two major parties has largely overlapped since the 1990s. A Gallup poll in early 2013 showed broad agreement on the top issues, albeit with some divergence regarding human rights and international cooperation through agencies such as the United Nations.[262]
In June 2014, the Quinnipiac Poll asked Americans which foreign policy they preferred:
A) The United States is doing too much in other countries around the world, and it is time to do less around the world and focus more on our own problems here at home.B) The United States must continue to push forward to promote democracy and freedom in other countries worldwide because these efforts make our own country more secure.
Democrats chose A over B by 65% to 32%; Republicans chose A over B by 56% to 39%; and independents chose A over B by 67% to 29%.[263]
The Democratic Party has been critical of Iran's nuclear weapon program and supported economic sanctions against the Iranian government. In 2013, the Democratic-led administration worked to reach a diplomatic agreement with the government of Iran to halt the Iranian nuclear weapon program in exchange forinternational economic sanction relief.[264] As of 2014[update], negotiations had been successful and the party called for more cooperation with Iran in the future.[265] In 2015, the Obama administration agreed to theJoint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which provides sanction relief in exchange for international oversight of theIranian nuclear program. In February 2019, the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution calling on the United States to re-enter the JCPOA, which President Trump withdrew from in 2018.[266]
Support for the war among the American people diminished over time. Many Democrats changed their opinion over the course of the war, coming to oppose continuation of the conflict.[270][271] In July 2008,Gallup found that 41% of Democrats called the invasion a "mistake" while a 55% majority disagreed.[271] ACNN survey in August 2009 stated that a majority of Democrats opposed the war. CNN polling director Keating Holland said: "Nearly two thirds of Republicans support the war in Afghanistan. Three quarters of Democrats oppose the war".[270]
During the2020 Presidential Election, then-candidateJoe Biden promised to "end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East."[272] Biden went on to win the election, and in April 2021, he announced he would withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by September 11 of that year.[273] The last troops left in August, bringing America's 20-year-long military campaign in the country to a close.[274] According to a 2023 AP-NORC poll, a majority of Democrats believed that the War in Afghanistan was not worth it.[275]
Israeli prime ministerBenjamin Netanyahu meeting with President Obama in 2013
Democrats have historically been a stronger supporter of Israel than Republicans.[276] During the 1940s, the party advocated for the cause of an independent Jewish state over the objections of manyconservatives in theOld Right, who strongly opposed it.[276] In 1948, Democratic PresidentHarry Truman became the first world leader to recognize an independent state of Israel.[277]
The 2020 Democratic Party platform acknowledges a "commitment to Israel's security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad" and that "we oppose any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through theBoycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement".[278] During theGaza war, the party requested a large-scale military aid package to Israel.[279] Biden also announcedmilitary support for Israel, condemned the actions ofHamas and other Palestinian militants as terrorism,[280] and ordered the US military to build a port to facilitate the arrival ofhumanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.[281] However, parts of the Democratic base also became more skeptical of the Israel government.[282]The number of Democrats (and Americans in general) who oppose sending arms to Israel has grown month by month asIsrael's war on Gaza continues.[283] Experts say support for Israel could have a negative impact on Democrats in several key states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, in the 2024 presidential election.[284]
Late in 2024, twenty Democrats requested support for US legislation that would ban the arms trade with countries that hinder humanitarian aid.[285]According to Pew research conducted in March 2025, 69% of Democrats now have an unfavorable view of Israel, compared to 53% in 2022, before theGaza war.[286]
Europe, Russia, and Ukraine
The 2022Russian invasion of Ukraine was politically and economically opposed by the Biden Administration, who promptly began an increased arming of Ukraine.[287][288] In October 2023, the Biden administration requested an additional $61.4 billion in aid for Ukraine for the year ahead,[289] but delays in the passage of further aid by the Republican-controlledHouse of Representatives inhibited progress, with the additional $61 billion in aid to Ukraine added in April 2024.[290][291][292]
Support for thecivil rights movement in the 1960s by Democratic presidentsJohn F. Kennedy andLyndon B. Johnson helped increase the Democrats' support within the African American community. African Americans have consistently voted between 85% and 95% Democratic since the 1960s, making African Americans one of the largest of the party's constituencies.[302][303]
Younger Americans have tended to vote mainly for Democratic candidates in recent years, particularly those under the age of 30.[310]
In the 2024 presidential election, Harris won voters aged 18–29 (54-43%) and 30–39 (51-45%), tied among those aged 40–49 (49-49%), lost those aged 50–64 (43–56%), and narrowly lost those aged 65 and older (49–50%). The median voter is in their 50s.[311]
One of the main reasons that 18–29 year old voters strongly support Democrats is that they are much less likely to be married. Harris tied with White voters aged 18–29 (49-49%) and won White women aged 18–29 (54-44%).[312]
Referring to the state map of the White vote, Kamala Harris in2024 won every state where Joe Biden won the White vote in2020. Republican Donald Trump won every state where Joe Biden lost the White vote except forVirginia.[313] Virginia is both 20% African American and its White voters are much less Republican than those of other Southern states, becauseNorthern Virginia in theWashington metropolitan area is a Democratic stronghold.[314]
Referring to the county map of the White vote, Democrats do win White voters in most ofNew England and theWest Coast. Democrats also do well in regions with highNordic and Scandinavian ancestry. For example, this keeps White voters in Minnesota and Wisconsin much less Republican than in other Midwestern states.[315][316]
Democrats are also relatively competitive among or win White voters in parts of theNortheast,Midwest, andSouthwest. Democrats do particularly poorly amongWhite Southerners, as racial polarization is extremely high in the Southern United States.[313]
In the 2024 presidential election, African Americans supported Kamala Harris 86-13%, while White Southerners supported Donald Trump 67-32%. Even in many urban counties in the Southern United States, Democrats do not win a majority of White voters. Trump won both White Southerners with college degrees (57-41%) and without college degrees (75-24%).[313]
In the swing states of Georgia and North Carolina, which Harris lost by 2.2% and 3.2%, Whites supported Trump 71-28% and 62-37%. Trump won White voters with college degrees in Georgia 57-43%, and lost White voters with college degrees in North Carolina 47–51%.
White evangelicals supported Trump in Georgia (91-9%) and North Carolina (87-12%), on par with African American support for Harris in Georgia (88-11%) and North Carolina (86-12%).[305]
New Mexico ishalf-Hispanic (49.3%), as the most heavily-Hispanic state in the country.[317] Of the 19 states and the District of Columbia won by Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, all except New Mexico had above-average educational attainment.[318] New Mexico also had the lowestpopulation density and the highestpoverty rate of any state carried by Harris.
Gender and sexual minorities
Total Fertility Rate by U.S. state in 2021
Since 1980, a "gender gap" has seen stronger support for the Democratic Party among women than among men. Unmarried and divorced women are more likely to vote for Democrats.[319][320] Although women supported Obama overMitt Romney by a margin of 55–44% in 2012, Romney prevailed amongst married women, 53–46%.[321] Obama won unmarried women 67–31%.[322] According to a December 2019 study, "White women are the only group of female voters who support Republican Party candidates for president. They have done so by a majority in all but 2 of the last 18 elections".[323][324]
In the 2024 presidential election, LGBT voters supported Harris 86-12%, on par with African Americans. Harris lost married men (38–60%) and married women (47–52%), tied among unmarried men (48-48%), and won unmarried women (61-38%).[312]
White women with college degrees do support Democrats somewhat strongly, with Harris winning them 58-41%, likely the best ever modern performance with this demographic. They were one of the few demographic groups that shifted towards Democrats from 2020 to 2024.[325]
Total fertility rate is strongly negatively correlated with support for the Democratic Party. Specifically, as total fertility increased in states, Democratic vote share decreased.[312]
The Democratic Party gradually lost its power in theSouthern United States since1964. AlthoughRichard Nixon carried 49 states in1972, including every Southern state, the Republican Party remained quite weak at the local and state levels across the entire South for decades. Republicans first won a majority of U.S. House seats in the South in the1994 "Republican Revolution", and only began to dominate the South after the2010 elections.[91] Since the 2010s,White Southerners are the Republican Party's strongest racial demographic, in someDeep South states voting nearly as Republican as African Americans vote Democratic.[147] This is partially attributable to religiosity, with Whiteevangelical Christians in theBible Belt, which covers most of the South, being the Republican Party's strongest religious demographic.
The Democratic Party is particularly strong in the West Coast and Northeastern United States. In particular, the Democratic Party receives its strongest support from White voters in these two regions. This is attributable to the two regions having the highest educational attainment in the country and being part of the "Unchurched Belt," with the lowest rates of religiosity in the country.[313]
The Democratic Party's support in theMidwest andSouthwest are more mixed, with varying levels of support from White voters in both regions. In the Midwest, the Democratic Party receives varying levels of support, with some states safely Democratic, someswing states, and some safely Republican. In the Southwest, the Democratic Party also relies onHispanic voters.[326]
White voters have considerable regional variations. In 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris lost Southern White voters 32–67% and Midwestern White voters 40–59%. Harris tied among White voters in the Northeastern United States 49-49%, and won White voters in the Western United States 52-45%. Harris lost White voters in the country as a whole to Trump 42–57%.[305]
The Democratic Party's support is strongly positively correlated with increased population density, consistent with theurban-rural divide observed globally.[328][297] Notably, in the2024 presidential election, the swings against Kamala Harris were inversely correlated to population density, shrinking the urban-rural divide slightly.[329] Harris still received higher support as population density increased. But relative to 2020, urban areas had the largest swings against Harris, suburban areas had lesser swings against Harris, and rural areas had the smallest swings against Harris.[330]
Specifically, Harris won voters in urban areas (60-38%), narrowly lost voters in suburban areas (47–51%), and lost voters in rural areas (34–64%). The urban-rural divide holds after controlling for race.[305]
Harris won White voters in urban areas (53-45%), lost them in suburban areas (41–57%), and lost them in rural areas (31–68%).
Harris won Hispanic voters in urban areas (57-39%) and suburban areas (51-48%), and lost them in rural areas (33–66%).
Harris won African American voters in urban areas (89-10%), suburban areas (86-12%), and rural areas (71-27%).
The only state of the ten least densely populated that Harris won wasNew Mexico, which is half-Hispanic (49.3%).
In theSouthern United States, racial polarization is often stronger than the urban-rural divide. In particular, Democrats lose White voters in many Southern urban areas, while doing extremely well in ruralmajority-Black counties.[313]
Income and wealth
Higher educational attainment in the US corresponds with higher median household wealth.[331]Median U.S. household income per County in 2021, showing the distribution of income geographically in the United StatesProportion of Americans living below the poverty line in each county of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico
Until the 2016 victory of RepublicanDonald Trump, lower income was strongly correlated to voting for the Democratic Party among the general electorate.[143] However, in all three of Trump's elections in 2016, 2020, and 2024, the previous correlation between lower incomes and voting for the Democratic Party was eliminated.[332] For White voters, instead higher educational attainment was strongly correlated with higher support for the Democratic Party.[142]
In the 2024 presidential election, Democratic nomineeKamala Harris did better among higher-income voters than lower-income voters for the first time ever in modern American political history.[294][295] High-income voters, including high-income White voters and White men with college degrees, are no longer Republican demographic strongholds and voted in line with the national popular vote in 2024.[333] Harris only narrowly lost White voters making $100,000 to $199,999 (49–50%), over $200,000 (48–51%), and White men with college degrees (48–50%), all on par with Harris losing the popular vote 48–50%. White men with college degrees are the highest-income demographic group.[293]
Nate Silver argues that theurban-rural divide, educational polarization, and racial polarization have rendered income irrelevant to voters in the Trump era.[144]
African Americans continue to be the lowest-income demographic in the United States.[334] According to 2024 exit polls, 45% of Black voters made less than $50,000 a year, compared to 27% of the electorate.[305] Harris still won most of thelowest-income counties, which are mainly majority-Black counties in theSouthern Black Belt.[28]
Among White voters in 2024, income was negatively correlated with support for Kamala Harris. Specifically, Harris lost White voters making less than $30,000 (34–63%), those making between $30,000 to $49,999 (37–62%), and those making $50,000 to $99,999 (42–56%). Harris only narrowly lost White voters making $100,000 to $199,999 (49–50%) and those making more than $200,000 (48–51%).[336]
Among the electorate as a whole, Harris won those making less than $30,000 (50–46%), lost those making between $30,000 and $99,999 (46–52%), won those making between $100,000 and $199,999 (51–48%), and won those making over $200,000 (52–46%). Harris' strongest income demographic were voters making over $200,000 a year.[305][337]
After controlling for education, there was little difference in White voter support for Harris by annual income. Note than 54% of White voters did not have degrees, and 46% of White voters did have college degrees.[305]
Harris lost White voters without college degrees making less than $50,000 (30–68%), making between $50,000 and $99,999 (32–67%), and making over $100,000 (33–66%). Among White voters without college degrees, 36% made less than $50,000, 35% made between $50,000 and $99,999, and 30% over $100,000.
Harris won White voters with college degrees making less than $50,000 (54–44%), making between $50,000 and $99,999 (54–45%), and making over $100,000 (53–46%). Among White voters with college degrees, 11% made less than $50,000, 27% made between $50,000 and $99,999, and 62% made over $100,000.
According to a 2022 Gallup poll, roughly equal proportions of Democrats (64-35%) and Republicans (66-34%) had money invested in thestock market.[338]
Ratio of White College Trump voters to White Non-College Biden voters in 2020
In the 2020 presidential election, college-educated White voters in all 50 states voted more Democratic than non-college White voters, as displayed in the two maps.[300][301] As of 2022, over 90% of American adults over the age of 25 have completed high school. However, only 35% have a Bachelor's degree and 17% have a graduate degree.[318] Higher educational attainment among White voters corresponds to increased ideological support for the Democratic Party.[146]
Educational attainment is not the only factor that affects ideology among White voters.[313] After controlling for education, there still remain huge variations by state and region.[305] Educational polarization is weaker than racial polarization in the South.[149]
Southern White voters with college degrees remain strongly Republican, with Harris losing them 41–57% in the 2024 presidential election. Harris won White voters with college degrees in the Midwestern United States 50-48%, the Northeastern United States 61-38%, and in the Western United States 67-30%. Harris won White voters with college degrees as a whole 53-45%.
Harris lost White voters without college degrees 24–75% in the Southern United States, 32–67% in the Midwestern United States, 37–61% in the Northeastern United States, and 42–56% in the Western United States. Harris lost White voters without college degrees as a whole 32–66%.
Educational polarization has benefitted Democrats in some well-educated Southern states, because it has not changed African American support for Democrats. Democrats are competitive in Georgia and North Carolina because there is much more room for Democrats to grow among White Southerners with college degrees than ground for Democrats to fall among White Southerners without college degrees. This also keeps Virginia reliably Democratic, despite its White voters voting Republican.[339]
In the 2024 presidential election, among White voters educational attainment was strongly positively correlated with support for Kamala Harris. Specifically, as educational attainment increased among White voters, so did support for Harris. It wasn't only about having a college degree or not, but rather support for Harris continuously increased as educational attainment increased.
In particular, Harris lost White voters with high school or less 25–73%, anAssociate degree 31–67%, and some college 38–61%. Harris tied with Trump among White voters with aBachelor's degree 49-49%, and won White voters with agraduate degree 58-40%.[305]
Educational polarization is stronger than gender and marital status among White voters, but weaker than racial polarization in the South.[305]
Harris won White women with college degrees (58-41%) and lost White men with college degrees (48–50%) by the same as the popular vote.[325]
Harris lost White women without college degrees (35–63%) and White men without college degrees (29–69%).
According to a Gallup poll in November 2024, unionization rates were positively correlated to increased educational attainment and higher income. In particular, 15% of those with graduate degrees, 8% with bachelor's degrees, 9% with some college, and 5% with high school or less were unionized. Also, 11% of those with household incomes of $100,000 or more, 7% of those with $40,000 to $99,999, and 3% with less than $40,000 were unionized. Also only 6% of those in the private sector were unionized, compared to 28% of government employees.[340]
Many Democrats without college degrees differ from liberals in their more socially moderate views, and are more likely to belong to an ethnic minority.[341][342] White voters with college degrees are more likely to live in urban areas.[341]
There was no difference in support for Harris from African Americans based on education, with Harris winning African Americans with and without a college degree 86-13%.
There was a modest difference in support for Harris among Hispanic voters with a college degree (54-42%) and without a college degree (51-48%). This was far less than the differences among Hispanic voters in urban (57-39%), suburban (51-48%), and rural areas (33–66%).[334]
Bar plot of the percentage of the population with a BA or higher in the electoral jurisdictions won by Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States presidential election.[318]
Upon foundation, the Democratic Party supportedagrarianism and theJacksonian democracy movement of PresidentAndrew Jackson, representing farmers and rural interests and traditionalJeffersonian democrats.[343] Since the 1890s, especially in northern states, the party began to favor more liberal positions (the term "liberal" in this sense describesmodern liberalism, rather thanclassical liberalism oreconomic liberalism). Historically, the party has represented farmers, laborers, and religious and ethnic minorities as it has opposed unregulated business and finance and favored progressive income taxes.
The 21st century Democratic Party is predominantly a coalition of centrists, liberals, and progressives, with significant overlap between the three groups. In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that among Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters, 47% identify as liberal or very liberal, 38% identify as moderate, and 14% identify as conservative or very conservative.[349][350] Political scientists characterize the Democratic Party as less ideologically cohesive than the Republican Party due to the broader diversity of coalitions that compose the Democratic Party.[351][352][353]
The party has lost significant ground with voters without college degrees in the 21st century, in line with trends across the developed world.[354] The realignment unfolded gradually, first with White voters in theSouth[147][148] andMidwest,[355] and later with voters as a whole without college degrees, except forAfrican Americans.[332][356]
Democrats have consistently won voters withgraduate degrees since the 1990s, including a majority of White voters with graduate degrees.[298] Since the 2010s, the party's main demographic gains have been among White voters with college degrees, which were previously a Republican-leaning group until 2016.[142] The party still receives extremely strong support fromAfrican Americans, but has lost ground among other racial minorities, includingHispanics,Native Americans, andAsian Americans.[294]
Top: Percent of self-identified liberals by state in 2018, according to aGallup poll.[357]Bottom: Linear regression of educational attainment vs. liberalism by state, based on the same Gallup data.[357]
Modern liberals are a large portion of the Democratic base. According to 2018 exit polls, liberals constituted 27% of the electorate, and 91% of American liberals favored the candidate of the Democratic Party.[358]White-collar college-educated professionals were mostly Republican until the 1950s, but they had become a vital component of the Democratic Party by the early 2000s.[359]
According to a 2025Gallup poll, 37% of American voters identify as "conservative" or "very conservative", 34% as "moderate", and 25% as "liberal" or "very liberal". For Democrats, 9% identified as conservative, 34% as moderate, and 55% as liberal.[360]
This ideological group is strongly correlated with high educational attainment. According to thePew Research Center, 49% were college graduates, the highest figure of any typographical group.[299] It was also the fastest growing typological group since the late 1990s to the present.[361] Liberals include most of the academia[363] and large portions of the professional class.[300]
TheBlue Dog Coalition was formed during the104th Congress to give members from the Democratic Party representing conservative-leaning districts a unified voice after the Democrats' loss of Congress in the1994Republican Revolution.[367][368][369] However, in the late 2010s and early 2020s, the Coalition's focus shifted towards ideologicalcentrism. One of the most influential centrist groups was theDemocratic Leadership Council (DLC), a nonprofit organization that advocated centrist positions for the party. The DLC disbanded in 2011.[370]
Some Democratic elected officials have self-declared as being centrists, including former President Bill Clinton, former Vice PresidentAl Gore, SenatorMark Warner, Kansas governorLaura Kelly, former SenatorJim Webb, and PresidentJoe Biden.[371][372] The New Democrat Network supports socially liberal and fiscally moderate Democratic politicians and is associated with the congressionalNew Democrat Coalition in the House.[373]Annie Kuster is the chair of the coalition,[371] and former senator and PresidentBarack Obama was self-described as a New Democrat.[374] In the 21st century, some former Republican moderates have switched to the Democratic Party.[375][376][377]
^All three incumbents in the 20th century to withdraw or not seek reelection—Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson—had succeeded to the presidency when their predecessor died, then won a second term in their own right.[114] Three presidents in the 1800s made and kept pledges to serve only one term, most recentlyRutherford B. Hayes.[115]
^Elected as Vice President with theNational Union Party ticket in the 1864 presidential election. Ascended to the presidency after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Rejoined the Democratic Party in 1868.
^Republican Vice PresidentDick Cheney provided atie-breaking vote, giving Republicans a majority until June 6, 2001, whenJim Jeffords left Republicans to join the Democratic Caucus.
^While there was no official Democratic nominee, the majority of the Democratic electors still cast their electoral votes for incumbent Vice PresidentRichard Mentor Johnson.
^Although Tilden won a majority of the popular vote, RepublicanRutherford B. Hayes won a majority of votes in the Electoral College.
^Although Cleveland won aplurality of the popular vote, RepublicanBenjamin Harrison won a majority of votes in the Electoral College.
^Although Gore won aplurality of the popular vote, RepublicanGeorge W. Bush won a majority of votes in the Electoral College.
^Although Clinton won aplurality of the popular vote, RepublicanDonald Trump won a majority of votes in the Electoral College.
References
^"About the Democratic Party".Democrats. March 4, 2019.Archived from the original on April 6, 2022. RetrievedApril 15, 2022.For 171 years, [the Democratic National Committee] has been responsible for governing the Democratic Party
^Democratic Party (September 10, 2022)."The Charter & The Bylaws of the Democratic Party of the United States"(PDF). p. 3.Archived(PDF) from the original on January 22, 2025. RetrievedMarch 24, 2025.The Democratic National Committee shall have general responsibility for the affairs of the Democratic Party between National Conventions
^Cole, Donald B. (1970).Jacksonian Democracy in New Hampshire, 1800–1851. Harvard University Press. p. 69.ISBN978-0-67-428368-8.
^abArnold, N. Scott (2009).Imposing values: an essay on liberalism and regulation. Oxford University Press. p. 3.ISBN9780495501121. Archived fromthe original on October 2, 2020. RetrievedApril 28, 2020.Modern liberalism occupies the left-of-center in the traditional political spectrum and is represented by the Democratic Party in the United States.
^Geismer, Lily (2015).Don't blame us: suburban liberals and the transformation of the Democratic party. Politics and society in twentieth-century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-15723-8.
^Cebul, Brent; Geismer, Lily, eds. (2025).Mastery and drift: professional-class liberals since the 1960s. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.ISBN978-0-226-83811-3.
^Rae, Nicol C. (June 2007). "Be Careful What You Wish For: The Rise of Responsible Parties in American National Politics".Annual Review of Political Science.10 (1).Annual Reviews:169–191.doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.10.071105.100750.ISSN1094-2939.What are we to make of American parties at the dawn of the twenty-first century? ... The impact of the 1960s civil rights revolution has been to create two more ideologically coherent parties: a generally liberal or center-left party and a conservative party.
^Cronin, James E.; Ross, George W.; Shoch, James (August 24, 2011). "Introduction: The New World of the Center-Left".What's Left of the Left: Democrats and Social Democrats in Challenging Times.Duke University Press.ISBN978-0-8223-5079-8.Archived from the original on August 20, 2024. RetrievedAugust 7, 2024. pp. 17, 22, 182:Including the American Democratic Party in a comparative analysis of center-left parties is unorthodox, since unlike Europe, America has not produced a socialist movement tied to a strong union movement. Yet the Democrats may have become center-left before anyone else, obliged by their different historical trajectory to build complex alliances with social groups other than the working class and to deal with unusually powerful capitalists ... Taken together, the three chapters devoted to the United States show that the center-left in America faces much the same set of problems as elsewhere and, especially in light of the election results from 2008, that the Democratic Party's potential to win elections, despite its current slide in approval, may be at least equal to that of any center-left party in Europe ... Despite the setback in the 2010 midterms, together the foregoing trends have put the Democrats in a position to eventually build a dominant center-left majority in the United States.
^Bruner, Christopher (January 1, 2018)."Center-Left Politics and Corporate Governance: What Is the 'Progressive' Agenda?".Brigham Young University Law Review:267–338.While these dynamics have remained have remained important to the Democratic Party's electoral strategy since the 1990s, the finance-driven coalition described above remains high controverisal and unstable, reflecting the fact that core intellectual and ideological tensions in the platform of the U.S. center-left persist.
^Dayen, David (December 2, 2024)."What Is the Democratic Party?".The American Prospect.The statistic that best defines our politics over the past 20 years is this: Nine of the past ten national elections have resulted in a change in power in at least one chamber of Congress or the White House. (The sole outlier is 2012.) Several of those elections were considered at the time to be realignments that would lead to a sustained majority for one of the major parties. ... After Republicans defeated John Kerry in 2004 and snatched five Senate seats across the South, commentators believed social issues like gay marriage would set an unwinnable trap for Democrats. Hugh Hewitt wrote a book called Painting the Map Red, imagining a permanent conservative majority. Democrats then took the House and Senate in the 2006 midterms. When Barack Obama crushed John McCain in post–financial crisis 2008, Democratic pundits decided they had an enduring majority. The Tea Party thrashed them in 2010. The conventional wisdom was that Obama was toast; he won in 2012. Donald Trump's 2016 victory signaled a changed electorate, until Democrats won the House in 2018 and the presidency in 2020, only to lose both in 2022 and 2024.
^abBadger, Emily; Gebeloff, Robert; Bhatia, Aatish (October 26, 2024)."They Used to Be Ahead in the American Economy. Now They've Fallen Behind".The New York Times.Archived from the original on October 27, 2024. RetrievedOctober 26, 2024.In the data, men working without a college degree of every racial group have fallen well below the average full-time worker (women without a degree have long been at the bottom in income, and college-educated men have consistently been at the top). Workers in coastal states have seen the highest growth, while steep declines have been concentrated in parts of the Midwest that are also likely to decide the election this November.
^Levy, Jonah (2006).The State after Statism: New State Activities in the Age of Liberalization. Harvard University Press. p. 198.ISBN9780495501121.In the corporate governance area, the center-left repositioned itself to press for reform. The Democratic Party in the United States used the postbubble scandals and the collapse of share prices to attack the Republican Party ... Corporate governance reform fit surprisingly well within the contours of the center-left ideology. The Democratic Party and the SPD have both been committed to the development of the regulatory state as a counterweight to managerial authority, corporate power, and market failure.
^Kimmage, Michael (February 25, 2025)."The World Trump Wants: American Power in the New Age of Nationalism".Foreign Affairs. RetrievedMarch 18, 2025.In the two decades that followed the Cold War's end, globalism gained ground over nationalism. Simultaneously, the rise of increasingly complex systems and networks—institutional, financial, and technological—overshadowed the role of the individual in politics. But in the early 2010s, a profound shift began. By learning to harness the tools of this century, a cadre of charismatic figures revived the archetypes of the previous one: the strong leader, the great nation, the proud civilization. ... They are self-styled strongmen who place little stock in rules-based systems, alliances, or multinational forums. They embrace the once and future glory of the countries they govern, asserting an almost mystical mandate for their rule.Although their programs can involve radical change, their political strategies rely on strains of conservatism, appealing over the heads of liberal, urban, cosmopolitan elites to constituencies animated by a hunger for tradition and a desire for belonging.
^Larson, Edward (2007).A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign.Free Press. p. 21.ISBN9780743293167.The divisions between Adams and Jefferson were exasperated by the more extreme views expressed by some of their partisans, particularly the High Federalists led by Hamilton on what was becoming known as the political right, and the democratic wing of the Republican Party on the left, associated with New York Governor George Clinton and Pennsylvania legislator Albert Gallatin, among others.
^Ericson, David F. (1964). "The Evolution of the Democratic Party".The American Historical Review.70 (1):22–43.
^Banning, Lance (1978).The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology. Cornell University Press. p. 208.
^abcMichael Kazin,What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party (2022) pp 5, 12.
^abM. Philip Lucas, "Martin Van Buren as Party Leader and at Andrew Jackson's Right Hand." inA Companion to the Antebellum Presidents 1837–1861 (2014): 107–129.
^Bates, Christopher (2015).The Early Republic and Antebellum America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History.Taylor & Francis. p. 293.ISBN9781317457404.The expansion engineered by Polk rendered the Democratic Party increasingly beholden to Southern slave interests, which dominated the party from 1848 to the Civil War.
^abcStaff."Jacksonian Democracy: The Democratization of Politics".Encyclopædia Britannica.Archived from the original on July 12, 2022. RetrievedOctober 6, 2022.By the 1840s, Whig and Democratic congressmen voted as rival blocs. Whigs supported and Democrats opposed a weak executive, a new Bank of the United States, a high tariff, distribution of land revenues to the states, relief legislation to mitigate the effects of the depression, and federal reapportionment of House seats. Whigs voted against and Democrats approved an independent treasury, an aggressive foreign policy, and expansionism. These were important issues, capable of dividing the electorate just as they divided the major parties in Congress.
^Banning, Lance (1978).The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology. Cornell University Press. p. 253.
^Douglas B. Craig,After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party, 1920–1934 (1993)
^Davis, Kenneth C. (2003).Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (1st ed.). New York: HarperCollins. pp. 321, 341.ISBN978-0-06-008381-6.
^Rutland,The Democrats: From Jefferson to Clinton (1995) ch. 7.
^David M. Kennedy,Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (2001).
^Paul Finkelman and Peter Wallenstein, eds.The Encyclopedia Of American Political History (CQ Press, 2001) pp. 124–126.
^Bullock, Charles S.; Hoffman, Donna R.; Gaddie, Ronald Keith (2006). "Regional Variations in the Realignment of American Politics, 1944–2004".Social Science Quarterly.87 (3):494–518.doi:10.1111/j.1540-6237.2006.00393.x.ISSN0038-4941.The events of 1964 laid open the divisions between the South and national Democrats and elicited distinctly different voter behavior in the two regions. The agitation for civil rights by southern blacks continued white violence toward the civil rights movement, and President Lyndon Johnson's aggressive leadership all facilitated passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. ... In the South, 1964 should be associated with GOP growth while in the Northeast this election contributed to the eradication of Republicans.
^Stanley, Harold W. (1988). "Southern Partisan Changes: Dealignment, Realignment or Both?".The Journal of Politics.50 (1):64–88.doi:10.2307/2131041.ISSN0022-3816.JSTOR2131041.S2CID154860857.Events surrounding the presidential election of 1964 marked a watershed in terms of the parties and the South (Pomper, 1972). The Solid South was built around the identification of the Democratic party with the cause of white supremacy. Events before 1964 gave white southerners pause about the linkage between the Democratic Party and white supremacy, but the 1964 election, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 altered in the minds of most the positions of the national parties on racial issues.
^abBlack, Earl; Black, Merle (September 30, 2003).The Rise of Southern Republicans. Harvard University Press.ISBN9780674012486.Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. RetrievedJune 9, 2018.When the Republican party nominated Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater—one of the few senators who had opposed the Civil Rights Act—as their presidential candidate in 1964, the party attracted many southern whites but permanently alienated African-American voters. Beginning with the Goldwater-versus-Johnson campaign more southern whites voted Republican than Democratic, a pattern that has recurred in every subsequent presidential election. ... Before the 1964 presidential election the Republican party had not carried any Deep South state for eighty-eight years. Yet shortly after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, hundreds of Deep South counties gave Barry Goldwater landslide majorities.
^abcMiller, Gary; Schofield, Norman (2003). "Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States".American Political Science Review.97 (2):245–260.doi:10.1017/S0003055403000650 (inactive November 7, 2024).ISSN1537-5943.S2CID12885628.By 2000, however, the New Deal party alignment no longer captured patterns of partisan voting. In the intervening 40 years, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had triggered an increasingly race-driven distinction between the parties. ... Goldwater won the electoral votes of five states of the Deep South in 1964, four of them states that had voted Democratic for 84 years (Califano 1991, 55). He forged a new identification of the Republican party with racial conservatism, reversing a century-long association of the GOP with racial liberalism. This in turn opened the door for Nixon's "Southern strategy" and the Reagan victories of the eighties.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
^James T. Patterson,Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (1997).
^Miller, Gary; Schofield, Norman (2008). "The Transformation of the Republican and Democratic Party Coalitions in the U.S.".Perspectives on Politics.6 (3):433–450.doi:10.1017/S1537592708081218.ISSN1541-0986.S2CID145321253.1964 was the last presidential election in which the Democrats earned more than 50 percent of the white vote in the United States.
^Patterson,Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (1997).
^James T. Patterson,Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (2011).
^abGeismer, Lily (June 11, 2019)."Democrats and neoliberalism".Vox.Archived from the original on November 5, 2022. RetrievedNovember 5, 2022.The version of neoliberalism embedded in these policies understood a distinct role for government to stimulate market-oriented solutions to address social ills such as unemployment and poverty. It thereby aimed not to eradicate the welfare state but rather to reformulate it. It extended the importance of poverty alleviation, which had long served as a benchmark of liberal policy, and had many similarities with the basic ideas of the war on poverty.
^Patterson.Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (2011).
^abc"The long goodbye".The Economist. November 11, 2010. RetrievedFebruary 20, 2023.In 1981 Republicans took control of the Senate for the first time since 1953, but most Southern elected officials remained white Democrats. When Republicans took control of the House in 1995, white Democrats still comprised one-third of the South's tally. ... white Southern Democrats have met their Appomattox: they will account for just 24 of the South's 155 senators and congressmen in the 112th United States Congress.
^Benoit, Bertrand; Luhnow, David; Monga, Vipal (December 27, 2024)."The Progressive Moment in Global Politics is Over".The Wall Street Journal. RetrievedDecember 27, 2024.Weak economic growth and record immigration are driving gains by the right, especially populists.
^abcEnten, Harry (November 29, 2016)."Even Among The Wealthy, Education Predicts Trump Support".FiveThirtyEight.First, it's clear from the exit polls that for white voters, every bit of extra education meant less support for Trump. ... Second, education matters a lot even when separating out income levels. ... Third, Trump saw little difference in his support between income levels within each education group.
^abAbramowitz, Alan I. (September 23, 2021)."Can Democrats Win Back the White Working Class?".Sabato's Crystal Ball. RetrievedFebruary 7, 2022.The data in Table 3 show that ideology had a powerful influence on vote choice in the 2020 presidential election. Almost all white voters located to the left of center on the ideology scale, regardless of education, voted for Biden, while almost all white voters located to the right of center, regardless of education, voted for Trump. Those in the center, just over one-fifth of white voters, favored Biden overall by a margin of 57% to 43%. However, there is little evidence that economic insecurity had any impact on the candidate preferences of even this group. Finally, it is worth noting that after controlling for ideology, there is almost no remaining difference between the candidate preferences of college and non-college whites. The class divide in candidate preference among white voters in 2020 is almost entirely explained by the fact that non-college white voters are now far more conservative across the board than are white college graduates.
^abcdeCohn, Nate (April 23, 2014)."Southern Whites' Loyalty to GOP Nearing that of Blacks to Democrats".The New York Times.President Obama's landslide victory in 2008 was supposed to herald the beginning of a new Democratic era. And yet, six years later, there is not even a clear Democratic majority in the country, let alone one poised for 30 years of dominance. It's not because Mr. Obama's so-called new coalition of young and nonwhite voters failed to live up to its potential. They again turned out in record numbers in 2012. The Democratic majority has failed to materialize because the Republicans made large, countervailing and unappreciated gains of their own among white Southerners.
^abKilgore, Ed (November 10, 2014)."From Yellow Dogs To Blue Dogs To New Dogs".Washington Monthly. RetrievedDecember 24, 2016.Even more to the point, once the ancient white Democratic voting habits were broken, there was really no going back. Blue Dogs were a fading echo of the Yellow Dog tradition in the South, in which the Democratic Party was the default vehicle for day-to-day political life, and the dominant presence, regardless of ideology, for state and local politics. ... So Martin's right: the Blue Dog model is gone for good. But I would warn against the very popular assumption that Democrats can simply intone "economic populism" and regain traction among "the economically pressed white voter" of the Deep South. All the reasons Democrats are struggling with non-college-educated white voters nationally are especially strong in the South: racial and religious fears, anti-urbanism, militarism, and mistrust of unions as well as Wall Street. And for a whole host of reasons, including exceptionally weak union affiliation levels and a neo-colonial heritage as a region starved for capital, the Deep South is going to be more "pro-business" than most of the country.
^abcJain, Lakshya (January 3, 2022)."The White Vote and Educational Polarization".Split Ticket. RetrievedJanuary 4, 2025.Before proceeding, it is worth pointing out that educational attainment, while highly informative, is by no means definitive. As David Shor and Ezra Klein have both said, the metric really serves as a proxy for class polarization, but while it is increasingly predictive, it is not the sole determining factor in a person's vote.
^Gitlin, Todd (2001). "The Left's Lost Universalism". In Melzer, Arthur M.; Weinberger, Jerry; Zinman, M. Richard (eds.).Politics at the Turn of the Century. Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 3–26.
^abcLarry E. Sullivan.The SAGE glossary of the social and behavioral sciences (2009). p. 291: "This liberalism favors a generous welfare state and a greater measure of social and economic equality. Liberty thus exists when all citizens have access to basic necessities such as education, healthcare, and economic opportunities."
^Mudge, Stephanie (2018).Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 167–213.
^Bailey, Michael A.; Goldstein, Weingast (April 1997). "The Institutional Roots of American Trade Policy".World Politics.49 (3):309–38.doi:10.1353/wp.1997.0007.S2CID154711958.
^John H. Barton,Judith L. Goldstein, Timothy E. Josling, and Richard H. Steinberg,The Evolution of the Trade Regime: Politics, Law, and Economics of the GATT and the WTO (2008)
^McClenahan, William (1991). "The Growth of Voluntary Export Restraints and American Foreign Economic Policy, 1956–1969".Business and Economic History.20:180–190.JSTOR23702815.
^Carmines, Edward G.; Stimson, James A. "Racial Issues and The Structure of Mass Belief Systems,"Journal of Politics (1982) 44#1 pp 2–20in JSTORArchived July 31, 2020, at theWayback Machine
^Williams, Daniel K. (May 9, 2022)."This Really Is a Different Pro-Life Movement".The Atlantic.Archived from the original on May 10, 2022. RetrievedFebruary 2, 2023.This was not merely a geographic shift, trading one region for another, but a more fundamental transformation of the anti-abortion movement's political ideology. In 1973 many of the most vocal opponents of abortion were northern Democrats who believed in an expanded social-welfare state and who wanted to reduce abortion rates through prenatal insurance and federally funded day care. In 2022, most anti-abortion politicians are conservative Republicans who are skeptical of such measures. What happened was a seismic religious and political shift in opposition to abortion that has not occurred in any other Western country.
^Cohen, David S.; Joffe, Carole (2025).After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe but Not Abortion. Beacon Press.ISBN978-0807017661.When the Supreme Court overturnedRoe v. Wade in June 2022, many feared it meant the end of abortion access in the United States. Yet the courageous work of people on the ground has allowed abortion to survive post-Dobbs in ways that no one predicted. ... Taking place across three intervals throughout 2022—pre-Dobbs in early 2022, right after Dobbs, and then six months later—these interviews showcase how nimble thinking on the part of providers, growth and new delivery models of abortion pills, and the never-ending work of those who help with abortion travel and funding have ensured most people who want them are still getting abortions, even without Roe.
^Leonhardt, David (February 24, 2025)."In an Age of Right-Wing Populism, Why Are Denmark's Liberals Winning?".The New York Times. RetrievedFebruary 24, 2025.Around the world, progressive parties have come to see tight immigration restrictions as unnecessary, even cruel. What if they're actually the only way for progressivism to flourish?
^See "July 3, 2014 – Iraq – Getting In Was Wrong; Getting Out Was Right, U.S. Voters Tell Quinnipiac University National Poll"Quinnipiac University PollArchived April 2, 2016, at theWayback Machine item #51
^abSuss, Joel; Xiao, Eva; Burn-Murdoch, John; Murray, Clara; Vincent, Jonathan (November 9, 2024)."Poorer voters flocked to Trump — and other data points from the election".Financial Times. RetrievedNovember 12, 2024.In contrast to 2020, the majority of lower-income households or those earning less than $50,000 a year voted for Trump this election. Conversely, those making more than $100,000 voted for Harris, according to exit polls.
^abcCohn, Nate (November 25, 2024)."How Democrats Lost Their Base and their Message".The New York Times. RetrievedNovember 25, 2024.Donald Trump's populist pitch bumped Democrats off their traditional place in American politics. ... It has long been clear that the rise of Donald J. Trump meant the end of the Republican Party as we once knew it. It has belatedly become clear that his rise may have meant the end of the Democratic Party as we knew it as well. After three Trump elections, almost every traditional Democratic constituency has swung to the right. In fact, Mr. Trump has made larger gains among Black, Hispanic, Asian American and young voters in his three campaigns since 2016 than he has among white voters without a college degree, according to New York Times estimates. In each case, Mr. Trump fared better than any Republican in decades. ... The overarching pattern is clear. In election after election, Democrats underperformed among traditional Democratic constituencies during the Trump era. Sometimes, it was merely a failure to capitalize on his unpopularity. Other times, it was a staggering decline in support. Together, it has shattered Democratic dreams of building a new majority with the rise of a new generation of young and nonwhite voters. This overarching pattern requires an overarching explanation: Mr. Trump's populist conservatism corroded the foundations of the Democratic Party's appeal. It tapped into many of the issues and themes that once made these voters Democrats.
^ab"Polarisation by education is remaking American politics".The Economist. October 13, 2024.From 1952 to 2000, a majority of white voters with college degrees self-identified as Republicans. Starting with the 2012 election, this affiliation began to weaken. It loosened even more once [Donald] Trump became the Republican standard-bearer in 2016. By 2020, the college-educated called themselves Democrats by a 2:1 margin. And there were many more of them; their share of the electorate rose from 8% in 1952 to 40% in 2020. Had the party held on to the rest of its support, this would have ensured an enduring majority. Yet at the same time, Democrats lost support among whites without college degrees. They now favour Republicans by their own margin of 2:1.
^abGrossmann, Matt; Hopkins, David A."Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics".Cambridge University Press. RetrievedMay 23, 2024.Democrats have become the home of highly-educated citizens with progressive social views who prefer credentialed experts to make policy decisions, while Republicans have become the populist champions of white voters without college degrees who increasingly distrust teachers, scientists, journalists, universities, non-profit organizations, and even corporations.
^Yglesias, Matthew (September 22, 2021)."The median voter is a 50-something white person who didn't go to college".Slow Boring. RetrievedApril 9, 2024.Long story short, if you're going to blow off the median voter, you ought to do it purposefully and with a plan — don't just act like the views of under-40 college grads are typical. ... And I don't think there's a mass delusion where people have come to believe that left-wing cultural politics and student debt relief are the top priorities for 50-something working-class people living outside the top 50 metro areas.
^abcConsidine, Clare (November 22, 2022)."Struggling to Attract Single Women? So are Republicans".Split Ticket.It's true—marriage has a conservatizing effect on the political attitudes of women. Married women are associated with lower levels of gender-linked fate, which is itself is associated with ideology, partisanship, and even positional attitudes such as support for abortion. Research tells us that marriage plays a distinct role in structuring legal abortion attitudes for women, particularly among white women. We know that the Dobbs decision created an inflection point in support for Democrats, and it's not an unreasonable to understand why the issue would have outsized salience among unmarried women (86 percent of abortion seekers in the US are unmarried).
^abcdefgJain, Lakshya; Lavelle, Harrison; Thomas, Armin (March 24, 2023)."Where Do Democrats Win White Voters?".Split Ticket. RetrievedJanuary 13, 2025.Educational polarization and urbanization are not the only two lenses through which to analyze the white vote. For all that educational polarization has done to explain shifts in partisanship (as shown by Atlanta and Dallas rocketing left), it cannot fully explain the differences in baseline partisanship nearly as well. To better understand this, it becomes necessary to consider a more comprehensive picture. ... Religious affiliation (i.e. denomination) and religiosity levels, among other factors, explained wide differences in how both non-college whites and college-educated whites voted across regions. Throughout New England and the Pacific Coast, widespread secularism makes both college and non-college whites significantly bluer than the national average. Elsewhere in the Northeast, a comparatively large Catholic population has raised the Democratic floor among whites across the educational attainment spectrum. ... This likely has a good deal to do with southern cultural conservatism, which is elevated relative to the nation thanks in part to marked Protestant religiosity, particularly among white Baptists. For this reason, support for abortion is exceptionally high in the Midwest, but extremely low in the South.This regional mix of religiosity and racial polarization results in something quite striking: whites in virtually every southern county are significantly more Republican than their northern counterparts.
^Brøndal, Jørn.Ethnic Leadership and Midwestern Politics: Scandinavian Americans and the Progressive Movement in Wisconsin, 1890–1914 (University of Illinois Press, 2004).
^"Unmarried Women in the 2004 Presidential Election"Archived January 1, 2016, at theWayback Machine (PDF). Report by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, January 2005. p. 3: "The marriage gap is one of the most important cleavages in electoral politics. Unmarried women voted for Kerry by a 25-point margin (62 to 37 percent), while married women voted for President Bush by an 11-point margin (55 percent to 44 percent). Indeed, the 25-point margin Kerry posted among unmarried women represented one of the high water marks for the Senator among all demographic groups."
^abMorris, G. Elliott; Brown, Amina; Marriner, Katie."Where Have All The Democrats Gone?".FiveThirtyEight. Archived fromthe original on February 4, 2025.This all raises questions about Democrats' messaging about the economy, or maybe suggests that the type of people they hypothesize would be helped most by their policies — such as wealth redistribution from progressive and corporate taxation and federal subsidies for companies that invest in underdeveloped areas, especially when it comes to manufacturing — are not as responsive as the party hoped to the type of so-called policy "deliverism" that the Obama and Biden administrations pursued. In a more dire framing for Democrats: If a party that tells itself it stands for working-class voters is systematically losing support with those people, something has gone terribly wrong for them.
^Cliffe, Jeremy (February 15, 2023)."The strange death of the centre right".New Statesman.Archived from the original on February 11, 2025. RetrievedFebruary 5, 2025.The traditional centre right of the postwar decades could do so by "bundling" moderate social conservatism (moderate by the standards of its day, at least) with the pro-business economic conservatism favoured by higher earners. But today those two elements are coming apart: richer folk are more likely to have gone to university and be socially liberal, while social conservatism is more associated with poorer groups. That puts centre-right politics in zugzwang: forced to move, but with no good options. It can emphasize its social conservatism and lose pro-business graduates to the centre, or play it down, shore up its support among those voters and lose social conservatives to the radical right.
^"What does 'working class' even mean?".Vox. December 9, 2024. RetrievedDecember 9, 2024.The criticism that Democrats left America's working class behind surged after the 2024 election. Here's why the term is so hard to define — and why that maters.
^"Charting the Biden economy: Despite all the growth and jobs, a deeply unpopular president". CNBC. January 19, 2025.Joe Biden leaves the presidency with what appears to be a sterling economic record. There's just one problem, and it is one that will forever taint the 46th president's legacy. Inflation and its onerous burden on households, particularly at the lower end of the income spectrum, dwarfed all the other good that happened on Biden's watch.
^Ruffini, Patrick (September 26, 2023)."Why Trump lost Georgia".The Intersection. RetrievedMarch 27, 2024.But this proximity belies highly racially polarized voting. Black adults outnumber white adults by 1 point and Biden voters Trump voters by a nearly identical 4 points. The Black Belt is one of four regions—including Southern Georgia, the Northern Highlands, and the Metro Borderlands, where the white vote for Republicans ranges upwards of 80 percent. This fact alone helps explain why education polarization in the South hasn't helped Trump: there are few non-college white Democrats to flip, but a lot of upside for Democrats in flipping still very Republican college-educated whites.
^abBrownstein, Ronald."Republicans and Democrats increasingly really do occupy different worlds". CNN.Archived from the original on October 24, 2018. RetrievedOctober 24, 2018.On the one hand, non-college whites almost always expressed more conservative views than did either non-whites or whites with a college degree living in the same kind of geographic area.
^Teixeira, Ruy (November 6, 2022)."Democrats' Long Goodbye to the Working Class".The Atlantic.Archived from the original on January 7, 2023. RetrievedNovember 8, 2022.As we move into the endgame of the 2022 election, the Democrats face a familiar problem. America's historical party of the working class keeps losing working-class support. And not just among White voters. Not only has the emerging Democratic majority I once predicted failed to materialize, but many of the non-White voters who were supposed to deliver it are instead voting for Republicans... From 2012 to 2020, the Democrats not only saw their support among White working-class voters — those without college degrees — crater, they also saw their advantage among non-White working-class voters fall by 18 points. And between 2016 and 2020 alone, the Democratic advantage among Hispanic voters declined by 16 points, overwhelmingly driven by the defection of working-class voters. In contrast, Democrats' advantage among White college-educated voters improved by 16 points from 2012 to 2020, an edge that delivered Joe Biden the White House.
^John Ashworth,"Agrarians" & "aristocrats": Party political ideology in the United States, 1837–1846(1983)
^Susan Dunn,Roosevelt's Purge: How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party (2010) pp. 202–213.
^abKane, Paul (January 15, 2014)."Blue Dog Democrats, whittled down in number, are trying to regroup".The Washington Post.Archived from the original on January 16, 2014. RetrievedJuly 23, 2014.Four years ago, they were the most influential voting bloc on Capitol Hill, more than 50 House Democrats pulling their liberal colleagues to a more centrist, fiscally conservative vision on issues such as health care and Wall Street reforms.
^Cite error: The named referencePiketty 2022 was invoked but never defined (see thehelp page).
^Cuenco, Michael (August 21, 2024)."Is Obama the reason Democrats are now 'underdogs'?".UnHerd. RetrievedDecember 10, 2024.Consider that when Obama last ran, the Midwest was still known as an impenetrable Blue Wall, while Florida and Ohio were still purple states. When Bill Clinton gave his acceptance speech in 1996, the Democrats were competitive throughout large swathes of the South. During that period, they had gone on to win not just Clinton's Arkansas and Al Gore's Tennessee, but states such as Kentucky and Louisiana too. The story of the last three decades has been one of political success for Democrats, who have won the popular vote in seven out of the last nine elections. Yet it is also one of narrowing political constituencies and pyrrhic victories, as the party attracted college-educated professionals at the expense of the non-college-educated majority. In particular, non-college-educated whites were lost, but in recent years they have increasingly been joined by significant numbers of non-college-educated minorities.
^Kondik, Kyle (December 5, 2024)."The End of the Line for Red State Senate Democrats".Sabato's Crystal Ball. RetrievedJanuary 17, 2025.As part of capturing the Senate this year, Republicans knocked out the final remaining Democratic senators from a group of 20 states that have consistently voted Republican for president since at least the 2000 election. A quarter-century ago, Democrats held nearly a third of the Senate seats from these 20 states. But that tally was down to just 2 leading into this election, and Republican victories in Montana and West Virginia reduced it to 0.
^Alvarez, R. Michael, and Jonathan Nagler. "Economics, Entitlements, and Social Issues: Voter Choice in the 1996 Presidential Election."American Journal of Political Science 42, no. 4 (1998): 1361.
^Gerstle, Gary (2022).The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era.Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0197519646.Archived from the original on June 26, 2022. RetrievedAugust 1, 2024.The most sweeping account of how neoliberalism came to dominate American politics for nearly a half century before crashing against the forces of Trumpism on the right and a new progressivism on the left. ... As he shows, the neoliberal order that emerged in America in the 1970s fused ideas of deregulation with personal freedoms, open borders with cosmopolitanism, and globalization with the promise of increased prosperity for all.
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