… Marginal shifts in partisan balloting by the white working class have been a crucial determinant in the outcome of elections since 1968.
This non-college white constituency — pollster shorthand for both the white working class and the white middle class without college degrees — makes up a massive bloc of the electorate, with estimates ranging from 48 percent of the entire electorate in 2016, according to an analysis by Catalist, a liberal voter research group, to 54 percent, according to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. …
“In almost every way, white non-college Democrats and white non-college Republicans are nothing alike,” Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the AFL-CIO who is now a senior adviser to its president, emailed in response to my inquiry. CONT.
Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times