#17 Trump and Class War

I have been invited to contribute to a short symposium in Socio-Economic Review on Philip Rathgeb’s great book on how the radical right has reshaped welfare and capitalism in Europe and the US. This led me to think about the class politics of Donald Trump after the 2024 US election. I though I could leave some thoughts here. I don’t think a lot of it hasn’t been said elsewhere but it helped me a bit to structure some thoughts on paper.

The political rise of Donald Trump has fundamentally reshaped the American electoral alignments. The Republican Party, once firmly associated with the economic elite, has transformed into a party that commands substantial support from the working class. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, historically aligned with labor and progressive redistribution, now finds increasing support among wealthier, college-educated voters.

In past decades, lower-income and non-college-educated voters tended to favor the Democratic Party. However, this pattern has changed dramatically. Exit polls from the 2024 election indicate that a majority of voters earning less than $50,000 a year backed Trump. Conversely, those making more than $100,000 tended to support Kamala Harris. This economic realignment has been a long time coming but has now fully materialized. Even more than income, education has become a stark dividing line. Nearly two-thirds of non-college-educated voters supported Trump, while college-educated voters leaned Democratic. An underlying mechanism is that cultural and identity-based issues—particularly immigration —play a pivotal role in determining political alignments in place of economic and redistribution issues.

Immigration is a major mechanism diverting the attention of low-income voters from economic issues and channeling it to the right. Polling before the 2024 election revealed that voters saw immigration as the most pressing issue, with 55% viewing it as a “critical threat” to the country. Accordingly, Trump’s messaging focused on border security, presenting the Biden administration’s approach as chaotic and ineffective.

Surprisingly, this rhetoric resonated particularly in Hispanic-majority areas along the U.S.-Mexico border, where Trump made notable gains. In Texas, for example, he managed to flip counties that had consistently voted Democratic since the 1970s. Immigration policy does not divide voters along simple ethnic lines; rather, concerns about border security and economic displacement influence voting choices across racial demographics.

Converting Poor Votes into Pro-Rich Policies

While Trump’s populist appeal draws in working-class voters, his economic policies overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy. His first administration pursued aggressive tax cuts, deregulation, and reductions in ...