Debates on the left are typically framed as a division between moderates and progressives, with the two sides wrestling over how best to form a governing coalition. Yet, in many ways, this divide obscures a much bigger fault line: the class divide. The fact is, many of the Democratic party’s ideological factions consist almost exclusively of college-educated professionals. As a result, the priorities of this class tend to dominate the party’s appeals. The priorities of working-class voters, meanwhile, are an afterthought.

A new report from Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working Class Politics, and Joan Williams, author of Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, looks at ways to bridge the yawning class divide that threatens the possibility of forming a winning coalition.

They developed an original survey to explore the various attitude “gaps” between the broad working class (defined as non-college educated, middle income workers) and the liberal upper middle class (Democratic-leaning college graduates with a household income in the top 25%).

The resulting report, titled The Left’s Coalition Crisis: Understanding the Massive Divide Between Working Class and College Educated Voters, and How to Bridge it, is, according to the authors, “the most comprehensive review available to date” of class-based political attitudes across a number of issue areas.

The first thing to note about the gaps between the educated upper middle class and the working class is that the latter overwhelmingly prioritize economic issues, while the former lean toward cultural ones.

Of the top 12 political priorities listed by working-class respondents, 11 are economic concerns. The only non-economic issue prized by the working class was a desire to lower the crime rate. Meanwhile, educated upper-income respondents rated cultural and symbolic issues over economic concerns. Of their top 12 priorities, only six were economic. They also rate abstract ideals over concrete, material ones. Educated voters prioritized “resisting authoritarianism” above “protecting social security” and “ending racism” above “protecting Medicaid”.

On an issue by issue basis, the largest gaps that Abbott and Williams found were along culture, climate, crime and immigration issues. That is, the very issues many college-educated liberals have built........

© The Guardian