What Do Working Class Voters Think About Billionaires and Populist Messaging?
Across months of focus groups and online qualitative research, voters express admiration and respect for wealth and work – they just want things to be fairer.
We’re back this week with another update from the largest research effort to understand why working class voters are trending away from Democrats.
This week, we want to share some analysis about working class voter reactions to populist messaging and their – often unprompted – sentiments of how they perceive Democrats on the economy.
As some leading Democrats rightly call out the “oligarchy” and the outsized influence billionaires have on our political system, it’s important to understand how working people are processing these issues in their own words – and what their baseline view of Democrats’ economic approach is. It’s also important to consider whether these messages truly resonate with the very people they are intended to attract.
Do working people think we need to pull out the pitchforks and torches? Or do they admire the wealthy and want to emulate their success? Do they want leaders who prioritize attacking billionaires or promoting working people’s upward economic mobility?
We’ve heard a lot about these issues from voters in 35 focus groups so far, plus months-long online discussion boards with working people all across America. Here are just a couple quick insights from those conversations.
THE TL;DR
Don’t vilify the people, vilify the system. Working people think the political system in America is broken and tilted in favor of the wealthy, well-off, rich, and powerful and that it doesn’t serve working people. In particular, they see our tax system as allowing the wealthy to avoid paying their fair share, shifting the burden to a working class already buried by rising costs. And they believe that politicians are willfully upholding and preserving this system. They want leaders who acknowledge these systems are broken and skewed to the rich and powerful – but they aren't demanding true pitchfork populism. It’s not off with their heads, it’s they should pay their fair share.
Remember, the people we’ve heard from describe themselves as living paycheck-to-paycheck. They don’t rely on government assistance, and they take pride in their own hard work. Persuadable working people see wealth and success as aspirations to pursue; they just want leaders who aren’t afraid to push for big changes to tilt things more in their favor. And they see Democrats right now as offering unfair handouts and giveaways within that broken system, instead of fighting to fix it.
#1: VILIFY THE PROBLEM, NOT THE PEOPLE
Many of the working class voters we’ve heard from in our focus groups do not hold being wealthy against billionaires. They aspire to wealth and want to see their hard work pay off with financial gain. They aren’t mad billionaires exist, they just want a better chance to become one.
They do believe that our political system is broken – and that it has been influenced by the rich and powerful to make things easier on those at the top, while failing to deliver for those at the bottom. But despite the broad perception that the system is rigged in favor of the rich, messaging that attacks billionaires personally and explicitly really wasn’t as effective as you might think.
They are not steeped in the political conversation about billionaires or the billionaires that surround the Trump Administration. And therefore they do not carry in their minds an image of an evil billionaire or have a built-in sense that billionaires are bad actors. Instead, working people told us they think hard work should be rewarded, and they perceive many wealthy people as having achieved the American Dream through their hard work.
Here’s just some of what we’ve heard:
“Politicians use billionaires as scapegoats for their own failures of not fixing the tax code, not fixing issues with this country.” – White man from Texas
“I do feel like there is some price gouging and people are struggling. I just don’t think blaming billionaires and corporations is the way to go. It kinda makes people not work hard if they think once they get to that point now everyone is going to think they are evil simply cause they worked hard and got rich.” – Hispanic man from Florida
“It is not a sin to be successful.” – White man from Nevada
“[Democrats] always talk about, ‘Oh, we gotta lock up the billionaires, billionaires need to pay more.’ Well, I mean, the top 1% probably pays over 50% of our taxes. So yeah, they make a lot of money. But I was raised to work. You work for what you want. Nothing is given to you for free. I raised my children that way. Nothing is free. There are some people that have generational wealth, right? But a lot of people… Like, my daughter has her own company. She works really, really hard, and so why should she be punished for working so hard to get successful?” – White woman from Texas
“What gets people out of poverty is a check and a job. And these guys are not offering that. They want to take from the rich and give to the poor but that doesn’t work. The rich just stop working and creating and building and then nobody wants to work, nor there is a place to work.” – Hispanic man from Florida
“‘Billionaires just get richer,’ I do not like this type of statement because it is an American Dream. But we need to make changes to the brackets that make it hard for the people that have little to get started.” – Hispanic man from Texas
“Everyone would love to be a millionaire, and those very few people who do, a lot of them got there, they didn't get it from stealing it, they worked hard at it, and worked their whole life for it. Maybe they worked three generations, or they took a risk. Billionaires are people, there’s good ones and there’s bad ones. Just because they got a lot of money doesn’t mean they’re bad, and just because they got a lot of money doesn’t mean they’re good.” – White man from Texas
These may not be insights you would pick up in a survey. But they are worth considering. To gain credibility and grow support, Democratic leaders have to confront the systemic problems and challenges working people face, not just attack billionaires for their wealth and power.
In short: Go harder on the problem, softer on the people.
This doesn’t mean Democrats should shy away from arguing that our broken systems benefit billionaires – for example, in most of our recent research, working class voters didn’t mind invoking billionaires when informed that the GOP is cutting Medicaid to give them tax breaks.
But that is focused on the system and the politicians bent on preserving it, not the individual. Working people want the chance to succeed. It’s the sense of unfairness that resonates with working people, not animus toward billionaires themselves.
#2: DEMS MUST REBRAND AROUND VALUING AND REWARDING WORK
On top of what we’ve heard about respecting wealth, many voters told us they don’t think the Democratic Party values success or hard work.
They believe Democrats are too focused on handouts, rewarding people for not working and pouring money into programs they don’t think work for them, instead of investing in upward economic mobility, and too distracted to actually prioritize fixing the stuff that’s screwing them over.
For many, there is a belief that Democrats used to fight for working people – but they no longer do.
“[Democrats] don’t understand that people want to work, for the most part, they want to provide for themselves. They don’t want the government to take everything they earn. They don’t want to subsidize the lazy that don’t feel like working. They don’t want to subsidize other countries in perpetuity. They don’t want DEI, people want the positions they earned through their hard work, not to be told they can’t have it based on the shade of their skin, or that they got a position based on the shade of their skin.” – White man from Michigan
“Democrats don’t really talk about personal prosperity. They would take, you know, the social justice over personal growth financially.” – Black man from Michigan
“Those of us who don’t depend on government assistance don’t look at Democrats the same way as those who do.” – Black man from North Carolina
“America was built on hard work. There are so many stories of immigrants coming to this country with virtually nothing, and then through hard work they establish a lifestyle and home here. Democrats are much too willing to give handouts to people who claim to have mental and physical disabilities which lead them out of the workforce. We need to care more about the working class, those willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work.” – White man from Nevada
Generally, the voters we’ve heard from see Democrats’ policies as failing to offer much of anything for people who work hard and play by the rules, while rewarding those who don’t. They believe people who fall on hard times should have a safety net, but think Democrats tend to feed dependency and don’t have a vision that rewards hard work and lessens the need for a safety net.
Working people want to see leaders offer ideas that reward their own work – such as raising the wages they earn for working hard, or cutting taxes for working people, or making buying a home more affordable and accessible. They have lost faith that politicians will do anything to actually fix what’s hurting them economically – which clearly affects their perception that politicians are looking for others (like billionaires) to blame.
SO WHAT NOW?
The working people we’ve talked to are very motivated by fairness. They want to feel like their hard work will give them a chance at success – perhaps even the opportunity to get rich one day, if they have the right idea and do the hard work to build it into something. This underlying belief in fairness – and hostility to things that are unfair – gives Democrats plenty to work with.
Democrats have seen a lot of success with working people when they centered fairness in their arguments (remember Warren Buffett’s secretary?), and there’s no reason to think they can’t again.
When Democrats condemn Republican proposals to weaken benefits earned through years of hard work, like Medicare and Social Security, in order to fund tax breaks for the rich or big corporations, that taps into the sense of unfairness we’ve heard over and over again. When Republicans try to enact policy that makes their wealthy friends even richer – not just tax cuts, but things like funneling government contracts to Elon Musk or others – that is an opening.
Democrats shouldn’t abandon their fundamental critiques that the system is stacked against working folks. They just should keep things focused on the broken system itself, not the beneficiaries of it.
And Democrats should spend more time focusing on how to make working people the beneficiaries of a reform agenda that unstacks the deck and actually delivers for their lives.
See this post on my Substack, "Elections: Advice for Potential Candidates (Determine Your Policy Positions 2)." Here I highlight a long list of pro-worker, pro-middle class policy positions that Dems should support. Many they generally do but they DON"T TALK ABOUT THEM. https://sharonlawrence.substack.com/p/elections-advice-for-potential-candidates-95e. Focus on the policy issues - not the politics or personalities.
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The overarching need, however, is for an easily understandable statement of value/governance philosophy. I suggest this:
Partnership for America’s Future
Government isn't Them. Or some scary Deep State set out to destroy our way of life. It is US. It is US working together to make life better for us individually and collectively. Core building blocks of that effort are:
An Educational System Second to None
Jobs to Build a Life On
Justice and Respect for All
Communities to Feel Safe In
A Helping Hand in Times of Need
Preservation of Our Constitutional Freedoms & the Rule of Law
An Economic System That Fosters Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Jobs for All
Stewardship of Our Precious Natural Resources
Global Leadership to Promote Peace and Prosperity
We still believe in the power of the American Dream and know that you do too. Let’s work together to make certain that dream becomes a reality for each and every one of us. (https://sharonlawrence.substack.com/p/elections-advice-to-anyone-willing)
I wrote about the issues of economic mobility on my Substack MONTHS ago, https://sharonlawrence.substack.com/p/elections-issue-insights-economic. So where's the Democratic Party's thoughtful discussion of such issues?
My beef with the Democratic Party --- look at all the jobs available with campaigns. They are all for organizers, fund raisers, event planners, social media managers, and the like. They HIRE NO ONE WITH A POLICY BACKGROUND ... and it shows.
Look at the DNC's Rapid Response Team,https://bsky.app/profile/factpostnews.bsky.social. All they do is repost clips of Trump officials/Republicans. It's just attack, attack, attack. How is this remotely appealing to anyone except Democrats who want red meat attacks on Republicans?
This does NOTHING to bring the 45 percent of Americans who are independents into the fold. It does nothing to combat disinformation, misinformation, lies and lack of information. It does NOTHING to help find solutions to the many problems that really aren't partisan. It just turns everyone but the rabid partisans off.