Working Class Weekly: How Campaigns Are Using Working Class Messaging
Last week, we shared the top negatives that are moving voters in our focus groups across the battleground. These voters are fed up with rising costs, and they’re not seeing things get better. Their economic anxiety is paired with a sense of betrayal by politicians who are not only out of touch, but seem to be cashing in while they fall behind.
Our focus groups have followed working class voters in battleground states since 2025 — many of whom backed Trump in 2024 but are now not aligned closely with either political party. They’re exactly the voters Democrats need to win back, and our research points to a real opening: the benefit of the doubt these voters extended to Trump and Republicans is wearing thin as costs keep climbing. Even Trump-inclined participants are telling us they’re open to voting for Democrats if they offer something better.
Up and down the ballot, candidates and allied groups are already building campaigns with messages our research shows resonate.
Here’s a look into how Democratic campaigns are using working class messaging in their efforts to win back these voters.
HEALTH CARE AS THE CORNERSTONE
Across all of our focus groups in 2026, health care stands out as a key issue driving financial anxieties and frustration. These voters know the system is broken and it’s only getting worse. The Big Beautiful Bill becomes a huge vulnerability for Republicans when working class voters are shown the details — like how it guts Medicaid and puts rural hospitals at risk, especially since the trade off was to give billionaires a tax break. This healthcare attack was critical last year in Virginia.
Democrats are starting to weaponize this, making health care messaging cornerstones of their campaigns. The Cook Political Report’s Battleground Issue Tracker shows health care and cost-of-living messaging dominating Democratic ad spending across the map.
The DSCC released a new ad calling out Ashley Hinson for spending her time in Congress getting rich at Iowans’ expense — with health care as the centerpiece of this message. The ad features Hinson’s record: she voted to cut taxes for the 1%, eliminate ACA tax credits, slash Medicaid, put Iowa hospitals at risk of closure, block veterans’ health care funding, and kill prescription drug price caps — all while she got richer. The ad’s argument is validated by our focus groups as a powerful working class message, that health care costs are high because she looks out for herself, not her constituents.
Key working class messaging:
“Her net worth? It’s increased up to $7 million since she first ran for Congress.”
“While she’s getting richer, Hinson voted to put health care for hundreds of thousands of Iowans at risk.”
But it’s not just Medicaid cuts and the Big Beautiful Bill that Democrats are using to talk about health care — it’s bleeding into corruption messaging. As we shared last week, these voters are deeply cynical about politics and believe that politicians on both sides of the aisle are corrupt.
Former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper represents one of the Democratic Party’s best chances to flip a Senate seat this cycle. His campaign ads center on making life easier for the working class, specifically calling out insurance companies that are keeping health care costs high. This messaging directly addresses the role special interests play in keeping costs high for the working class — messaging our focus groups show resonates with these voters.
Key working class message from Cooper:
“I’m running for the Senate to make life easier today. To go after insurance companies ripping you off, to make sure you can retire with dignity, and to build an economy that finally values working people.”
In Georgia, Jon Ossoff is defending a vulnerable Senate seat, and the one most essential to winning a Senate majority. Ossoff’s campaign has made this connection between special interests and higher costs central to his campaign. Nowhere is this more clear than the over four-minute ad, This is Why Things Don’t Work for Ordinary People. Ossoff traces how pharmaceutical lobbying has kept prescription drug prices high, and Ossoff’s own record of taking on the industry.
Key working class messages from Ossoff:
“We’re told a story. Work hard, play by the rules, and you’ll thrive. No matter who you are, or where you start, the grind will pay off. But for too many, this story just isn’t true.”
“You aren’t the problem, neither are your fellow Americans. The problem is a corrupt and failing political system.”
“If we can break the grip of corruption, our politics can meet the people’s needs, instead of serving the wealthy and powerful.”
James Talarico, who is vying to flip Texas’ Senate seat blue for the first time in decades, is running a similar message, built around prescription drug prices and his record of fighting to cap insulin at $25 a month for Texans. The ad, which boasts 10 million views on YouTube, recounts his own struggle affording insulin as a Type 1 diabetic, demonstrating that he understands the lived reality of working class voters.
Working class messaging from Talarico:
“When I picked up my first insulin prescription it cost me $684 dollars. I couldn’t afford that. Most Texans can’t either.”
“I know what it means to fight for my life. I approve this message because, in the Senate, I’ll fight for yours.”
CORRUPTION STOCK TRADES, AND SELF DEALING
One message that runs through nearly every campaign using working class messaging: the economy doesn’t work for you, because politicians in Washington are working for themselves and their donors, not you.
The framing aligns with what we hear in focus groups. Corruption is a strong negative for working class voters and taps into a sentiment we heard earlier in our focus groups: that our system is broken and we need change. These voters gave Trump early benefit of the doubt, even through the chaos, because they believe Washington is fundamentally broken and needs an overhaul. They still believe the system doesn’t work for them and needs to be changed. Democrats aren’t shying away from that.
In Ohio, one of the key Senate battlegrounds, Democratic candidate and former US Senator Sherrod Brown is making a congressional stock trading ban a centerpiece of his campaign. This month, Brown launched Last Year, a spot built around the $635 million members of Congress made in stock trades last year and calls for a ban on members of Congress and their spouses trading stocks.
Brown’s working class messaging:
“Members of Congress and their spouses should be banned from trading stocks. And if you serve in Congress you should never be able to cash in and become a lobbyist.”
“If you can’t agree to that, then you shouldn’t be in office.”
Pennsylvania, home to some of the cycle’s most competitive House races, shows the same sentiment. In the state’s 8th District, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti launched her campaign with a video hammering Rep. Rob Bresnahan for making more than 600 stock trades after campaigning on a congressional trading ban — including, as Cognetti highlights, selling stock in Medicaid providers just before voting to gut Medicaid, “profiting off of Pennsylvanians loss” as she puts it. Cognetti explicitly connects congressional stock trading and self dealing from her Republican opponent with the economic pain Pennsylvania voters are feeling. She pairs the hit with her own record of fighting corruption as Scranton mayor.
Cognetti’s working class messaging:
“[Rob Bresnahan] Cut Medicaid for over 25,000 of our neighbors. Sold Medicaid provider stocks just before the vote, profiting off of Pennsylvanian’s loss.”
“We can stand tall against a Washington that takes advantage of working people, and make it work for us.”
In Iowa, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand is making anti-corruption and government efficiency the core of his campaign. A former state prosecutor and State Auditor, Sand is leaning on his career catching public officials for misusing funds and lasering in on the message of protecting tax payer money from corrupt politicians. In his campaign ads, he promises to make jail time mandatory for public officials that steal tax dollars. The message aligns with what we’re hearing from working class voters: they’re fed up with a political class that cheats the system and lines its own pockets at their expense.
Key message:
“Stealing is bad, and stealing from tax payers should be unacceptable.”
WORKING CLASS AS AN IDENTITY, NOT JUST A TAX BRACKET
For many of these voters, “working class” isn’t just an income level, it’s an identity built on hard work. Our conversations with working class voters show us that they want to work, they don’t want to depend on the government, and they’re frustrated that no matter how hard they try they just can’t seem to get ahead. They’re working paycheck to paycheck, and they know what it means to struggle to get by.
Campaigns honing working class messaging are tapping into this identity.
Iowa Senate candidate Josh Turek’s campaign launch video,“Underdog”, is built around this ethos. It opens with him pushing his wheelchair up a hill while describing growing up working class and never doubting that, despite his spina bifida and working class background, hard work would get him the American dream — tapping directly into the working class values of self sufficiency and hard work we’ve heard in our focus groups. He credits VA health coverage and a free summer lunch program with helping get him there, then pivots to Republican Sen. Joni Ernst’s vote to cut Medicaid and food assistance to fund tax breaks for billionaires.
His message frames the programs Republicans slashed, not through dependency or as a contradiction to hard work and grit, but as a way of allowing families the safety net to let their hard work pay off.
Key messages:
“I knew nothing would come easy, but I never doubted my right to the American dream.”
“It wouldn’t have been possible without the grit that made me shoot a thousand shots every day. And I wouldn’t have gotten that far without VA health coverage from my dad’s service, free summer lunch programs when my parents were struggling, and the local AEA that made sure I had access to a good education.”
“Now the Senator from Iowa is just closing doors. Taking away health care, making it harder for parents to feed their kids. All just to give tax breaks to billionaires.”
In Pennsylvania’s 7th District, firefighter and union president Bob Brooks is tying anti-corruption messaging to his own working class identity. In his campaign launch, Brooks frames his opponent, Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, as someone who hands tax cuts to the wealthy while working people get left behind. His message clearly lays out the corruption in Washington while pushing to make things more affordable, give more people health care, and build more stuff in Pennsylvania — tying in affordability and anti-corruption messaging with the value of work we’ve seen from working class voters.
Key messages:
“There’s a lot of politicians in Washington like Mackenzie, not a lot of folks like us.”
“We gotta make things more affordable, get more people health care, and build stuff here. With a clear goal: to make life easier, so we can spend more time with our family.”
Running in Ohio’s 7th District, Brian Poindexter has built his campaign around his own working class identity as a union ironworker. His campaign launch ad centered messaging on what we’ve heard from working class voters: working people are putting in more effort than ever, yet Washington’s rigged rules keep them from getting ahead. Poindexter consistently honors the work ethic of his constituents while holding Washington accountable for failing them.
Key working class messages from Poindexter:
“We’re working harder and harder and we’re getting less and less.”
“Growing up in the ‘80s on the west side of Cleveland, we didn’t have much, but an honest day’s work was enough to provide for your family. My dad was a machinist with the IAM for 46 years. That one job was enough to support a family of 8. That is obviously not possible anymore.”
“I’m tired of the Republicans who are in the pockets of the rich and the corporations. I’m tired of the sellout Democrats, too. The ones who fight for everybody else except for the working people.”
In North Carolina’s 11th District, congressional candidate Jamie Ager uses working class messaging to make the connection between working class identity and government accountability. A fifth-generation farmer, Ager’s campaign launch draws a direct line between the hard work and accountability farm life demands to the kind of leadership needed in Congress.
Key messages:
“Farming teaches you to be accountable. To the land, the animals, and to people.”
“Helping the rich get richer on the backs of hard-working Americans isn’t working.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way. The challenges we face are big, but how we arrive at the answers is probably pretty simple. Be honest, be curious, work together. That’s how you run a farm, imagine if it’s how we ran our country.”
A BLUEPRINT
These are just a few of the campaigns showing how to deploy working class messages effectively. They aren’t talking about issues that leave working class voters feeling cast aside and they aren’t just attacking Republicans — they’re messaging relentlessly about costs, tying every attack on Republicans back to the economic squeeze voters are feeling, they’re speaking to the values and identity of working class voters, and pairing critiques with a positive vision forward.
NEXT WEEK: We’ll explore how campaigns are working class messaging to turn Republican priorities against them and offering working class voters a more positive vision for the future.
Oh my goodness! Such good news! Thanks! I look forward to continuing to read the posts.
Such a wonderful coverage, thank you.