At the BYD factory in Lancaster, Los Angeles County, California, American blue-collar workers work in the assembly workshop.
2022 US Congress midterm elections are in full swing. Recently, in order to win the primary election, John Fettman, a popular figure in Democratic candidate and a Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, has constantly mentioned the status of the union in his campaign speeches to show his importance to the blue-collar class.
is crucial for future candidates from both parties, especially for candidates in Rust Zone . At present, both the white blue-collar class and the Latino blue-collar class tend to support Republican . Democratic candidates have many difficulties in winning the support of the blue-collar class.
On the one hand, the white and blue-collar class is still a staunch supporter of the Republican Party. Since the 2016 presidential election, the white and blue-collar class has increasingly turned to support the Republican Party. But from the perspective of American history, the white blue-collar class is mainly supporters of the Democratic Party. In the 2008 US presidential election, Democratic candidate Obama used his response to the 2008 financial crisis as a campaign strategy to attract the blue-collar class. In the end, the support of the white and blue-collar class became the key to Obama's victory in the Rust Zone.
But during Obama's administration, the white and blue-collar class began to turn to support the Republican Party. During Obama's two-term administration, the Democratic Party built itself into a party that "supports multiculturalism and opposes white supremacy", emphasized too much about minority rights and ignored the white blue-collar class, which led to the Democratic Party's increasing loss of white blue-collar voters. Although Democratic candidate Biden won in the 2020 election, according to US media reports, compared with Hillary , Biden's achievements in the rust zone, such as Pennsylvania , are more reflected in winning the support of white voters from more wealthy suburban suburbans than white blue-collar workers.
On the other hand, the Latino blue-collar class has a tendency to support the Republican Party. Since the 2020 election, the Latino blue-collar class has begun to turn to support the Republican Party. In the 2020 presidential election, Democratic support for the Latino blue-collar class has dropped sharply. According to data from U.S. polling agencies Catalist and State of Change, the support for the Democratic Party has dropped by 16 points. Even in the Arizona and Nevada where Biden won, the Democratic support for the Latino blue-collar class dropped by 22 points and 15 points respectively.
In the current 2022 Congress midterm elections, more Hispanic blue-collar workers support the Republican Party. The Economist and "Your Government Poll" poll data at the end of June this year showed that the Republican Party led the Democratic Party by 9 points in terms of support ratings among the Latino blue-collar class.
On April 16, hundreds of people gathered in Chicago to protest the police's earlier shooting of 13-year-old Hispanic teenager Toledo.
Latinos are currently the most populous minority in the United States. Most of them have always supported the Democratic Party. Why did the Latino blue-collar class stage "Nora's run away" after 2020? The main reason is that Latino blue-collar voters have more identity with working-class American identity than Latino. For the Latino blue-collar class, the Republican cultural and economic policies are more in line with the interests of their own class. The Latino blue-collar class has the general characteristics of the working class in the United States, namely, it has conservative cultural values and attaches importance to the economy. The Democratic Party’s free position on issues such as same-sex marriage, immigration, and gender is obviously not in line with the conservative values of the Latino blue-collar class. In addition, in the face of the current high inflation in the United States, the Democratic government's ineffective response has caused disappointment among the Latino blue-collar class and turned to support the Republican Party.
After the 2016 presidential election, in the face of the loss of blue-collar voters, the Democratic Party took various measures to save it, but the results were not good. In the 2022 Congressional midterm elections, Democratic candidates adopted an election strategy that values economic interests to attract blue-collar voters.For example, in the Pennsylvania congressional primary, Democratic gubernator John Fettman constantly emphasized the status of the union; Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tim Ryan, an Ohio , promised to raise the minimum wage and expand child care to attract blue-collar voters. But for blue-collar voters, both white and minority blue-collar voters are conservative voters. In addition to economic interests, defending conservative values is equally important for them, and even more important for some blue-collar voters. Therefore, if the Democrats do not reshape their image on the issue of values, it will be difficult to gain the support of blue-collar voters.
(This article belongs to the Shanghai Zheshe general project "The politicization of American anti-immigration concepts and its response strategies" [2019BGJ002] phased results)
Author: Tang Huiyun (Associate Researcher at the Institute of International Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)
Editor: Liu Chang
Picture: Xinhua News Agency
