The U-Shaped Party | City Journal
Zacher explains that the Democratic coalition is now U-shaped garnering the greatest support among voters in the bottom fifth and top fifth of incomes and doing worst among voters in the middle 20 percent to 80 percent. The shift of the affluent to the Democratic Party can be seen across ethnic groups and even cuts across education levels; voters from families making over $150,000 annually have moved 15 points in the Democratic direction if they have a college degree and 10 points if they lack one. The trend is particularly accentuated in larger metropolitan areas; wealthy voters in smaller towns and rural regions have not shifted as much in the Democratic direction and remain more supportive of Republicans.
The causes for these trends are complex and open to debate. Zacher flags certain possibilities. Bill Clinton helped consolidate an an anti-welfare, anti-organized labor, and ideationally pro-free market turn among Democrats, he argues, which, in turn, made the party more palatable to wealthy Americans. Globalization, the tech revolution, and financialization led to expanded economic opportunities for college-degreed Americans and intertwined with the consolidation of financial capital in key urban hubs. College-educated elites became more sympathetic to a certain brand of left-leaning cultural politics, which have come to define the contemporary Democratic Party. The tumult of the Trump presidency may have accelerated some of these trends, Zacher argues, but it is far from their sole cause.