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Polling Conundrums: Activist Government, S; Democrats, No!
There’s good news for liberal economics today, as well as bad news for Democratic Party economics, and all-around confusion about the public’s take on economics. The good news comes from some polling analysis released today by the Center for American Progress (CAP). The bad news, along with a smidgen of good, comes from a new poll conducted for CNN. The confusion comes when you try to reconcile the two, though I’ll take a stab at it at the end of this On TAP.
The CAP study looked at responses to questions about economic policy from voters both with and without college degrees—from both sides, that is, of the increasingly paramount gap in American politics—and found cross-class support for a number of liberal economic positions. (The surveys they studied included those of both pre- and immediately post-2024-election voters.) Fifty-eight percent of working-class voters and 61 percent of the college-educated believed the decline of unions had hurt American workers; 67 percent of working-class respondents and 58 percent of college grads supported a $17 federal minimum wage; 63 percent of the working class and 64 percent of graduates favored higher taxes on those making at least $400,000 a year; and roughly 75 percent of each group supported expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income Americans.
But this cross-class concurrence didn’t have much effect on the actual voting of these two classes. Fifty-six percent of college grads cast their votes for Kamala Harris, while 56 percent of the non-grads (who greatly outnumbered the grads) voted for Donald Trump. At minimum, this suggests that despite voters having ranked the economy as their number one concern, the economic policies listed above didn’t figure very much in their economic assessments (at least, when compared to the cost of living), or weren’t identified as policies that Democrats favored and Republicans opposed, or, very probably, both.
This weekend’s CNN-sponsored poll highlights the Democrats’ inability to brand themselves as the party with economic policies that benefit the working and middle classes. To be sure, the public is not in a libertarian mindset: Asked whether they believe that “the government is trying to do too many things” or that “government should do more to solve problems,” they opt for more problem solving by a hefty 58 percent to 41 percent margin. So, advantage Democrats? No.
The CAP study looked at responses to questions about economic policy from voters both with and without college degrees—from both sides, that is, of the increasingly paramount gap in American politics—and found cross-class support for a number of liberal economic positions. (The surveys they studied included those of both pre- and immediately post-2024-election voters.) Fifty-eight percent of working-class voters and 61 percent of the college-educated believed the decline of unions had hurt American workers; 67 percent of working-class respondents and 58 percent of college grads supported a $17 federal minimum wage; 63 percent of the working class and 64 percent of graduates favored higher taxes on those making at least $400,000 a year; and roughly 75 percent of each group supported expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income Americans.
But this cross-class concurrence didn’t have much effect on the actual voting of these two classes. Fifty-six percent of college grads cast their votes for Kamala Harris, while 56 percent of the non-grads (who greatly outnumbered the grads) voted for Donald Trump. At minimum, this suggests that despite voters having ranked the economy as their number one concern, the economic policies listed above didn’t figure very much in their economic assessments (at least, when compared to the cost of living), or weren’t identified as policies that Democrats favored and Republicans opposed, or, very probably, both.
This weekend’s CNN-sponsored poll highlights the Democrats’ inability to brand themselves as the party with economic policies that benefit the working and middle classes. To be sure, the public is not in a libertarian mindset: Asked whether they believe that “the government is trying to do too many things” or that “government should do more to solve problems,” they opt for more problem solving by a hefty 58 percent to 41 percent margin. So, advantage Democrats? No.
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-06-03-polling-conundrums-activist-government-si-democrats-no/