Trump is losing the working class

A multiracial working-class coalition, if you can keep it

Low-income voters broke for Trump in record numbers, but that trend seems to be reversing. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Donald Trump and the Republicans are losing their newest voters at alarmingly fast rates, leading to the rapid emergence of one of the worst political environments Republicans have seen in years.

It’s well-documented that Trump’s winning coalitions were powered by record gains among all types of historically Democratic voters. Among Black, Hispanic, and noncollege voters, Trump made double-digit improvements on the historic Republican margins.

Seems like it’s last in, first out. This coalition is rapidly coming apart at the seams — as I’ve written before for The Argument, the Republican Party is losing support among young, nonwhite, and disengaged voters, as well as male and non-college-educated voters.

But there’s one major underexamined source of discontent: working-class voters.

Despite Donald Trump putting up record GOP numbers with low-income voters, his standing with them is now abysmal, and it is here that he has suffered his biggest losses.

Though Trump is now unpopular with every income bracket, the slippage is especially striking when it comes to the poorest voters. For example, in our dataset, Trump outright won voters who made less than $25,000 in the last presidential election. But his approval with them is now 20 percentage points underwater.

Compare that with voters who make over $200,000, where Trump has experienced less than half of that slippage, and the story becomes clear: An outsized part of his extreme political decline can be explained through his losses with low-income voters who backed him in 2024.

Accordingly, this is also where Democrats are making the largest gains. Democrats have gained just 1 percentage point on their 2024 margins with voters who make over $200,000, but they have gained 7 percentage points among voters who make less than $50,000. This is the main reason the party has surged into such a commanding position on the generic ballot.