Democrats Lost Working-Class Voters’ Trust

As the 2026 midterm elections approach, the question of why Democrats have increasingly struggled with working-class voters — and why Donald Trump’s Republican Party has been able to make inroads with them — is becoming more urgent. This question has long occupied the Center for Working-Class Politics, who published the results of an exhaustive survey this fall on the attitudes of working-class voters in the Rust Belt.

The survey found that voters are hungry for candidates running on ambitious, economic populist platforms. It also found that voters tend to penalize candidates merely for identifying as Democrats, showing the extent to which the party brand has been tarnished in the region.

Center for Working-Class Politics director Jared Abbott recently talked about the report’s findings with sociologist Rachel Rybaczuk on her podcast Shifting Terrain. The two discussed how and why the Democratic Party has lost many working-class voters.

That loss of working-class support has not been confined to the Rust Belt, however, or to white voters, as was once imagined; more and more Latino voters have also been moving to the Right. To understand this trend, Rybaczuk also interviewed René Rojas, an assistant professor of human development at Binghamton University and a Catalyst editorial board member, who has recently analyzed Latinos’ role in the 2024 election. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.