Is Economic Populism the Key to Winning Over Rust Belt Voters?
A new study from the Center for Working-Class Politics shows that voters in battleground states want fairness, accountability and immediate relief from rising costs. The results could point the way forward for a Democratic Party stuck in the wilderness.
Jared Abbott
For all their divisions, Americans share one conviction: the economy comes first.
In September 2024, 81% of registered voters told Pew the economy would be very important to their presidential vote—the top issue on their list, ahead of all others. Gallup likewise found the economy was the most important of 22 issues, with 52% calling it “extremely important” and another 38% “very important,” making it a significant factor for roughly nine in ten voters. And this February, Pew reported that economic concerns dominate Americans’ top national problems, including the affordability of health care (67%) and inflation (63%).
But beyond general concern about “the economy,” affordability and inflation, it’s much less clear what specific economic policies might help to nudge more infrequent voters to the polls and turn swing voters into Democrats.
Centrist Democrats claim that the best policies to connect with working-class voters are commonsense, practical, non-ideological policies aimed at strengthening economic growth and expanding economic opportunities for working people. For example, a post-election study conducted by PPI of battleground voters found that 82% of Americans agreed that it should be easier to start a business, 83% favored having more alternatives for college and 81% wanted to reduce government budgets. By contrast, only 47% of respondents in the PPI survey supported taxpayer-funded health insurance and just 42% had a favorable view of “increasing social spending and redistribution.”
Progressives counter by arguing that the notion Americans are averse to bold progressive economic policies is a myth — and there’s substantial evidence to support that claim. Recent polls have shown, for example, that 63% of Americans favor higher taxes on large corporations, 76% support Congress passing a national paid family and medical leave program, and 65% of working-class respondents want to see worker representatives on corporate boards of directors, while 69% of working-class respondents hope the federal minimum wage will rise to $15 per hour, and 79% of working-class voters support increased funding to Social Security and Medicare. But just because voters express hypothetical support for a given policy doesn’t mean they would be moved to support candidates who endorse it.
To gauge voters’ true economic priorities, the Center for Working-Class Politics, the Labor Institute, and Rutgers ran a survey in four Rust Belt battleground states (Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) in which respondents ranked 25 economic policy proposals spanning progressive (e.g., raise the minimum wage, tax the wealthy), market-oriented (e.g., corporate tax cuts, a balanced-budget amendment), and corporate/government accountability (e.g., crack down on price gouging, ban on congressional stock trading). Survey takers were repeatedly shown four policies at a time and asked to choose one they liked most and one least. The results yield a picture of which policies Rust Belt voters really care about when forced to choose, not just what sounds good in isolation.
When Rust Belt voters had to weigh trade-offs among 25 competing economic priorities, the results both confirmed and complicated the idea that bold progressive economic policies offer the strongest foundation for rebuilding political support in working-class heavy swing states.
Several clearly progressive economic ideas ranked among the top 10 policies prioritized by Rust Belt voters. Raising taxes on the super wealthy and large corporations and stopping corporations from price gouging tied for 1st, while enacting a bold federal jobs guarantee ensuring all Americans have the option of a stable job, and a novel policy to reign in corporate excesses by stopping big companies from laying off workers, tied for 5th among the 25 policies tested. All enjoyed similar levels of support among both Democrats and independents.
Yet other progressive priorities fared less well: proposals to enact a trillion-dollar industrial policy for clean energy and domestic manufacturing, putting worker representatives on corporate boards of directors, and raising the minimum wage to either $15 or $20 per hour all tied for 12th, and providing monthly cash payments of $1,000 to all Americans, and imposing price and wage controls to address inflation, tied for 21st.
Why did some progressive policies do better—sometimes much better—than others?
Regardless of their ideological tilt, the top-performing policies in the survey shared a few essential features: they were easy to understand, emphasized fairness and accountability, and promised visible, practical improvements to people’s lives.
The most popular policies were those that speak directly to voters’ everyday economic frustrations. Lowering prescription drug costs, cracking down on corporate price-gouging, and providing small-business tax credits for job training programs all ranked highly, as did more aggressive proposals to protect workers at large corporations from involuntary layoffs and renegotiate trade deals to boost U.S. manufacturing. Each of these policies connects clearly to tangible benefits — better jobs, lower prices, and more economically secure communities — and most also reflect a broad sense that economic elites should be held to account for leaving working people behind.
A similar logic applies to the top-ranking tax and government accountability reforms tested. Eliminating taxes on Social Security income, raising taxes on the very wealthy and large corporations, and banning members of Congress from trading stocks all drew strong support across party lines (though raising taxes on the wealthy ranked lower among Republican respondents). These policies are grounded in a shared notion of fairness: that ordinary people work hard and play by the rules, while those at the top too often don’t.
Many of the highest-ranking planks performed well across class, education, and partisan lines. Working-class and middle-class respondents, and those without college degrees — and, to a slightly lesser extent, those with college degrees — largely agreed on the importance of lowering costs, reining in corporate abuses and ensuring that the rules of the economy are fair. These cross partisan and cross-class commonalities suggest that there’s ample space for building stronger, more durable majoritarian coalitions under the banner of economic populism.
Yet at the same time, some proposals that would clearly improve the material lives of working Americans were viewed less favorably overall and proved much more polarizing. Raising the minimum wage to $15 or $20 and universal monthly cash payments were popular with Democrats but faced strong skepticism from independents and Republicans. Respondents may have worried that these proposals were untested or inflationary, or felt they were too closely linked to partisan branding. So, while raising the minimum wage is easy to understand, some respondents may have worried — rightly or wrongly — that its inflationary effects might undercut the practical benefits it generated.
The survey also underscores that while traditional market-oriented conservative policies — like cutting corporate taxes or rolling back regulation — are quite unpopular, the animating economic concerns underlying such policies — fiscal constraint and ensuring a pro-business economic climate — are not. In fact, a balanced-budget amendment was among the highest-scoring proposals. And several conservative ideas performed about as well as stalwart progressive goals such as making it easier for workers to join a union.
In short, while Rust Belt voters were eager to get behind a range of progressive economic policies, they showed a nuanced mix of openness to progressive ideas that spoke to fairness and addressed bread and butter concerns, while simultaneously expressing lukewarm support for policies that might cut against their worries around inflation and excessive government spending.
For progressives, these findings are both encouraging and cautionary. On the one hand, there is unmistakable enthusiasm for economic populism — policies that reduce costs, protect jobs and make the system fairer. On the other hand, voters in key battleground states hold complex and conditional views with respect to progressive economics. Many appear to support ambitious reform in principle but worry about inflation, wasteful spending, and whether policy promises will translate into real material gains.
None of this means that progressives should abandon experimentation with bold new policy ideas, far from it. Indeed, a completely novel policy idea to literally prohibit large companies from involuntarily laying off workers — anathema to any traditional conservative or neoliberal economic agenda — was among the most highly-ranked policies tested.
But the survey results do suggest that progressives may gain more traction with voters in key swing states if they work harder to find and center policies that speak both to voters’ anger at elite misconduct and their desperate need for economic relief, while also recognizing that many of the same voters have genuine economic concerns around the role of government and inflation.
