The Emerging Republican Advantage

Ever since the Re­pub­lic­an tri­umph in Novem­ber, Demo­crats have been cast­ing around for ra­tion­al­iz­a­tions. One the­ory, es­poused by Pres­id­ent Obama, blamed the party’s dra­mat­ic loss on the simple fact that too many Sen­ate races had taken place in con­ser­vat­ive states. “This is prob­ably the worst pos­sible group of states for Demo­crats since Dwight Eis­en­hower,” Obama re­marked on Elec­tion Day. Oth­er ana­lysts poin­ted to the “six-year itch”—which of­ten con­demns the party of a second-term pres­id­ent to de­feat dur­ing the midterm elec­tions. Still oth­ers chalked up the res­ults to the fact that midterm elec­tions (with their low turnout) in­her­ently fa­vor Re­pub­lic­ans, while pres­id­en­tial elec­tions (with their high turnout) in­her­ently fa­vor Demo­crats. “We have two sep­ar­ate Amer­icas vot­ing every two years,” wrote Markos Moulit­sas Zuniga, the founder of Daily Kos. “And Demo­crats can win eas­ily with the one, and Re­pub­lic­ans can win eas­ily with the oth­er.”

In­deed, in the wake of the midterms, the Cen­ter for Amer­ic­an Pro­gress op­tim­ist­ic­ally pre­dicted that, if 2016 vot­ing pat­terns re­semble those from 2012, the rising num­ber of voters of col­or “will not only make it easi­er for Demo­crats to win states that they pre­vi­ously won in 2012. These demo­graph­ic changes are also cre­at­ing an op­por­tun­ity for Demo­crats to win back states they lost in 2012.”

None of these ob­ser­va­tions are wrong, as far as they go. It is un­deni­able, for in­stance, that the cur­rent Demo­crat­ic co­ali­tion does bet­ter in pres­id­en­tial years than it does in midterm elec­tions. Yet all of these ex­plan­a­tions have a com­mon prob­lem: They ob­scure the pos­sib­il­ity that 2014 was not an isol­ated event but rather the latest mani­fest­a­tion of a re­sur­gent Re­pub­lic­an co­ali­tion.

Amer­ic­an parties routinely go through peri­ods of as­cend­ancy, de­cline, and dead­lock. From 1896 to 1930, the Re­pub­lic­an Party reigned su­preme; from 1932 to 1968, the New Deal Demo­crats dom­in­ated; fol­low­ing a peri­od of dead­lock, the Re­agan Re­pub­lic­ans held sway dur­ing the 1980s. After the parties ex­changed the White House, Demo­crats ap­peared to take com­mand of Amer­ic­an polit­ics in 2008. In that elec­tion, Obama and the Demo­crats won not only the White House but also large ma­jor­it­ies in the Sen­ate and House, plus a de­cided edge in gov­ernor’s man­sions and state le­gis­latures.

At the time, some com­ment­at­ors, in­clud­ing me, hailed the on­set of an en­dur­ing Demo­crat­ic ma­jor­ity. And the ar­gu­ments in de­fense of this view did seem to be backed by per­suas­ive evid­ence. Obama and the Demo­crats ap­peared to have cap­tured the young­est gen­er­a­tion of voters, where­as Re­pub­lic­ans were re­ly­ing dis­pro­por­tion­ately on an aging co­ali­tion. The elect­or­ate’s grow­ing eth­nic di­versity also seemed likely to help the Demo­crats go­ing for­ward.

These ad­vant­ages re­main par­tially in place for Demo­crats today, but they are be­ing severely un­der­mined by two trends that have emerged in the past few elec­tions—one sur­pris­ing, the oth­er less so. The less sur­pris­ing trend is that Demo­crats have con­tin­ued to hem­or­rhage sup­port among white work­ing-class voters—a group that gen­er­ally works in blue-col­lar and lower-in­come ser­vice jobs and that is roughly iden­ti­fi­able in exit polls as those whites who have not gradu­ated from a four-year col­lege. These voters, and par­tic­u­larly those well above the poverty line, began to shift to­ward the GOP dec­ades ago, but in re­cent years that shift has be­come pro­gress­ively more pro­nounced.

The more sur­pris­ing trend is that Re­pub­lic­ans are gain­ing dra­mat­ic­ally among a group that had tilted to­ward Demo­crats in 2006 and 2008: Call them middle-class Amer­ic­ans. These are voters who gen­er­ally work in what eco­nom­ist Steph­en Rose has called “the of­fice eco­nomy.” In exit polling, they can roughly be iden­ti­fied as those who have col­lege—but not post­gradu­ate—de­grees and those whose house­hold in­comes are between $50,000 and $100,000. (Ob­vi­ously, the over­lap here is im­per­fect, but there is a broad con­gru­ence between these polling cat­egor­ies.)

The de­fec­tion of these voters—who, un­like the white work­ing class, are a grow­ing part of the elect­or­ate—is genu­inely bad news for Demo­crats, and very good news in­deed for Re­pub­lic­ans. The ques­tion, of course, is wheth­er it is go­ing to con­tin­ue. It’s tough to say for sure, but I think there is a case to be made that it will.

AMER­IC­AN POLIT­IC­AL parties are in­form­al co­ali­tions of in­terest groups, so­cial and eco­nom­ic classes, na­tion­al­it­ies, and re­gions. When a vot­ing bloc shifts from one party to an­oth­er—or when a vot­ing bloc with­in a party changes in size—it can of­ten spell the be­gin­ning or end of a party’s dom­in­ance. The GOP’s suc­cess in the 1980s, for in­stance, was driv­en in large part by the move­ment of white work­ing-class voters out of the Demo­crat­ic Party and in­to the Re­pub­lic­an Party—in the North as well as the South. Mean­while, the suc­cess of the Demo­crats in the 1990s and in 2006 and 2008 was based on the growth of the minor­ity vote (from 13 per­cent of the elect­or­ate in 1992 to 26 per­cent in 2008); the con­tinu­ing move­ment of wo­men, par­tic­u­larly single wo­men, in­to the Demo­crat­ic column; and the sup­port of pro­fes­sion­als, who were once the most Re­pub­lic­an of oc­cu­pa­tion­al group­ings. (Pro­fes­sion­als range from nurses and teach­ers to doc­tors and ar­chi­tects; in exit polls, they can be iden­ti­fied roughly as voters who pos­sess post­gradu­ate de­grees.)

But the Demo­crat­ic suc­cess of re­cent dec­ades was not based only on shifts among minor­it­ies, wo­men, and pro­fes­sion­als. To win elec­tions, Demo­crats have still needed between 36 and 40 per­cent na­tion­ally of the white work­ing-class vote—which, in prac­tice, meant totals in the twen­ties or even the teens in the South, and near-ma­jor­it­ies in many North­ern and West­ern states. At one time, uni­ons had provided a link between many of these voters and the Demo­crat­ic Party. This ad­vant­age star­ted to dwindle in the 1970s as private-sec­tor uni­ons began to shrink. Nev­er­the­less, on a prom­ise of prosper­ity, Bill Clin­ton got about 40 per­cent of the white work­ing-class vote in 1992 and 1996, and Obama got 40 per­cent in 2008. Bill Clin­ton won a nar­row plur­al­ity of middle-class voters in 1992 and 1996. (Dir­ck Hal­stead/The LIFE Im­ages Col­lec­tion/Getty Im­ages)

Demo­crats also needed to hold their own among middle-class voters. Re­agan and George W. Bush hand­ily won this demo­graph­ic, but Clin­ton won a plur­al­ity of these voters in 1992 and 1996, and Obama won voters with col­lege (but not post­grad) de­grees by 50 per­cent to 48 per­cent in 2008. In House races in 2006, Demo­crats split these voters, then car­ried them 49 per­cent to 47 per­cent in 2008.

From the 2008 to the 2012 pres­id­en­tial elec­tions, Demo­crats main­tained their core co­ali­tion—the His­pan­ic vote for Obama even went up 4 per­cent­age points in 2012—but their sup­port among both white work­ing-class and middle-class voters began to shrink. After get­ting 40 per­cent of the white work­ing-class vote in 2008, Obama got only 36 per­cent in 2012. And after win­ning col­lege-but-not-post­grad voters and middle-in­come voters in 2008, he lost both groups to Mitt Rom­ney, by 51 per­cent to 47 per­cent and 52 per­cent to 46 per­cent, re­spect­ively.

The drop in midterm House races was even more pre­cip­it­ous. Demo­crats slid from 44 per­cent of the white work­ing-class vote na­tion­ally in 2006 to only 34 per­cent in 2014, and from a 49-per­cent-49-per­cent split among col­lege-edu­cated voters in 2006 to a 54-per­cent-44-per­cent loss among these voters in 2014. They also dropped from a 50-per­cent-48-per­cent ad­vant­age among middle-in­come voters in 2006 to a 54-per­cent-44-per­cent de­fi­cit in 2014. Of course, Re­pub­lic­ans have be­nefited from re­dis­trict­ing and from the con­cen­tra­tion of Demo­crat­ic voters in metro areas, but the Demo­crat­ic losses among white work­ing-class and middle-class voters are a prime reas­on that Demo­crats have had, and will con­tin­ue to have, dif­fi­culty re­tak­ing the House.

The shift of these voters played a role in some of 2014’s more sur­pris­ing Sen­ate races. In Col­or­ado, where Demo­crat Mark Ud­all was upen­ded by Cory Gard­ner, Ud­all lost 7 per­cent­age points among white work­ing-class voters from his 2008 vic­tory over Robert Schaf­fer; 8 points among col­lege-edu­cated voters; and 11 points among voters mak­ing between $50,000 and $100,000. You might be temp­ted to write that off as the dif­fer­ence between run­ning for the Sen­ate in a pres­id­en­tial elec­tion year (2008) and in a midterm year (2014)—but con­sider that, from 2008 to 2012, Obama lost 8 points in Col­or­ado among col­lege-edu­cated voters.

In Vir­gin­ia, where highly favored Demo­crat Mark Warner eked out a win over un­der­fun­ded former lob­by­ist Ed Gillespie, Warner’s totals among white work­ing-class and middle-class voters plummeted between 2008 and 2014. He lost 25 points among white work­ing-class voters, 16 among col­lege-edu­cated voters, and 24 among middle-in­come voters. Here again, these res­ults can’t be dis­missed en­tirely as a pres­id­en­tial-versus-midterm phe­nomen­on. In 2008, Obama won col­lege-edu­cated voters in Vir­gin­ia by 50 per­cent to 49 per­cent and middle-in­come voters by 54 per­cent to 46 per­cent. He lost both groups in 2012.

In gov­ernor’s races, the Re­pub­lic­an edge among middle-class voters helped ex­plain sev­er­al sur­pris­ingly easy vic­tor­ies. In Wis­con­sin, in­cum­bent Re­pub­lic­an Scott Walk­er in­creased his ad­vant­age among middle-in­come voters from 56-per­cent-44-per­cent in 2010 to 57-per­cent-42-per­cent in 2014. In Ohio, in­cum­bent Re­pub­lic­an John Kasich in­creased his edge among voters with col­lege, but not post­grad, edu­ca­tion from 59-per­cent-38-per­cent in 2010 to 64-per­cent-32-per­cent. In Illinois, a de­pend­ably blue state, the shift of middle-class voters was a key factor in Re­pub­lic­an Bruce Rau­ner’s win over in­cum­bent Demo­crat Pat Quinn. Rau­ner won col­lege-edu­cated voters by 60 per­cent to 36 per­cent—a 12-point shift from Quinn’s mar­gin in 2010.

Over­all, Demo­crats have con­tin­ued to get a lower per­cent­age of the vote among white work­ing-class voters than among middle-class voters. But dur­ing the Obama years, middle-class voters have moved away from the Demo­crats at a com­par­able—and, in a few in­stances, such as the Sen­ate race in Col­or­ado, a high­er—rate than white work­ing-class voters.

And while the white work­ing-class vote has stead­ily shrunk as a per­cent­age of the elect­or­ate, middle-class voters—as defined by edu­ca­tion and in­come—have grown. In the 1980 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion, the white work­ing class made up about 65 per­cent of the elect­or­ate; by 1988, it was 54 per­cent; by the 2008 elec­tion, it was just 39 per­cent. Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin es­tim­ate that by 2020, it’ll be 30 per­cent of the elect­or­ate. On the oth­er hand, voters with col­lege de­grees but not post­gradu­ate de­grees went from 26 per­cent of the elect­or­ate in 2004, to 29 per­cent in 2012, to 31 per­cent in the last elec­tion. And ac­cord­ing to census es­tim­ates, turnout among middle-class voters is 10 per­cent­age points or more high­er than among work­ing-class voters. So middle-class voters are a force to be reckoned with.

The core swing voters with­in the middle class are whites, who make up 70 to 75 per­cent of this group; but the vot­ing pat­terns of minor­it­ies in this in­come brack­et don’t ne­ces­sar­ily mir­ror the over­all minor­ity vote. The two most rap­idly grow­ing minor­ity groups are His­pan­ics and Asi­ans. Ac­cord­ing to a Pew study of the 2012 elec­tions, His­pan­ic sup­port for Obama was 13 per­cent­age points lower among those with a col­lege de­gree than among those without a col­lege de­gree; and it was 23 points lower among those mak­ing more than $50,000 than among those mak­ing less than $50,000. (There is no com­par­able polling among Asi­an voters, but they are more likely to be col­lege-edu­cated and have high­er in­comes than oth­er minor­it­ies—and than white voters. They re­coiled against Rom­ney in 2012, prob­ably due to his anti-im­mig­ra­tion rhet­or­ic, but split their vote evenly in 2014 House races.)

Some Demo­crats be­lieve that the party’s sup­port among mil­len­ni­al voters—the 18-to-29-year-olds who first went to the polls in the 2000s—and their suc­cessors can mit­ig­ate any losses among oth­er groups. It is true that these voters were an im­port­ant part of the ori­gin­al Obama co­ali­tion, but they are not quite as en­thu­si­ast­ic about the Demo­crats as they once were. In 2006, 60 per­cent of young voters backed Demo­crats in House races; that num­ber hit 65 per­cent in 2008, fell to 60 per­cent in 2012, and slid to 54 per­cent in 2014. Moreover, an on­go­ing study by the Har­vard In­sti­tute of Polit­ics has found a steady de­teri­or­a­tion in young voters’ sup­port for Demo­crats since its peak in 2008. “Our re­cent polling,” the study wrote last fall, “shows that on a wide range of is­sues and ques­tions, young voters … now look very much like the elect­or­ate at large—pess­im­ist­ic, un­trust­ing, lack­ing con­fid­ence in gov­ern­ment.”

If Re­pub­lic­ans are smart, they will nom­in­ate for pres­id­ent someone in the mold of George W. Bush in 2000.

TO MAKE AN edu­cated guess about wheth­er these trends will con­tin­ue, it helps to look at how the white work­ing class and middle class have be­haved his­tor­ic­ally. White work­ing-class voters began de­fect­ing from the Demo­crat­ic Party in 1968. Ini­tially, this was in re­sponse to civil-rights le­gis­la­tion and Lyn­don John­son’s War on Poverty. But soon their op­pos­i­tion to gov­ern­ment ac­tion on be­half of blacks had crys­tal­lized in­to a gen­er­al op­pos­i­tion to gov­ern­ment spend­ing and taxes. Ac­cord­ing to a Demo­cracy Corps study, white work­ing-class voters over­whelm­ingly agree—by 12 per­cent­age points more than the av­er­age voter—with the state­ment: “When something is run by the gov­ern­ment, it is usu­ally in­ef­fi­cient and waste­ful.”

For their part, middle-class voters have long been mis­trust­ful of gov­ern­ment. In a 2010 study based on the ex­tens­ive Gen­er­al So­cial Sur­vey con­duc­ted semi­an­nu­ally by the Na­tion­al Opin­ion Re­search Cen­ter, polit­ic­al so­ci­olo­gists Leslie Mc­Call and Jeff Manza found that those with col­lege but not post­grad de­grees ex­hib­ited more marked op­pos­i­tion than any oth­er edu­ca­tion­al group­ing to gov­ern­ment spend­ing, and to policies that prom­ised to re­dis­trib­ute in­come from the rich to the poor.

Be­fore the Great De­pres­sion, middle-class voters had been a stal­wart Re­pub­lic­an con­stitu­ency, and they moved back to­ward the Re­pub­lic­an fold after World War II. They sup­por­ted Re­agan in 1980 in the wake of Carter-era stag­fla­tion and the tax re­volt that began in Cali­for­nia in 1978. Re­act­ing to the 1991 re­ces­sion, a plur­al­ity nar­rowly favored Bill Clin­ton in 1992 and 1996, but they began drift­ing to the Re­pub­lic­ans in 2000 and favored Bush by 58 per­cent to 42 per­cent in 2004. In 2008, in the wake of the Ir­aq War and the Great Re­ces­sion, they sup­por­ted Obama; but in 2010—angry about Obama’s stim­u­lus pro­gram and be­liev­ing that the Af­ford­able Care Act had cost too much without truly be­ne­fit­ing them—they once again began re­turn­ing to the Re­pub­lic­an camp.

Middle-class voters tend, on av­er­age, to be more so­cially lib­er­al than white work­ing-class voters, and they have pun­ished Re­pub­lic­ans for tak­ing harshly con­ser­vat­ive stands on so­cial is­sues. In the 2012 Sen­ate race in Mis­souri, for in­stance, Demo­crat Claire Mc­Caskill, run­ning against an­ti­abor­tion cru­sader Todd Akin, was able to win col­lege-edu­cated voters by 50 per­cent to 44 per­cent after los­ing them by 53 per­cent to 43 per­cent to Re­pub­lic­an Jim Tal­ent in 2006. She edged Akin among voters with house­hold in­comes between $50,000 and $100,000 after los­ing them, too, in 2006. (Per­haps some of this was due to the dif­fer­ence between a midterm elect­or­ate and a pres­id­en­tial-year elect­or­ate; but some of it was al­most cer­tainly due to Akin’s in­fam­ous com­ments about “le­git­im­ate rape,” which caused him to go from lead­ing to trail­ing in the polls.)

Yet while middle-class voters are gen­er­ally so­cially lib­er­al, they op­pose can­did­ates on this basis only when those can­did­ates take ex­treme po­s­i­tions. And so, when Re­pub­lic­an politi­cians have soft-pedaled their views on abor­tion or guns or im­mig­ra­tion, middle-class voters have largely ig­nored these is­sues in de­cid­ing whom to back—re­vert­ing to their nat­ur­al tend­ency to fo­cus on top­ics like taxes, spend­ing, and the size of gov­ern­ment. In 2014, Demo­crats in Arkan­sas, Col­or­ado, Mary­land, Ohio, and Vir­gin­ia learned this the hard way when they centered their cam­paigns on their op­pon­ents’ op­pos­i­tion to abor­tion rights or gun con­trol—and lost.

Middle-class voters also tend to be less pop­u­list than white work­ing-class voters when it comes to blam­ing Wall Street and the wealthy for the eco­nomy’s ills. As a Wash­ing­ton Post poll showed last Oc­to­ber, middle-class voters are less likely than white work­ing-class voters or pro­fes­sion­als to agree that Amer­ica’s sys­tem “fa­vors the wealthy.” Many of them work for busi­nesses where their own suc­cess is bound up with the com­pany’s bot­tom line. That makes them less sus­cept­ible than white work­ing-class voters or pro­fes­sion­als to Demo­crat­ic taunts about the “1 per­cent.”

How middle-class voters re­act to this sort of pop­u­lism was on dis­play in 2012. Obama did man­age to make in­roads in­to the white work­ing class in the North by run­ning ads de­rid­ing Rom­ney’s sharp fin­an­cial prac­tices and his op­pos­i­tion to the auto bail­out: In Ohio, Obama lost white work­ing-class voters by only 46 per­cent to 44 per­cent in 2012 after los­ing them by 54 per­cent to 44 per­cent in 2008. But what helped with work­ing-class voters hurt with the middle class. In Ohio, he lost col­lege-but-not-post­grad voters by 54 per­cent to 44 per­cent after hav­ing won them by 51 per­cent to 48 per­cent four years earli­er.

Maybe such a trade-off would be worth it if left-wing pop­u­lism could con­sist­ently win over white work­ing-class voters en masse. The truth, though, is that Mitt Rom­ney was a per­fect tar­get for these pop­u­list at­tacks in Ohio, and Demo­crats can­not ex­pect to have such a use­ful foil in most elec­tions. On the whole, the white work­ing class and the middle class—an­im­ated by their dis­trust of gov­ern­ment spend­ing and taxes—have moved to­ward the Re­pub­lic­ans in re­cent years, in the ab­sence of some oth­er is­sue (such as war or eco­nom­ic cata­strophe or so­cial ex­trem­ism) tem­por­ar­ily tak­ing pre­ced­ence. And the two groups have done so largely in tan­dem.

THERE MAY BE no bet­ter il­lus­tra­tion of all these trends than the 2014 Mary­land gov­ernor’s race. I live in Mary­land, but, like most na­tion­al polit­ic­al re­port­ers, I know very little about what goes on in my own state, county, and city. On the eve of the 2014 elec­tion, I as­sumed that the Demo­crat­ic can­did­ate, Lt. Gov. An­thony Brown, would eas­ily de­feat GOP busi­ness­man Larry Hogan. The Huff­ing­ton Post gave Brown a 92 per­cent chance of win­ning, and Edis­on Re­search, which con­ducts exit polls, didn’t even both­er to sur­vey Mary­land voters.

Yet Hogan won fairly eas­ily, 52 per­cent to 47 per­cent. That even­ing, I re­ceived my first ink­ling of why from my wife, who is a dent­ist in a middle-class part of Sil­ver Spring. She told me that many of her pa­tients had been com­plain­ing about their taxes go­ing up un­der the out­go­ing Demo­crat­ic gov­ernor, Mar­tin O’Mal­ley. My former New Re­pub­lic col­league Alec Mac­Gil­lis heard the same com­plaints when he in­ter­viewed voters in work­ing-class Bal­timore sub­urbs. And that in­cluded Afric­an-Amer­ic­an voters. These con­cerns played in­to Hogan’s cam­paign, which was fo­cused on O’Mal­ley’s tax in­creases. Brown de­fen­ded O’Mal­ley, and at­temp­ted to base the elec­tion on Hogan’s op­pos­i­tion to abor­tion and gun con­trol. But when Hogan prom­ised not to change Mary­land’s laws on abor­tion or gun con­trol, he took those is­sues off the table.

Brown, who is Afric­an-Amer­ic­an, won ma­jor­ity Afric­an-Amer­ic­an Bal­timore City and Prince George’s County eas­ily. And he won 62 per­cent of the vote in Mont­gomery County, which is heav­ily pop­u­lated by pro­fes­sion­als. Brown really lost the elec­tion in key work­ing- and middle-class counties where O’Mal­ley had either held his own in 2010 or de­feated his Re­pub­lic­an op­pon­ent, Bob Ehr­lich. O’Mal­ley had tied Ehr­lich in Bal­timore County (which con­sists of Bal­timore city’s blue-col­lar and middle-class sub­urbs) in 2010, but Hogan won the county by 59 per­cent to 39 per­cent. O’Mal­ley had won middle-class Howard County by 54 per­cent to 44 per­cent in 2010, but Hogan won it 52 per­cent to 47 per­cent. For Mary­land voters in the 2014 gubernat­ori­al elec­tion between Re­pub­lic­an Larry Hogan (left) and Demo­crat An­thony Brown (right), the most im­port­ant is­sue was taxes. (Jonath­an New­ton / The Wash­ing­ton Post via Getty Im­ages)

Some Demo­crats tried to at­trib­ute Brown’s de­feat to ra­cism, but Brown was a bland tech­no­crat in the mold of former Mas­sachu­setts Gov. Dev­al Patrick. He did not have a his­tory of tak­ing strong po­s­i­tions on ra­cial is­sues and did not do so in his cam­paign. Un­doubtedly, some voters blanched at elect­ing an Afric­an-Amer­ic­an gov­ernor, but that does not seem to have driv­en the vote.

In­stead, it ap­pears that the elec­tion hinged on taxes and the size of gov­ern­ment—the ques­tions to which middle-class voters so of­ten seem to re­turn. In early Oc­to­ber, a Wash­ing­ton Post poll had showed Brown lead­ing by 9 points—but it also re­vealed that for Mary­land voters, the most im­port­ant is­sue was taxes.

Sev­er­al weeks after the elec­tion, in the ab­sence of exit polls, I sought out middle-class Mary­land voters who had changed their vote from Obama in 2008 to Rom­ney in 2012 or from O’Mal­ley in 2010 to Hogan in 2014. I wanted to find out what they were think­ing. The evid­ence they gave me is an­ec­dot­al, of course, but it helps to il­lus­trate the way these is­sues are play­ing out in the minds of some voters.

Jerry is in his late 50s. He is a sales rep­res­ent­at­ive in South­ern Mary­land for a mul­tina­tion­al cor­por­a­tion. He has a col­lege de­gree and makes about $80,000 a year. He con­siders him­self a “mod­er­ate Demo­crat.” He voted for Obama in 2008 and O’Mal­ley in 2010. He says of Obama in 2008, “He was a breath of fresh air.” But after Obama be­came pres­id­ent, Jerry be­came dis­il­lu­sioned. He didn’t like Obama’s stim­u­lus pro­gram. “I really think Obama messed up with all the money that we were giv­ing out,” he said. He sus­pects that both Obama and O’Mal­ley primar­ily gave the money to “their con­stitu­en­cies”—most not­ably, labor uni­ons. In 2012, Jerry voted for Rom­ney, whom he ad­mired as a “busi­ness­man.” In 2014, he voted for Hogan. Taxes were an im­port­ant reas­on. “Every year I seemed to pay more with Mary­land state taxes,” he ex­plained. “I am not happy with what is hap­pen­ing with the taxes. I don’t seem to be get­ting any­thing more from them.” Brown, he feared, would con­tin­ue along the same line as O’Mal­ley. “Hogan seemed to have the mes­sage,” he said.

Con­nie is in her mid-40s, a col­lege gradu­ate and a paralegal at a prop­erty-man­age­ment firm. She lives in north Bal­timore County. She was a Demo­crat un­til a month be­fore last Novem­ber’s elec­tion, and she voted for Obama in 2008 and O’Mal­ley in 2010. In 2012, hav­ing be­come dis­il­lu­sioned with Obama, she voted for Rom­ney. “I was dis­en­chanted. [Obama] made a lot of prom­ises. I have just seen our coun­try turn around and go back­wards,” she said. “I work in prop­erty man­age­ment. The num­ber of young people liv­ing on en­ti­tle­ment pro­grams is over­whelm­ing to me. I have seen it in­crease as nev­er be­fore.” Last Novem­ber, she voted for Hogan. “I was up­set with the num­ber of taxes that I was be­ing hit with as a single par­ent,” she ex­plained. “We are over­spend­ing, and someone needs to get a handle on it, and per­haps a busi­ness­man was the best per­son to do that.” Con­nie sup­ports abor­tion rights, but she thought Brown mis­rep­res­en­ted Hogan’s po­s­i­tion. “Hogan is not for re­peal­ing any­thing,” she said. She char­ac­ter­ized Brown’s at­tempt to paint Hogan as a foe of abor­tion rights as a “polit­ic­al jab.” Hogan’s an­ti­abor­tion po­s­i­tion “didn’t both­er me,” she said.

James is in his early 30s, a col­lege gradu­ate and a co­ordin­at­or of ser­vices at a uni­versity in South­ern Mary­land. He lives in Howard County. He is one of the mil­len­ni­al voters on whom Demo­crats have res­ted their hopes. He voted for Obama twice and O’Mal­ley in 2010, but in 2014, he backed Hogan. “I didn’t en­tirely like Hogan,” James said. “But I liked the idea of rein­ing in spend­ing.” He also thinks there was “some point” to Hogan’s at­tack on Brown as a tax-hiker. “The im­port­ant thing with Brown is that he was likely to spend money. That would mean more taxes,” he said. James re­jects the idea that Re­pub­lic­ans are an­ti­gov­ern­ment. “Re­pub­lic­ans are skep­tic­al of gov­ern­ment,” he told me.

Jerry, Con­nie, and James are, I would ar­gue, very typ­ic­al of the middle-class voters who are mov­ing to­ward the Re­pub­lic­ans. They are not driv­en by any ra­cial an­im­us. They are so­cially lib­er­al, and would prob­ably not vote for a Re­pub­lic­an who was openly al­lied with the Re­li­gious Right, but they were will­ing to sup­port an an­ti­abor­tion Re­pub­lic­an who didn’t make a fuss about the is­sue. They are not un­bend­ingly op­posed to gov­ern­ment, like some liber­tari­ans or tea-party act­iv­ists; but they are wor­ried about over­spend­ing and taxes.

In a speech after the elec­tion, Demo­crat­ic Sen. Chuck Schu­mer of New York ad­vised Demo­crats to “em­brace gov­ern­ment” to “get the middle class go­ing again.” But if Demo­crats take this ad­vice, which has some ap­peal with­in policy circles, they could con­tin­ue to drive middle-class voters like Jerry, Con­nie, and James away.

NONE OF THIS is to sug­gest that Amer­ica is headed to­ward an era of Re­pub­lic­an dom­in­a­tion. Go­ing for­ward, the coun­try’s polit­ics is likely to re­main on a seesaw. What’s clear, however, is that the Demo­crat­ic ad­vant­age of sev­er­al years ago is gone. And the seeds of a slight Re­pub­lic­an ad­vant­age ap­pear to have taken root, par­tic­u­larly in gov­ernor’s man­sions, state le­gis­latures, and the U.S. House, where Re­pub­lic­ans sport ma­jor­it­ies they haven’t en­joyed since the Hoover-Coolidge 1920s.

In 2016, with the eco­nomy pick­ing up, the Demo­crats could take back the Sen­ate from the Re­pub­lic­ans, who have to de­fend sev­en seats in states that Obama won. But they are un­likely to win back the House or a ma­jor­ity of state­houses soon. Much of the Re­pub­lic­an edge in midterms—which really dates from 1994—has less to do with gen­er­ic vot­ing habits than with the de­gree to which Re­pub­lic­ans en­joy ad­vant­ages among the polit­ic­al grass­roots—through churches and tea-party-like groups as well as busi­ness and civic or­gan­iz­a­tions—that Demo­crats have had a dif­fi­cult time coun­ter­ing. For dec­ades, Demo­crats de­pended on or­gan­ized labor at the grass­roots level, but labor’s clout seems to be re­ced­ing every year.

In pres­id­en­tial elec­tions, the Demo­crat­ic co­ali­tion re­mains for­mid­able, and the ranks of minor­it­ies and pro­fes­sion­als—both Demo­crat­ic con­stitu­en­cies—con­tin­ue to swell. But the party may still have a dif­fi­cult time win­ning the pres­id­ency next year. For one thing, it’s tough for either party to win three terms in a row in the White House. And in the case of the Demo­crats in 2016, de­fec­tions from the white work­ing class and the middle class will also con­tin­ue to loom large.

The White House un­der­stands that Demo­crats have a prob­lem with white work­ing-class and middle-class voters and is now call­ing for a “middle-class tax cut” aimed squarely at them. Yet the Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee in 2016 will still have to shoulder the size-of-gov­ern­ment and who-be­ne­fits-from-tax-dol­lars griev­ances cre­ated by Obama’s ini­tial spend­ing pro­grams and by the Af­ford­able Care Act.

The Demo­crats’ best chances in next year’s elec­tions will come if Re­pub­lic­ans run can­did­ates iden­ti­fied with the Re­li­gious Right or the tea party or the GOP’s plu­to­crat­ic wing. If Re­pub­lic­ans are smart, they will nom­in­ate for pres­id­ent someone in the mold of George W. Bush in 2000 or the nu­mer­ous GOP Sen­ate can­did­ates who won last year—a politi­cian who runs from the cen­ter-right, soft-ped­als so­cial is­sues, in­clud­ing im­mig­ra­tion, cri­tiques gov­ern­ment without call­ing for ab­ol­ish­ing the in­come tax and So­cial Se­cur­ity, and dis­plays a good ol’ boy em­pathy for the less well-to-do. Such a can­did­ate would cater to the Re­pub­lic­an ad­vant­age among the middle class without ali­en­at­ing the white work­ing class.

After the 2008 elec­tion, I thought Obama could cre­ate an en­dur­ing Demo­crat­ic ma­jor­ity by re­spond­ing ag­gress­ively to the Great Re­ces­sion in the same way that Frank­lin Roosevelt had re­spon­ded in 1933 to the Great De­pres­sion. Obama, I be­lieved, would fi­nally bury the Re­agan Re­pub­lic­an ma­jor­ity of 1980 and in­aug­ur­ate a new peri­od of Demo­crat­ic dom­in­a­tion.

In ret­ro­spect, that ana­logy was clearly flawed. Roosevelt took power after four years of the Great De­pres­sion, with Re­pub­lic­ans and busi­ness thor­oughly dis­cred­ited, and with the pub­lic (who lacked any safety net) ready to try vir­tu­ally any­thing to re­vive the eco­nomy. Obama’s situ­ation was very dif­fer­ent. Busi­ness was still power­ful enough to threaten him if he went too far in try­ing to tame it. Much of the middle class and work­ing class were still em­ployed, and they saw Obama’s stim­u­lus pro­gram—which was ut­terly ne­ces­sary to stem the Great Re­ces­sion—as an ex­pan­sion of gov­ern­ment at their ex­pense.

In the wake of the dra­mat­ic gains Re­pub­lic­ans have made dur­ing Obama’s pres­id­ency, I now read the his­tory of the last 80 years much dif­fer­ently. The peri­od of New Deal Demo­crat­ic as­cend­ancy from 1933 to about 1968 may well prove to have been what his­tor­i­ans Jef­fer­son Cow­ie and Nick Sal­vatore have called the “long ex­cep­tion” in Amer­ic­an polit­ics. It was a peri­od when Amer­ic­ans, pan­icked about the De­pres­sion, put on hold their his­tor­ic aver­sion to ag­gress­ive gov­ern­ment eco­nom­ic in­ter­ven­tion, when the middle and bot­tom of the Amer­ic­an eco­nom­ic pyr­am­id united against the top, and when labor uni­ons could claim the loy­alty of a third of Amer­ic­an work­ers. That era suffered fatal fis­sures in 1968 and fi­nally came to a close with Re­agan’s land­slide in 1980.

It now ap­pears that, in some form, the Re­pub­lic­an era which began in 1980 is still with us. Re­agan Re­pub­lic­an­ism—rooted in the long-stand­ing Amer­ic­an dis­trust of gov­ern­ment, but per­haps with its roughest theo­crat­ic and in­sur­rec­tion­ary edges sanded off for a na­tion­al audi­ence—is still the de­fault po­s­i­tion of many of those Amer­ic­ans who reg­u­larly go to the polls. It can be ef­fect­ively chal­lenged when Re­pub­lic­ans be­come iden­ti­fied with eco­nom­ic mis­man­age­ment or with mil­it­ary de­feat. But after the memory of such dis­asters has faded, the GOP co­ali­tion has ree­m­erged—sur­pris­ingly in­tact and ready for battle.

Cor­rec­tion: An earli­er ver­sion of this story in­cor­rectly de­scribed Ed Gillespie as a lob­by­ist. He is a former lob­by­ist.