The midterm elections last Tuesday blew a hole in conventional political wisdom. The supposed law that the president’s party could never win a midterm. That partisanship was too entrenched for voters to split their tickets between parties at a high rate. That candidate quality and experience no longer mattered. That politics has been so nationalized that the entire country would get more Republican or Democratic together, rather than different climates in different states or regions. The most important myth busted for people with leftwing politics is the impressive win of John Fetterman for Senate in Pennsylvania. Fetterman proved that progressive politics really could win back working class white Trump voters in rural areas.
The idea that populist redistributive economics could win back working class Trump voters has been proposed since immediately after the 2016 election. It made sense ideologically to leftists, but there was no proof of concept until this election. Every attempt at using Medicare for All and anti-elite rhetoric to bring Trump voters in ancestrally Democratic areas back to the party had failed miserably. The platform and messaging of Fetterman, however, led him to a shocking 4.4% win in a state that President Biden won by just 1.1%. The president’s party flipping a Senate seat in a midterm election, let alone quadrupling the president’s winning margin, is incredibly rare. Respected sites like Fivethirtyeight and Sabato’s Crystal Ball viewed Oz as a clear favorite. Beyond this, Fetterman flipped the script on 40 years of partisan trends. Fetterman matched Biden’s margins in highly educated urban and suburban areas that have been getting more Democratic for decades, especially in the Trump era. His surprising winning margin came most of all from drastically improving on Biden’s margins in working class post-industrial and rural areas that had been getting redder for the last few decades, even faster than the suburbs had been getting bluer. How did he do this, and what does this mean for Democrats going forward?
The losing Republican senate candidates in other states that the fundamentals suggested would go Republican tended to embrace far-right politics, narratives of election fraud, and even lurid QAnon conspiracies. Their losses can clearly be attributed to their out-of-the-mainstream politics, particularly in comparison to more centrist-leaning Republicans on the same ballot. Fetterman’s opponent Mehmet Oz, however, pitched a closing message of moderation and bipartisanship, and tried to paint Fetterman as a dangerous radical socialist because of his support for Medicare for All and Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid. This tested, establishment message crashed on the rocks of Fetterman’s rugged populism and redistributive economic platform.
The Fetterman campaign proves that this sort of politics really can reassert class as a driver of political behavior and a foundation of redistributive economic policy. The key is having the right message and the right messenger. First, the Fetterman campaign was able to define Oz as a rich carpetbagger, who didn’t know or care about Pennsylvanians or their struggles. Fetterman’s humor and online-savvy communications operation were able to form the first and lasting image of Oz. 57% of Pennsylvania voters felt that Oz could not represent Pennsylvania effectively because he wasn’t from the state. This attack lodged in the minds of voters immediately after the primary and affected their perceptions over the entire course of the election. Winning progressive, working class politics relies on authenticity and opponents who can be painted as inauthentic and alienated from the working class.
Fetterman in particular was a greater messenger for leftwing economic policies. He looks and sounds like a working class Pennsylvanian who is empathetic to the struggles of his neighbors. There is a real difference between a redistributive policy that sounds like it comes from a think tank and policy that sounds like it comes from someone who would actually benefit.
After Fetterman suffered a stroke, took a lengthy break from campaigning, and then displayed his disability clearly at the debate, journalists, pundits and strategists on both sides thought he had alienated voters. In fact, quite the opposite happened. Fetterman’s health struggles are relatable to nearly all American voters. By contrast, Oz’s assertion that abortion should be up to “local political leaders” was incredibly damaging and unpopular and stopped his momentum in its tracks. Voters appreciate honesty and effort and can recognize and reject smarm. Despite the predictions of most supposed political experts, Fetterman’s authenticity and pro-working class message gained far more votes than his stutters lost.
Much of this election was defined by extremist Republican candidates losing votes from voters who disapproved of Biden and wanted to vote Republican but could not bring themselves to threaten democracy and abortion rights. Pennsylvania’s senate race was an exception. It showed that a more moderate candidate can lose to an authentic populist message, from a trusted messenger, with clear ideas that voters can understand. Even with Democrat’s success in this election, they have not broadly proven they could win back working class Trump voters, but John Fetterman provides a clear blueprint for the future.
Ben Davis works in political data in Washington, DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign
