A very important think tank study has just been published and is a must for anyone interested in politics. “Factory Towns“, report from the organizations American Family Voices and Democrats of the 21st Centurylooks at where Democrats have lost ground since the 2012 elections in 10 Midwestern states.
Control of the White House and Congress depends on the ability to win in these states and, as the report said, to win in these “factory towns” in particular. This report should change the way we think about how elections are won and lost in these states.
The report suggests that aside from the usual distribution of urban, suburban and rural voting patterns, most of the change happened in two kinds of cities that don't really fit into either of those categories, at least in the Great Lakes and Midwest. Cities with fewer than 35,000 residents in which manufacturing was once the main source of employment are “small factory towns”, and those with more than 35,000 but not connected to a major metropolitan area are “medium-sized factory towns”.
Sit down before continuing because the next stat should blow your mind. The report looked at seven swing states — Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and two more swing states — Illinois and Indiana — as well as 48 counties upstate New York. Those who live in the “factory towns” represent 46% of the electorate in these states. And, between 2012 and 2020, while Democrats increased their margins in the urban and suburban Midwest by about 540,929 and 506,448 votes respectively, in the mid-sized manufacturing cities the Democrats lost 766,578 and in the small factory they lost a staggering 218. .
Both small and medium-sized factory town counties accounted for more Democratic losses than the rural areas of those 10 states, where there were 557,206 net declines for Democrats. These are hard numbers of actual votes, not polls.
The link between manufacturing job losses and changes in political allegiance was evident in these factory towns because their economies were less diverse, less able to offer employment alternatives to the manufacturing jobs that went overseas.
The changes were dramatic. In Ohio's Trumbull County, which lost 68% of its manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2019, the shift in the Democratic vote share from 2012 to 2020 was -17%. Manitowoc County in Wisconsin saw a 22% loss in manufacturing jobs over the same period, and the shift in Democratic vote share was -10%. Luzerne County in Pennsylvania, where I was Writing since about 2008, it has lost 28% of manufacturing jobs, the most of any county in Pennsylvania, and has dropped 10 points in the GOP.
Trump wasn't lying when he said these workers were forgotten, he was just lying when he said he was going to do something about it.
There was also widespread loss of manufacturing jobs in suburban counties during the same time period, but the economies of those counties were and are much more diverse and other job opportunities presented themselves. So, despite a loss of 156,742 manufacturing jobs in the 40 suburban counties in these 10 states from 2001 to 2019, these counties saw a 19.3% increase in all jobs over the same time period. In small “factory towns” overall job growth was less than half that, at 9.2%, and in medium-sized “factory towns” overall job growth was a paltry 3.6%.
The suburbs were not destroyed as communities like small and medium-sized communities by the loss of industrial jobs, and this difference shows in voter behavior. Twenty-eight of the 40 suburban counties saw Democrats gain power between 2012 compared to only 12 where Republicans did.
The report concludes:
Job losses alone don't always produce significant changes in political support—after all, these manufacturing job losses occurred over 20 years under both Democratic and Republican administrations. But when anger at job losses and community breakdown is combined with a candidate who presents himself as an economic populist and champion of the small, party support can shift quickly and significantly.
Unlike Mitt Romney in 2012, Donald Trump was largely attuned to the frustration and invisibility felt by communities hit hard by industrial job losses. In plain language, over the course of five years, he struck unfair trade deals that cost American jobs. He positioned himself as standing up to China, both verbally and with punitive tariffs. It also offered foreigners as easy economic scapegoats.
The report recalls that Trump mentioned NAFTA eight times in his first conversation with Hillary Clinton in 2016 and nine times about “unfair trade deals.” He told these people that they had been forgotten, and the neoliberal policies that President George W. Bush promoted and President Barack Obama failed to reverse had indeed forgotten these workers in the relentless drive to find the lowest possible wages at home or abroad.
Trump wasn't lying when he said they were forgotten, he was just lying when he said he was going to do something about it.
The report goes on to examine the ways in which health declined when jobs arrived. Using measurements from the Health rankings and county road maps tracking a variety of health outcomes, not just access to affordable care, the researchers found that mid-sized factory towns saw their health outcomes decline by 5.7 percent over the past decade, and the greater the decline, the greater the shift toward the GOP in the voting booth; Interestingly, they report that health outcomes in small factory towns actually improved by 0.3%.
A third section shows the decline of unionism in factory towns, which is part of the explanation for the decline in Democratic voting. Unions have long been a driving force of progressive politics in the Midwest, and the region surveyed accounted for 93% of the total decline in union jobs over the past decade.
The final section of the report examines race, and the results are not pretty. More diverse factory towns were less likely to see a vote swing away from Democrats than those that were disproportionately white. The racist dog whistles worked.
The report does not seek to answer the more difficult and troubling question: Did economic uncertainty make the appeal to racism more likely to succeed, or was racism there all along?
Such questions may be answered by historians, but politicians need something now, and so they will offer theories that serve their political ideology. What we do know is that Obama won Iowa twice before Trump won it twice, and of the 10 states surveyed, Iowa had the most factory towns, accounting for 65% of the electorate in the Hawkeye State.
Perhaps this blow was simple reaction, but I suspect a more likely explanation will be that charismatic Obama appealed to Iowans' best angels and charismatic Trump to their worst angels, and in this media-heavy era, charisma counts more than moral argument every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I asked John Pouland, who serves on the 21st Century Democrats advisory board, about the influence of religion on voter attitudes in these factory towns. “You know, the study didn't look at religious views, but there is data out there that shows there is a higher degree of religiosity in these communities,” he told NCR.
Pouland referred to the GOP's success in messaging. “When Jesus wanted to help the poor, he was considered a savior, but now if you try to help the poor, you are considered a socialist. And that rubs some people the wrong way,” he said. “This study didn't go into that per se, but there are people in these communities who share economic concerns who would be receptive to being approached by Democrats. They care about people, they care about their neighbors, and they care about efforts to break them up. health.”
Currently, and for the foreseeable future, there is no road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that does not cross the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Michigan and Wisconsin were both decided by a whisker in the previous two elections. The 10 states surveyed represent one-fifth of the US Senate.
Every Democratic Party strategist and fundraiser and activist should study these findings. And every Democrat in Congress should make sure to vote for the two infrastructure bills that might bring jobs back to some of these hard-hit areas!
It's sad to realize that so many Americans have fallen for Trump's strongman folly. Democrats must find ways to bring jobs and dignity back to these factory towns or they will lose.
