Nate Silver Explains Who the DSA supporters are.

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As a result of contentious Democratic primaries in Michigan, Maine, and New York, I’ve been reading a lot of conversation about the role that class plays in voting patterns in the United States. In these primaries, candidates like Graham Platner and Abdul El-Sayed who are associated with democratic socialism often claim to have the mandate of the working class. But in practice, their strengths tend to be with college-educated voters. Even before his scandals, Platner wasn’t particularly doing better among voters without college degrees than previous (losing) Democratic nominees in Maine. El-Sayed has relatively weak support from Black voters in polls, meanwhile.

But does that make them hypocrites? For what it’s worth, they certainly both have interesting backstories. Platner didn’t graduate from college, but came from a fairly privileged background. I don’t think it would be unfair to classify him as “downwardly mobile.” El-Sayed is in some ways the polar opposite: a first-generation American who went to a good public school in suburban Detroit and is obviously a high-achieving person....

I’m reminded here of Peter Turchin’s elite overproduction hypothesis. It basically argues that America is producing “too many” college graduates relative to the number of high-prestige, well-paying jobs available to them. People who wind up in this situation often carry heavy student loan burdens or other sorts of debt. Even if their material situation is objectively “just fine,” it’s rarely great. They’re gloomy about their own financial prospects, and feel aggrieved about the state of the country. Their class status is ambiguous: privileged in some senses, but they’re part of the “have-nots” in other meaningful ways.

What would be ideal here, to get closer to the notion of class, is if we had data on voters’ family backgrounds. Did they grow up rich or poor? Were their parents white-collar or blue-collar? Did they go to a private high school? Unfortunately, you’ll rarely, if ever, see this sort of question in political surveys, even ones as comprehensive as the CES....

Based on this grid, what is the most Democratic voting group in America? It’s voters with postgraduate degrees but lower-to-middle household incomes of $30K to $60K per year.

This is very much also the sweet spot for the DSA. In the group’s most recent member survey in 2021, 80 percent of members aged 25 or older had bachelor’s degrees, but 45 percent had household incomes below $60,000 per year.

This is unusual, because education and income are usually substantially positively correlated. In the composite CES data, only 19 percent of Americans with bachelor’s degrees or higher had household incomes of $60K or below. The DSA rate is around twice that. These voters aren’t necessarily “blue collar” in the sense of working with their hands. But that doesn’t mean they’re privileged. Common occupations among DSA members include teachers, non-profit workers, social workers, and public sector employees....

By contrast, who are the most Republican voters in the country? It’s not necessarily voters with a lot of “economic anxiety”. Rather, it’s the precise opposite corner from the DSA: high-earners who didn’t attend college. About 60 percent of voters with a high school education or less, but whose households earned incomes of $60,000 or above, preferred Trump to the various Democratic presidential candidates. (You can probably think of various stereotypical professions here too: small business owners, independent contractors, real estate developers, used-car dealers, etc.)

While it’s true that Black voters are not a monolith, their preferences are notably more uniform than for whites — and mostly very blue. But what’s the most Democratic Black voting group? You guessed it — Black voters with graduate degrees earning $30K to $60K per year. In fact, with 95 percent of voters who meet this description voting for Democrats, it’s probably the most D subgroup in the entire voter universe....

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