Americans entered 2024 in presidential election mode, expecting their politicians to woo them to win their votes through November 5th. In this sense, there is a very important constituency for both candidates, the working class. Historically, this group of voters was the big driving force behind the Democratic victory in 2016 Donald Trumpparticularly in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The Republican had promised them to make the USA an “industrial superpower” and to stop China. The message resonated with some workers who had been abandoned by the Democratic candidate. Hillary Clinton. But in the last elections the current president Joe BidenThanks to the many trips he made to the area and his efforts to rebuild the “blue wall” brick by brick, he managed to regain their support. The question now is who will win over these voters.
The famous “Rust Belt” stretches across the Northeast and Midwest of the country and takes its name from the industrial decline that the region experienced beginning in the 1970s. The majority of residents were and are unskilled laborers and white-collar workers, descended from workers in glass factories, coal mines and blast furnaces that created the region’s wealth from the 19th century until the 1970s, when so-called deindustrialization began and manufacturing jobs emerged diverted abroad, the automobile industry grew, and the country’s steel and coal industries began to decline. The consequences were not long in coming, and while major cities like New York and Boston managed to adapt to the new times, places like Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis continue to suffer from labor exodus.
In 2016, Trump won over voters in the Rust Belt with a populist speech. They viewed the tycoon as an “outsider” who understood their concerns about the future of work, which was so uncertain, and their fears about the loss of jobs, traditional trades and local property in the region. The Republican managed to increase employment in the country’s manufacturing sector in his first three years in the White House, but the big beneficiaries were not the traditional cores but the most advanced industries, and many felt favored by a sector swamped by globalization and industry cheated development.
Trump had not won any of the Rust Belt states by large majorities, and in 2020 Democrats won back the voters who had loyally supported them for so many years. Biden continued to focus on the country’s “industrial heartland” in his speech, always emphasizing his middle-class background, his working-class family and his roots in Pennsylvania. “If I defeat Donald Trump in 2020, it will be me here,” said the US President at one of his many rallies in the “Rust Belt”. He focused on gaining the support of the unions to which the traditional worker is affiliated and thanks to them he managed to penetrate the community. With this strategy, 8% of working-class voters who voted for Trump in 2016 went to Biden in 2020. Many of them are women with higher education or African Americans, a bloc with a lot of power in the Rust Belt. It was enough to declare victory for the Democrats. Among working voters, the lowest-paid voters voted for Biden by a wide margin, while small and medium-sized businesses timidly supported Trump.
Amid inflation that has devastated many families, the question is how the decline in purchasing power and both candidates’ still-unfulfilled promises will resonate with Rust Belt voters. Who will vote for this deep but urban part of the United States that guarantees the movement of consumer and capital goods? According to the expert Michael Robets“Biden has the support of most” of them, but “they may not expect much from him, and they will be right.”
In 2023, the two major parties have set out to hunt for workers’ votes. For this reason, both Democratic candidate Joe Biden and the Republican favorite in the polls, Donald Trump, have taken several mass baths in the area. The president even joined a workers’ strike demonstration in Michigan, and the former Republican president skipped the primary debate to travel to the same state and reconnect with voters who trusted him in 2016. This was just a small taste of what Biden and Trump are prepared to do if he is finally elected as the Republican nominee to win the union vote, a movement that is reemerging after decades of calm. Over the years, they have seen their elections unfold amid economic disasters, secrets that emerged at the last moment, rebellions because a candidate did not accept the results, or even a pandemic. But this time the challenge is unique and could pose a direct threat to American democracy, which is why it will be a presidential election with many legal overtones.
Johnstown is a city that symbolizes the area’s new hostility toward Democrats. Large steel mills that closed a quarter-century ago and have been converted into historical monuments still stand on the banks of the Conemaugh River and along the railroad tracks that were historically manufactured in this area. The city is emptying out due to a lack of work. The 20,000 people who live there today are much more conservative than their Gilded Age ancestors. “They’re switching sides because Trump speaks to them in a way that they value,” said the chairman of the Cambria County Democratic Party. Frank Fantauzzoa former worker and union leader.