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Republicans are Red

Democrats are Blue

We’re stuck in a doom loop

‘Cause our parties are just two

Thank you. Thank you. 

But wait… There’s more to this newsletter than mere doggerel and bad dad jokes. I’ve got some fleshy new data analysis that could change how you understand the Republican and Democratic Party coalitions. Plus my “hot take” on Debt Ceiling Chicken. And: why the real winners of the 2024 election could be China and Russia.

Democrats represent wealthier districts. Republicans represent less wealthy districts.

What does that mean for the future of US politics?

Last week, my talented ������Ƶ colleague Oscar Pocasangre and I released a new deep data-dive on the demographics and voter preferences of all 435 congressional districts. 

We had started last fall by asking how competitive districts were tugging differently on Democratic and Republican coalitions. We wound up with an even deeper understanding of the challenges both parties face in holding together their coalitions.

The report is chock-a-block with fascinating stuff. (I promise!). But the scatterplot that sticks out for me is our Figure 2. 

Districts vary considerably by percent of residents who identify as white. This is not news to anybody. Most districts have average income in the mid-five figures, but some districts have high average incomes: Also not news to anybody.

But if we break districts into four quadrants, splitting on the average, we get four types of districts. And that’s where it gets interesting… 

The most common type of district has a below-average income, and is more white than average. These are the districts where Republicans dominate. Of the 162 districts that fit this category (about 37 percent of districts), Republicans won 137 in 2022, or 85 percent.

But in the other three types of districts here, Democrats dominate.

Democrats do best in the more diverse and wealthier than average districts. Of these 82 districts, Democrats won 63 in 2022, or 77 percent.

Democrats also prevail among the more diverse (less white) and less affluent districts, winning 74 out of 102 such districts, or 73 percent — just a shade less than the less white, wealthier than average districts.

Finally, among the whiter and wealthier districts, Democrats also win the majority, 51 out of 89, or 57 percent. 

Put another way, Democratic members of Congress come from many different types of districts. Republican members of Congress overwhelmingly come from districts that are mostly white and less affluent than average.

Districts Congressional Democrats come from

Districts congressional Republicans come from

Three quarters – 75 percent — of Republicans in Congress represent districts that are less wealthy than the average district. Among Democrats, a slight majority of the congressional delegation comes from wealthier than average districts.

Likewise, two-thirds of more affluent districts (67 percent) sent a Democrat to Congress in 2022, while 63 percent of less affluent districts sent a Republican to Congress in 2022. 

This feels weird, right?

The Democrats are supposed to be the party of the working class, the Republicans are supposed to be the party of the business class. Maybe not so much anymore? 

Our analysis is obviously only at the district level. But a just-published paper by Yale PhD candidate Sam Zacher, “” shows how dramatically affluent voters have blue-shifted, particularly since 2008. As Zacher writes:

“In recent decades, the top 33% (by income), top 20%, top 10%–15%, top 5%–10%, and top 1%, in addition to stock-owning and high-income occupation voters in recent decades, have all increased their allegiance to the Democratic Party. And in multiple recent elections (i.e., 2016 and 2020, and to a lesser degree, 2012), some most-affluent groups supported Democrats at above-majority levels. This new group of affluent Democratic voters is very multiracial, and while higher-income Democrats are more likely to be college-educated, the non-college-educated affluent have also become more Democratic.”

Yes, cultural and social liberalism is mostly responsible. But Zacher adds a twist. Democrats are softening on the very rich:

“Democrats at the head of the party have not meaningfully altered the policy agenda in ways that would threaten the interests of affluent Americans. Therefore, it is quite likely that the Democratic economic policy agenda’s relative friendliness toward affluent income earners, homeowners, and stock owners (even as high as the top 5%) is a necessary condition for keeping and increasing the share of affluent voters from the 1990s through 2020.”

Zacher has a helpful triptych of charts to describe the trend. The charts are a little confusing at first, because the colorful percentages reflect the percentage of the affluent population that falls into the color category. But give yourself two solid minutes to read these charts and they will pop.

by Brian F. Schaffner, a Tufts University political scientist, and Kaitlyn Gaus, a Tufts research associate, zooms in on suburban college-educated voters, where they observe the biggest shift. Schaffner and Gaus attribute it to a major dislike of Trump among these voters. But based on analysis of 2022 voting patterns, they think this shift might be more permanent. 

As :

“The suburban electorate is becoming increasingly diverse, while white college educated suburban voters have become significantly more moderate and less racially resentful than they were just a few cycles earlier. More importantly, if Democratic voting among white college-educated suburbanites has hardened into Democratic partisan identity, then the inertia of this shift may not easily ebb absent a new cult of personality who arrives on the political scene to disrupt the party coalitions.”

(Their paper is“ and it is definitely worth a read.)

So now what? If Democrats are relying more and more on wealthy voters in wealthy districts, while Republicans are relying more and more on less affluent voters in less affluent districts, isn’t an economic realignment overdue? Maybe.

What’s intriguing in the above analysis Oscar and I conducted is that within Democratic districts, voters tend to broadly agree on economic issues. Whereas, in Republican districts, voters disagree more with each other. Rich Democrats mostly believe in some redistribution. But so do some Republicans, especially less affluent Republicans. (A similar finding also emerged from a )

The fault lines in the Republican Party seem clearer than in the Democratic Party, particularly on economic policy. Thus, Joe Biden’s State of the Union emphasis on economic populism, and in particular Social Security and Medicare, is perfectly aimed at the biggest potential GOP fracture point. 

And the fracture may grow.  Trump appears eager to bring the Social Security/Medicare fight to DeSantis, ������Ƶ strongest support comes from non-college educated voters who are most dependent on these social programs. Economic populism is probably ������Ƶ best card in the GOP 2024 primary.

All this points to some deep instability ahead in American politics. Observable patterns and election results may . But beneath the surface, some hefty  plate tectonics are a-rumblin’..

Maybe we’ll see some of them play out over the next few months, as Congressional Republicans try to figure out what they actually want to ask for in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Speaking of which… 

Debt Ceiling Chicken sure is a crackbrained game. 

It’s a lose-lose-lose.

Here we are, in 2023. We can edit the human genome and build robotic body parts. But we are still subjecting the full faith and credit of the United States to a schoolyard staring contest.

We may have the world’s largest GDP, and hold the world’s reserve currency. But we have just about the worst system of government for managing it. 

The parlor game around DC is the usual: Predicting the odds of default. Gaming out how it ends. Trying to figure out out of the negotiations (That’s ) Debt Ceiling Chicken invites all kinds of fun punditry and betting.

But the big question for me is: why are we playing this silly lose-lose game at all?

Isn’t there a better, more cooperative game we could play? There actually is…

No other modern democracy leaves the threat of default lying around like a loaded gun with the safety off.

So why haven’t we? Great question. It’s because, well, our system seems to perish the thought of resolving anything that could be used as a political cudgel.

Easy to blame Republicans, right? But let’s roll the tape back to late last year, when Democrats controlled the House as well as the Senate, and in theory, could have abolished the statutory debt ceiling once and for all.

But Democrats didn’t.

Not even after it was clear Republicans had won a House majority for 2023-2024. Neither Nancy Pelosi nor Chuck Schumer President

An anonymous Biden advisor, however, “Although there is grave risk to the economy, the gun is in Republicans’ hands. And there is little question as to who will get blamed for this.”

Translation: Let’s hand Republicans the loaded weapon and watch them bicker and brow-furrow over what to demand. Democrats can only look better in comparison.

And bicker they are. And bicker they will. McCarthy made his grand bargain with the Narcissistic Nihilist Caucus by promising he would stand up to Biden. But political brinksmanship is all fun and games until somebody miscalculates and loses an economy. 

Also, it seems like our foreign adversaries would like nothing more than to see the US default on its debt and undermine the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Speaking of which…

The Real Winners of the 2024 Election Could be China and Russia

Our foreign adversaries would like nothing more than another disputed election

Last summer, I had the great honor of s. Yes, the same place (and in fact, the same exact stage) where Salman Rushdie would be stabbed two weeks later. It still gives me chills of horror. 

But that’s not why I mention it in this context. I mention it because on the ride back to the Buffalo Airport, I met a fellow Chautauqua speaker who had also just given a talk, National Defense University professor Sean McFate. 

Sean was there talking about his new book, . His core argument is that old war — fought with planes and tanks on traditional battlefields — is vanishing. Instead, we’re in a new era of “sneaky war.” Sneaky war involves cyber-attacks and misinformation. It’s not about winning on the battlefield, but about destabilizing an adversary from the inside. And China and Russia are both trying to do it to us.

As I told Sean about my talk on the dangers of binary hyper-partisan polarization, we noticed ways in which this made the US uniquely vulnerable to this kind of sneaky war, because our foreign adversaries can easily sow misinformation to turn up the existing partisan hatreds.

Worse, the hyper-partisan polarization is now extending to the military, Sean warned me. And while national security leaders might recognize the problem, they have their heads in the sand, not wanting to confront the reality that they might be called on to police a contested election.

So we decided to write . We envisioned a contested 2024 election: “Welcome to the victory party for Russia and China,” we called it. As we concluded in our piece:

“Hyper-partisanship is a top national security issue. Foreign adversaries like Russia and China foment polarization through clandestine, provocative disinformation as a strategy to defeat us, like a virus killing its host. Ultimately, the solution lies in addressing our rigid two-party system and electoral institutions that keep us divided and vulnerable. But it won’t be resolved by 2024. If the domestic peace collapses, it will be the military’s problem. If the military is too polarized to function, it may induce a crisis that amounts to a Russian and Chinese victory. Better to start addressing it now, while there’s still (a little) time.”

Read our full piece in Time, “

That’s all for this edition. To honor this strange, syrupy holiday of the February doldrums:  Fill your hearts with love, your mouths with chocolate, and your minds with possibilities

And of course, please press all my buttons…