Blue-collar voters could affect GOP

In the 2024 election, Donald Trump mapped an escape route for Republicans from the greatest long-term challenge facing the party.

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Less than a year later, that path looks much more precarious.

The core demographic challenge facing the GOP is that the party's most reliable bloc of voters — White people without a four-year college degree — is shrinking. Trump's solution in 2024 was to markedly improve his performance among non-White voters without a four-year college degree, according to the Tribune News Service.

But polling through his second term consistently shows those voters cooling on his performance and priorities. If that trend continues, the math for Republican candidates — especially in presidential races — will grow much more complicated.

For decades, White voters without a college degree were the nucleus of the dominant New Deal coalition forged for Democrats by Franklin D. Roosevelt. But the cultural and racial storms of the 1960s shattered that coalition; during the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, millions of blue-collar White voters moved right, largely around racially tinged issues such as school busing, crime and welfare, but also because of social issues, taxes and national security.