What does Democrat or Republican mean anymore?

Is the country as a whole shifting right?

Have the parties switched platforms? Are the Republicans the party of the working class while blue has become the color of the ultra-wealthy, or should I say, elitists? 

Since we’re already all wound up after a tense and historic week – why not just go all in. 

Welcome to Trump’s World. 

That was the cover of the Economist yesterday. It was expected to be an extremely close election. We were told the results may not be in for weeks. Many were getting themselves prepped for all the drama of election fraud, which funny enough only seems to be an issue if one side wins. On Tuesday night, we got the exact opposite. Clear, decisive results from America. By Wednesday morning, a red wave was obvious. Many say this referendum came from the working class, who are tired of struggling to get by.  

But aren’t conservatives supposed to be the rich ones who prioritize their pocketbooks over human rights?  ouch 

While those bleeding-heart liberals want to turn us into a socialist country with all their equalizing and handouts? yikes 

Well, that’s not what the data showed this time. The economy was the most important issue of the 2024 presidential election. It hasn’t been the number one issue for voters since 2008. For a moment I want to continue the conversation, but from the perspective of what is commonly conceived about the parties – rather than what either platform actually suggested as their proposed policies for the economy. Often, Republicans are considered the party of the wealthy. While Democrats are the party for the middle class. 

As a young, proud, I-know-everything and no one can tell me different liberal, I was often told just wait until you make a real money and then you’ll vote with conservatives. As you guys know last year I became quite obsessed with the US Tax Code for my own personal finance and for years as a mortgage advisor have followed the economy and monetary policy very closely. This is where I started to see discrepancies between the general public’s perception of which party’s policy actually benefits the economy most. 

As a quick side note, while my fiscal alliance hasn’t changed, my view of politicians and how much they actually care about any of us has changed. I now understand, and this election reaffirmed for me, the best thing I can do is focus on myself and my family so we can be a better part of our community. 

Back on track - of course this has been studied. Whether Democratic or Republican economic policy is better for most of America. That’s a tough, highly subjective question to answer so let’s look at two measures of the economy that are both popular and rooted in only data, not opinion. The performance of the stock market and the GDP. The S&P has grown an average of 10% under Democratic Presidents versus 6.7% under Republicans. GDP, the broadest measure of the economy, has averaged 3.9% under Democrats and 2.4% under Republicans. 

What about taxes? Folks like to say Republicans only care about their taxes. Especially Trump’s tax cuts that went into effect in 2017.  But I’ve also heard it said, by really critical thinkers, that the middle class are the only ones who really pay taxes.  This is why we may see more wealthy people making their vote based on social issues.  The rich know how to avoid taxes, like our boy Trump himself.  This is pure speculation but I find that the general public focuses on tax brackets and percentages.  They focus on what the candidates promise for tax cuts.  The tax code is so much more intricate than this!  There are loop holes that look a lot like huge rewards for entrepreneurs and real life jackpots for real estate investors to sometimes wipe out their tax liability completely - legally.  I don’t know that the middle class is as aware of these strategies as the folks at the top. 

I broke down the Tax Cut and Jobs Act and who it benefited most in a previous post. So I won’t rehash that now because what I want to get into is something my brother said this week. For color, this brother is a former President of the Young Republicans club at the University of Nevada, Reno. 

He said Republicans are now the party of the working class while the ultra-wealthy, “the elite”, vote Democrat. This stuck in my brain because I’ve been seeing all the same campaign ads you have about how Kamala has the middle class’s back and Trump only cares about billionaires. Their platforms and proposals actually hold fairly true to those accusations. We also saw the world’s 10 richest peoples’ net worths absolutely explode the day after the election.  Hopefully that trickles down right? 

But I have to admit I have also noticed how more and more wealthy people vote blue. Over the last 15 years, the Democratic Party has seen pretty big shifts demographically. The second largest majority within that party is now made up of college educated white people. To simplify this more than I want to (let me make that clear, I don’t want to generalize the way I’m about to but it’s the only way to analyze these numbers) the party used to be predominantly working-class white people and then all of the minorities. That might be changing. 

Especially when a Republican could capitalize on the Democrats taking for granted the minority vote. Let’s break this down. A win for Harris would have needed women to really turn up. She won 53% of women. That was not as big of a majority as she needed, especially because the bottom completely fell out with Hispanics. Latino voters switched to Trump by 25 percent points. They aren’t into identitarian politics anymore. As the population grows, less and less of the Hispanic vote is foreign born and that may have something to do with the shift we saw. An interesting note is that Harris couldn’t keep up with Biden’s popularity among Latino voters, and neither could Hillary Clinton. She also underperformed that population. 

Harris was not the female Barack Obama either. 

When comparing these results with the 2020 election results, it was Trump – not Harris – who picked up support amongst Black voters. Harris secured 80% of the Black vote but that is a full ten percent less than Biden did. Trump on the other hand has been on a different trajectory with these voters. In 2016 he won 8% of their vote, 12% in 2020 and this time was 20%. I will point out that George W. Bush claimed that much support from Black voters in 2020 so this particular stat is not necessary indicative of a major shift in party demographics. 

The price of eggs. 

Trumps victory isn’t a conspiracy. This election at least spared us the drama of wondering where our country really stands. It is truly clear. But does his victory boil down to the price of eggs? Across all demographics, voters were fed up with the economy. They may not understand the tax code in the slightest, but they know exactly how much milk and eggs cost when they get groceries on Sunday. They know what gas costs when they fill up on their way home. They don’t care who created the inflation. They don’t care that’s normalizing. Income levels are rising.. but they don’t feel it. The stock market is doing great…but that doesn’t pay the working classes credit card bill.  

It was a change election, in my opinion. And I’ll be interested to see how these shifts between and within the parties continue. I did hear something interesting from SmartHer news, an IG account I can highly recommend you follow. There is never-ending talk about how divided we are as a country, polarized. We could shift our perspectives and instead think, wow – look how balanced we are. The issues and values of our country members are represented half and half in their government. Granted, post-election it is less even now and that feels very discomforting to many. I will just say I think both Biden and Harris’ remarks after the results came in rang absolutely true - you can’t only love your country when you win. 

Rates! 

I can’t wrap up this blog without talking about interest rates. The Fed cut 25 bps yesterday. They are in a tricky position going forward, but I’m kind of out of time here. So I suggest you listen to full breakdown on interest rates and where they are headed post-election, which I have for you in Property Pursuits – linked here.