Report: Economic Populism Has Broad Appeal in the Rust Belt

An exhaustive new survey from the Center for Working-Class Politics and its partners finds that strong economic populism resonates across Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — and that independent candidates outperform Democrats delivering the same message.

Inequality in the United States is higher now than at any point since the early twentieth century. The broad prosperity of the postwar era has been replaced by deindustrialization, mass layoffs, and the erosion of unions, turbocharged by tax breaks for the wealthy and financial deregulation.

Since the Democratic Party embraced many of the policies that caused these trends, working-class voters have increasingly bolted from the party they felt had abandoned them. This exodus has been especially damaging in Rust Belt counties in