“When Democrats don’t engage honestly on real issues important to Americans, we give the impression that we either don’t understand or, worse yet, simply don’t care.” So said Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton in a recent post-election op-ed in The Washington Post.

Moulton has been a lonely voice of rationality in the weeks after the 2024 elections as Democrats and the media strive to understand why they lost, much as they did in 2016. They got it wrong then, and it looks like they still don’t get it.

There has been a lot of analysis about the inroads Trump and Republicans made with working-class voters, particularly Hispanics — all true. One of the main reasons was their ability to capitalize on the Democrats’ political slide to the left since 2016. 

What has driven the Democratic Party into third-party status isn’t complicated. There is now, and has been for some time, a potentially existential split in the Democratic Party between working-class voters, historically the key voter group in their coalition, and what I call “Democratic liberal elites,” whose influence isn’t in numbers but in money and the media. 

There is no better example of that disconnect than the events surrounding Kamala Harris’ candidacy, as Democratic power brokers pushed Joe Biden aside hoping for a better candidate.

Lunch bucket Joe was out. Elite progressive Harris was in.

It was this split, rooted in class and ideology, that opened the door to a second Trump presidency and remains a significant challenge to the Democratic Party as it tries to rebuild. 

There are many Democrats and media members who seem surprised by the election outcome, just as they were in 2016, and think the demographic shifts in the electorate this year are a new development. They aren’t. The fact is this divide between Democratic working-class voters and liberal elites was a critical element in Trump’s 2016 win.

What emerged in that election, and was in clear focus in the 2024 election, was a split between liberal elites and Democratic working-class voters who simply weren’t on the same page when it came to the economy.

The reason for this split was differing views on the importance of the economy. According to 2016 Edison exit polls, overall 36 percent of voters thought the economy was excellent/good, while 62 percent thought it was not so good/poor. 

In 2024, it was 31-68 percent, slightly worse than 2016. In contrast, in 2020, the state of the economy was almost at parity at 49-50 despite the economic difficulties that the pandemic brought on. 

The dissonance between liberal elites and working-class voters was clearly evident in a report I did analyzing 8,000 voters surveyed in November and December 2016 by YouGov. The report was published by the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. Respondents were asked to rate the importance of 23 different issues. Using those 23 issue rankings, I did a cluster analysis to look at the electorate through the lens of issue priorities and explore how those priorities affected their voting decisions, rather than only on the basis of demography.

From the data, we identified five distinctive voter groups. They were: “Democrat/Independent Liberal Elites,” who made up 15 percent of voters; “Democratic-Leaning Working Class,” who were the largest group, making up 25 percent of voters; “Moderate Younger Middle Income” voters (17 percent); “Conservative Older” voters (21 percent); and “Conservative Younger” voters (12 percent). There was an additional 10 percent who did not respond to all 23 issue questions and couldn’t be characterized. 

These clusters produced distinct presidential election preferences, party preferences and ideological patterns that provided insight into how voters made their decisions in the 2016 election. We found that the Democratic/Independent Liberal Elites cluster prioritized issues popular with the media and progressives but weren’t issues that were considered “very important” to the Democratic-Leaning Working Class cluster. 

Overall, in the 2016 election, the top issues were the economy, and then health care, followed by jobs. The Working Class prioritized health care first, the economy second and jobs third. In contrast, Liberal Elites put the economy 10th and jobs in the bottom half of the issues at 14th. For Elites, the environment was their top issue, followed by climate change in second. 

The Working Class group had the environment at 10th and climate change in the bottom half of their list at 13th, a stark difference in priorities.

There were other issues where these two groups were clearly at odds. The Working Class voters prioritized crime at eighth and terrorism at ninth, while Elites placed those same issues at 19th and 21st, respectively. Conversely, Elites placed money in politics at seventh and gay rights at ninth, while the Working Class placed them at 18th and 23rd, respectively. 

The great Democratic divide also delivered some significant differences in how the two groups have voted for president. Ninety-four percent of Elites voted for Hillary Clinton and 95 percent for Barack Obama in 2012. But among the Working Class, Clinton won them by a 36 percent margin, while Obama had won them by a 43-point margin — warning signs that the Democratic Party ignored, along with stark differences in ideology and other key demographics.

The 2016 survey found that Elites were 74 percent liberal and 1 percent conservative, while Working Class voters were 43 percent moderate and 24 percent conservative. Elites were 75 percent white, while the Working Class had the highest percentage of Hispanics and Blacks of any of the clusters. Finally, 47 percent of Elites had graduated college, while 80 percent of the Working Class had not.

The strategic question that emerged from 2016 was whether Republicans could build on the economic openings created by the Democratic split first or whether Democrats would be able to work through their economic dissonance first. The answer would be critical in defining where the electorate would place governing responsibility in the future.

If 2024 tells us anything, it is that Democrats failed to close the gap, leaving the party behind independents in party ID and seeing significant demographic losses, particularly Hispanic voters who prioritized economic issues. 

The 2017 analysis revealed the great divide between the Democratic working class and liberal elites and noted: “These differences will be consequential for Democrats in the future.” 

David Winston is the president of The Winston Group and a longtime adviser to congressional Republicans. He previously served as the director of planning for Speaker Newt Gingrich. He advises Fortune 100 companies, foundations and nonprofit organizations on strategic planning and public policy issues, as well as serving as an election analyst for CBS News.