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The party realignment is still in mid-swing. I have faith this narrow Republican majority is largely an artifact. Previous party alignments took decades to play out. For example, Texas elected Democratic governors as late as 1990!
The trend is clear. Democrats are for rich white people and the underclass. Republicans are for the others.
100k is very middle class today. Amongst the posh, Democrats are so utterly dominant its comical. I can't find it on Google (because of course I can't) but someone looked at political donations from every large employer. The majority of donations went to Democrats for every employer except for the NYPD and maybe one other. That's right, even supposedly "right wing" corporations like Exxon had more Democratic donors than Republican ones. Amongst tech companies and universities, Democrats held an edge of something like 10-1.
The elite is all in on the Democratic party. And that is truly new. Back in the day, there were a substantial subset of WASP-y Republicans in the northeast and California. They are utterly gone. I know these people. They vote blue now, no matter who.
Until said reversal actually manifests, calling its absence an artifact seems premature. Predicting the Democrats are going to become the party of rich white people is one thing (which I still find doubtful, but nevertheless). Saying the Democrats are already the party of old rich white people is factually inaccurate when the GOP has a distinct advantage with high income voters (approx. 10 points), white voters (approx. 10-15 points), and older voters (approx. 5 points, higher when talking about really old voters).
This seems to hinge on gerrymandering 'elite' (and related terms) in ways that include a lot of middle income people from major cities while excluding high income people from the suburbs and major cities (and fits into a broader pattern of conservatives denying their own political power). The regional gentry that dominate the Republican Party don't like to think of themselves as 'elite', even though they often make more money (in many cases, significantly more money) than the urban professional class that mirrors them in the Democratic Party.
Like, I'm not really sure what you mean by posh here, since that's a British term without clear American analogy (maybe some New England Old Money, but they're frankly not very relevant). I'm guessing you mean affluent metropolitan professionals, but that's just a guess. Or maybe Ivy League students, but then you're not really comparing SES, you're comparing children to parents.
Assuming this is true (and I will grant that it is facially plausible), it is evidence for the merchant/gentry class vs professional class divide. It's not evidence for Republicans being poorer or more working class.
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