Republicans have long been considered the party of the affluent and upwardly mobile, while Democrats have appealed to the economically disadvantaged. In that era, people with greater-than-average long-term income gains became significantly more conservative — and Republican — while those whose incomes stagnated did not. Jennings’s survey respondents left high school near the end of a 25-year period of unusually rapid and egalitarian income growth. Thus, the first 15 years of the “New Gilded Age” further widened the political gap between economic winners and losers. Of course, two more decades of slow growth and escalating inequality may have brewed new support for conservative “populism” among those left behind.

Source: Washington Post May 14, 2018 10:07 UTC