What the Winning Conservative Coalition Looks Like

“Those who work with ideas increasingly vote for the Democrats, while those who work in physical reality with their hands or machinery increasingly vote Republican.”

The 2020 general election in the United States was meant to sweep former Vice President Joe Biden to victory over President Donald Trump, atop the crest of a blue tidal wave of Democratic victories in congressional and state legislative races. This did not happen. There was no landslide. There was no blue tsunami.

Instead, around 66,000 voters across Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and Nebraska’s second congressional district decided the outcome in an election that saw the highest turnout since 1900. Both sides received more votes than then-Senator Barack Obama did in 2008, with President Trump receiving at least 72 million and former Vice President Biden at 78 million or so. As an external observer from the United Kingdom, here is what I see, particularly when it comes to the future for American conservatism.

What we saw, as Oren Cass argues at American Compass, was that—in coming close to winning—President Trump potentially remade the Republican Party into a multi-ethnic, working-class party that could win in the future, should GOP politicians, activists, and donors seize this chance to ride the realignment into office.

President-elect Biden’s Democrats have seen their moral worldview elevated to the highest seat of power. However, at the state and local levels, the Democrats are in serious trouble. This is due to many factors: educational polarization, geographical separation, and the condemnation of broadly popular conservative values.