Reagan Democrat

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Reagan Democrat is an American political term used by political analysts to denote traditionally Democratic voters, especially white working-class Northerners, who defected from their party to support Republican President Ronald Reagan in both the 1980 and 1984 elections. It is also used to refer to the smaller but still substantial number of Democrats who voted for George H. W. Bush in the 1988 election.

The classic study of Reagan Democrats is probably the work of the Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. Greenberg analyzed white ethnic voters (largely unionized auto workers) in Macomb County, Michigan, just north of Detroit. The county voted 63 percent for John F. Kennedy in 1960, but 66 percent for Reagan in 1984. He concluded that "Reagan Democrats" no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle-class aspirations, but instead saw them as working primarily for the benefit of others: the very poor, the unemployed, African Americans, and other political pressure groups. In addition, Reagan Democrats enjoyed gains during the period of economic prosperity that coincided with the Reagan administration following the "malaise" of the Carter administration. They also supported Reagan's strong stance on national security and opposed the 1980s Democratic Party on such issues as pornography, crime, and taxes.^[1]

Researchers have not tracked what political path these voters took after the end of the Reagan and Bush administrations.

The term Reagan Democrat also refers to the vast sway that Reagan held over the House of Representatives during his presidency, even though the house had a Democratic majority during both of his terms.^[2]

[edit] References

Fairfax, Anthony Edward. The Democratic Trend Phenomena (2005) ch 4
Gainsborough, Juliet F. Fenced Off: The Suburbanization of American Politics (2001)
Greenberg, Stanley B. Middle Class Dreams: Politics and Power of the New American Majority (1996)
Greenberg, Stanley B. The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and how to Break it (2004)
Judis, John B. The Emerging Democratic Majority (2004)
Teixeira, Ruy A., and Joel Rogers.America's Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters (2001)