Major Voting Blocs and Assets for Each Party

Democrats

Government Workers — The most deeply motivated Democratic Party bloc includes people who work for any level of government, or work sometimes, or once served as a county’s Assistant Administrator of General Assistance, or were given a government-related job by a brother-in-law, or prefer not to worry about getting fired, or like not having to work until age 60, or . . . (wide-ranging bloc, this).

About 24 million Americans currently hold government jobs. How dominantly Democrat is their vote? Since government is the District of Columbia’s primary business, DC is a good barometer. In each of the past five presidential elections, the District’s vote for the Democrat candidate has been above 90%. Through the 15 elections in which DC has been able to vote for president, its electoral votes for Republican candidates have totaled zero.

Teachers Unions — This bloc is more Democrat than most Democrats are. And it’s nationally focused on the precious asset that must be protected at all costs and many strikes: the salaries, benefits, and cushy early retirement eligibility of millions of teachers, administrators, and education bureaucrats.

But never forget, it’s all about the children.

Academia — The politically partisan character of schools traditionally did not extend to ones educating the recently potty-trained, but it does now. Progressives always demand progress. 

Government schools have become undeclared Democrat fiefdoms, currently busy giving political lessons to students small and large. Faculties nationwide have become comfortably like-minded. In grade schools, high schools, colleges and universities, conservative educators are now only slightly more numerous than Martian educators.

Media — This professional sector is declining but still influences many voters, especially ones with modest reading skills. Its Democrat allegiance has a few exceptions, prominently Fox News, The Wall St. Journal, and The New York Post. But almost all other influential national media now work within a range of perspectives from Sen. Chuck to Sen. Bernie.

This Democrat asset includes all non-Fox cable stations; plus ABC, NBC, and CBS; NPR and PBS; correct magazines like The New Yorker and The Atlantic; almost all social media (until the wrong billionaire bought in); The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, even the recently awakened Chicago Tribune, and virtually all major newspapers (especially ones carrying syndicated NYT reports); heartfelt Hollywood movies and TV programs.

Scared Corporations — Many business cycles ago, corporations’ greatest fears were loss of profitability, a shrinking customer base, and strengthening competition. Now their greatest fears are angry leftists who hate profits, angry politicians who hate capitalism, and angry young people who don’t want to work for corporations. 

People Who Could Be Earning Paychecks in the Private Sector But Prefer Getting Checks from Government — This preference was once an outlier, but it’s grown thanks to encouragement by the current administration, which is remarkably generous with money it orders the Fed to create.

Show Biz Saints — Whether they own a Mediterranean stunner with a perfect view of the sun setting over the ocean or just some modest Pacific Palisades place worth under $5 million, these luminaries love their existential crusades. They never stop promoting Democrats and the current season’s campaign, such as defending the endangered spiky yellow woodlouse or the endangered Malibu Oceanfront.

Elite Show Biz Saints are small in number but they do influence millions of fans who have no identity of their own.

The Inert Disgruntled — These are found in many of the categories listed above, but there are also independents, many more now than just a few years ago. They’d like to join protests, but don’t like leaving the couch. In less activist times, most of the inert disgruntled didn’t vote, but now they often do, especially if drug legalization is on the ballot.

Republicans

Small Business — Most people running a small business aren’t devoted to the Republican Party or conservative politics; they’re just trying to make a living. But they do notice what Democrats keep delivering to them: more shoplifting and fewer cops, their business robbed by the same guy who did it Tuesday, higher taxes and regulation, complaints that whatever they’re paying to the government isn’t their “fair share.” While trying to prevent their small (or medium-sized) business from becoming a bankrupt business, these besieged folks form the defensive bedrock of the Republican Party.

Traditionalists, Curmudgeons, and Other People Who Notice That The World Is Going To Hell These Days — Maybe you know such people, one or two, anyway. Most of them recall a time when rioting wasn’t lauded as peaceful, children weren’t treated like social experiments, and debt hadn’t become an always-soaring flight from reality. Some still move around cautiously, or speedily when they flee Democrat cities. Actually, increasing proportions here are minorities whose indentured votes Democrats still believe they should own.

But most people who miss “the good old days” are nearing the end of their own days. Republicans need to import a new voting bloc of their own, as Democrats have been doing at the southern border. 

How about extraterrestrials? Could Republicans import voters from a planet whose residents are responsible, hard-working, productive for the economy — another world’s Eisenhower Republicans? Maybe open immigration to a new class of aliens?

graphic by Scott Bittinger