The Ground Is Shifting Under Biden and Trump

Have Democrats and Republicans traded places?

How has the ascendance of well-educated, relatively affluent liberals among Democrats, alongside the dominance of non-college voters in the Republican coalition, altered the agendas of the two parties?

Are low-turnout elections and laws designed to suppress voting now beneficial to Democrats and detrimental to Republicans? Would the Democratic Party be better off if limits on campaign contributions were scrapped?

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard, contends that the answer to these last three questions is changing from no to yes.

In a paper posted last week, “Election Law for the New Electorate,” Stephanopoulos argues that “the parties’ longstanding positions on numerous electoral issues have become obsolete. These stances reflect how voters used to — not how they now — act and thus no longer serve the parties’ interests.”

Stephanopoulos describes the consequences of the reversal of the traditional class bases of the two parties like this:

This switch reflects what Stephanopoulos describes as “a post-Marxist electorate.”

Data cited by Stephanopoulos demonstrates how Donald Trump’s entry into presidential politics has accelerated these trends, pulling more voters without college degrees into the Republican Party while repelling Republican-leaning, well-educated suburban voters.

At the same time, Stephanopoulos continues:

A fundamental reason for the erosion of the traditional lines of cleavage, Stephanopoulos contends, is the emergence of education “as a potent new axis of electoral segmentation. Among white voters, in particular, individuals with at least a college degree are now a much more Democratic constituency than people with less schooling.”