A top Senate Republican warned that the same voting bloc that has propelled the GOP to power over the last decade is at risk of turning its back on the party during this election cycle.
For decades, White, working-class voters often aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, giving Democrats a stranglehold on Congress until the 1990s and often favoring the Democratic candidate atop the presidential ticket.
President entrance onto the political scene and victory in 2016 solidified a shift that was years in the making, giving Republicans a strong base of working-class support. But with the state of the economy, Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, a top ally of Trumps on Capitol Hill, warned that the GOPs steady base could head for the exits.
FOX NEWS POLL: SQUEEZED BY COSTS, FRUSTRATED VOTERS TURN TO THE DEMOCRATS
“This is the whole deal,” Moreno told Fox News Digital. “It’s the whole deal. If we don’t hang on to those working-class voters, we’re dead as a party. That’s why I say with no hyperbole, if President Trump hadnt won in 2016, the Republican Party would be dead. Because the Republican Party had abandoned working-class Americans.”
“Ironically, the Democrats abandoned working Americans, and there was a void â President Trump filled it,” he continued. “That’s why he won.”
Trump has consistently performed highly with White, working-class voters each time he has run for office, scoring between 66% and 67% of their vote between 2016 and 2024, according to a variety of exit polls.
REDISTRICTING GIVES REPUBLICANS AN EDGE, BUT AFFORDABILITY WILL DECIDE THE MIDTERMS
Some Democrats acknowledged that after the 2024 election, their party had a problem with engaging the working class. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., circulated a memo that urged Democrats to embrace economic populism following stunning losses across the gamut of power in Washington.
“No one, including me, has all the answers right now, but what we know for certain is that Democrats must reclaim our identity as the party of the working class,” Murphy wrote.
Still, Republicans are facing political headwinds heading into this midterm election cycle, in which affordability issues are dominating headlines and voters concerns.
FOX NEWS POLL: MOST RATE THE ECONOMY NEGATIVELY, INCLUDING HALF OF REPUBLICANS
Trump and the GOP again rose to be the dominant party in Washington, D.C., after the 2024 election by pitching a message to rectify the economy that the president charged was “destroyed” by former President Joe Biden.
But a published earlier this month found that nearly 60% of voters said that their top concern was the economy. A separate Fox News poll published in May found that 67% of White voters without a college degree disapproved of Trumps handling of the economy.
Republicans have hit the trail this Fall pitching their economic successes, particularly from the colossal “big, beautiful bill” and trying to instill in voters that the cost of fuel, for example, is only temporary as the war w
