Party of the People

Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP

By: Patrick Ruffini

Narrated by: Stephen Graybill

Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

An eye-opening, revelatory account of the future of the Republican party as they unite working-class voters in a multi-racial, cross-generational populist coalition.

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election shocked the world. Yet his defeat in 2020 may have been even more surprising: he received 12 million more votes in 2020 than 2016 and his unexpectedly diverse coalition included millions of nonwhite voters, a rarity for the modern Republican party.

In 2020, Trump defied expectations and few journalists, strategists, or politicians could explain why Trump had nearly won reelection. Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and one of the country’s leading experts on political targeting, technology, and demography, has the answers—and the explanation may surprise you. For all his apparent divisiveness, Trump assembled the most diverse Republican presidential coalition in history and rode political trends that will prove significant for decades to come.

The shift is profound: seven in ten American voters belong to groups that have shifted right in the last two presidential elections, while under three in ten whites with a college degree belong to groups that are trending left. Together, this super-majority of right-trending voters forms a colorblind, populist coalition, largely united by its working-class roots, moderate to conservative views on policy, strong religious beliefs, and indifference to or outright rejection of the identity politics practiced by the left. Not all these voters are Republican, and in certain corners of the coalition, only a small minority are. But recent elections are pointing us towards a future where party allegiances have been utterly upended.

The Party of the People demonstrates this data. Ruffini was as wrong as every pollster in 2016 and spent the intervening years figuring out why and developing better methods of analyzing voters in the digital age. Using robust data, he shifts you away from the complacent, widespread narrative that the Republican party is a party of white, rural voters. It is, but more importantly for its longevity, it’s a party of non-college educated voters. And as fewer voters attend college, the Republican party shows no signs of stagnation. With rich data and clear analysis, Party of the People explains the present and future of the Republican party and American elections.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Patrick Ruffini (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio

a good start

this book is enlightening, it becomes clear that it's written by someone who realizes that he is in a bubble and that he is out of touch with many Americans. it draws on solid data, and makes sweeping claims about moderate, but consistent trends.

it leaves a glaring hole in its analysis of queer issues, femicide, and bigotry, and even hate crimes in multiracial working class America. likely because the author himself agrees with the fundamental order of society that conservatives of both parties fought for in the 90s and aughts.

he ignores the potential for further democratic backsliding and the ways that "anticorruption" messaging brings autocrats to power around the world as they promise to actually get things done and throw out the resistance. it ignores the democratic norms being eschewed by the trump coalition. he does accurately place a finger on the perceptions that many Hispanics and Vietnamese have because of their recent familiar immigration history.

this book also neglects that the trump administration's first term was held back by moderating traditional conservative and libertarian voices much of the time. these moderating voices will certainly have a negligible position in the next administration.

he ignores the trends present among Muslim, queer, hindu, sikh, and Jewish swing voters, all of whom have conflicting interests at times, which also can be exploited by future generations. though, no one expected this book to cover *every* potential identity group.

the author tells a compelling story about the expansion of mainstream American society to include more and more races of immigrants over time. this is something (as a tejano myself) that I've seen be the case for many Hispanics.

overall, the book describes an important opportunity that trump and perhaps others (though the primary process may reveal it's only an opportunity trump will exploit for now) have to expand the racial composition of the Republican party.

the final policy prescriptions make it clear the preferences of the author, and that they still are out of touch with the voters they describe. if I had written the book, it would have seemed similarly out of touch as well, even if my political skew (I'm 27) is different than the author's (he seems largely "libertarian" by nature, socially conservative, fiscally irresponsible, anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-environment). he has a good touch on the pulse of oil-workers in South Texas though, I'm sure.

some of the other blindspots are about gender conversations within my generation. young men really aren't doing well, and men don't do well in our current education system. furthermore, the alt-right is drawing in men of many races. again, it doesn't surprise me that people, namely a minority of undereducated young men of all races, who hate trans-people are flocking to the Republican party.

.... I'm honestly just ranting, he's a smart guy and is starting a conversation about real trends. I might be wrong about his policy preferences, but he makes it clear in the book that he's not a policy maker. his pulse on the stats and the interviews he's conducted, and especially Trump's messaging and adept propaganda machine, targeting specific minority groups with in-touch messaging is *super* important.

it's a good start, I hope he writes more books, looking at this same topic from a few more angles. unionization, for example. or what might happen if the popular vote is enacted in the intervening years, or what might happen depending on Trump's messaging this year.