Expensive housing, anxious voters
Get married, have children, buy a house, and live comfortably on a single income. Not very long ago, that path was the reality, the norm, for the great American middle class. But America has gone backward in this regard, and struggling citizens know it all too well. Experiencing the kinds of lives enjoyed by our parents and grandparents has become impossible for most Americans, leading to widespread disenchantment and a palpable loss of patriotism and confidence in America.
Polling proves this point. Last year, a Wall Street Journal survey found that 78% of Americans do not believe their children will be better off in the future, the least optimistic finding in the history of that poll, which goes back decades. Similarly, another Wall Street Journal survey found that only 36% of Americans believe the American Dream is still achievable.
The disadvantaged non-wealthy
As bad as those poll results are, they are perhaps too optimistic, at least for the key battleground states that will decide the 2024 national election. My populist-right laborers’ advocacy group, the League of American Workers, surveys these swing states on a rotating basis. Our poll last November in battleground Arizona discovered that only 18% of likely voters there think the American Dream is still attainable.
We just returned to Arizona to poll the state again, and the new results point to the specific policy failures that create seemingly insurmountable obstacles facing hard-working citizens there. Polling firm North Star Opinion Research used an Arizona sample evenly split between Trump and Biden 2020 voters and found that 84% said that a family cannot thrive on a single income. A whopping 88% said that affordable housing is out of reach for most citizens.
In a country as politically polarized as America is presently, many political issues break down in typical 45%–45% splits. So, such nearunanimous Arizona poll results are startling. Moreover, they point to systemic problems.
To be sure, the trends that disadvantage the non-wealthy masses have worsened for decades. Globalization, mass migration, and a financially centered economy have eroded the standard of living for working-class citizens since the 1970s. But these trends have also accelerated materially under President Biden, and voters clearly blame him for their predicament, per our new polling.
On the question of income, detractors might regard even asking about single-income households as somehow anachronistic or sexist. But surveys clearly reveal that at least half of women with young children prefer to stay home — and supermajorities prefer to have at least the option to stay home.
What Americans want
But whether the stay-at-home caregiver is the mother or the father, shouldn’t the option to stay home be a laudable economic goal for our society? Clearly, working-class Americans think so, as only 29% of bluecollar Americans prefer both parents working full time, per American Compass polling.
Regarding housing affordability, the average sales price for a home in the Phoenix area just hit an all-time record high at $590,000. Even the proBiden New York Times acknowledged this harsh economic reality with a stinging article about the lack of housing affordability, noting: “Arizona is a presidential election battleground state, and a dire shortage of affordable housing there is sowing economic anxiety among voters.”
Fully 87% of pledged Biden voters in Arizona believe affordable housing is out of reach. Other historically Democratic constituencies concur, with 93% of young adults and 90% of Hispanics reporting that housing is not affordable.
Undoing decades of policy failures represents a daunting task, to be sure. But America must again become a nation of promise for working-class families. Time to get to work on restoring that kind of society.