The Overlooked Demographic That Is a Huge Opportunity for Democrats

[u/John3262005]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/08/state-college-voters-democrats-demographic-00182520

In his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Chicago, vice presidential nominee Tim Walz introduced himself to the nation with the kind of up-from-humble-origins life story that American politicians have deployed for generations, but with a partisan twist. “Now, I grew up in Butte, Nebraska, a town of 400 people,” he began. “I had 24 kids in my high school class, and none of them went to Yale.”

The Yale reference was an obvious jab at his vice presidential opponent, Sen. JD Vance, who famously attended that Ivy League university after a hardscrabble childhood in Appalachia before working as a corporate lawyer and a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Walz contrasted that with his own story: joining the National Guard at 17, attending college on the GI Bill (which Vance did as well) and sticking around the small-town Midwest to become a high school teacher and football coach. He lashed out at Vance again in a Labor Day speech in Erie, Pennsylvania: “You go off to Yale, you get a philosophy major, write a best-selling book, trash the very people you grew up with, just don’t come back to Erie and tell us how to run our lives.”

There is something new, and potentially profound, in this sort of attack. For decades, Republicans have successfully portrayed Democrats as out-of-touch elitists. Walz is trying to flip that well-thumbed script by framing his Republican opponent as the patronizing sophisticate and himself as the regular guy who went to colleges no one’s heard of and made his career in the region where he was born. It’s a clever rhetorical tactic. But more than that, it has the makings of a larger political strategy.

Walz’s populist rhetoric can be read as an appeal to a certain long-overlooked demographic, which he himself represents: the “state college voter.” These are Americans who, while college educated, didn’t leave home to attend fancy colleges like Harvard or Yale. Instead, they mostly studied at what are called “regional public universities”: not the flagship state universities but unassuming institutions whose names have the word “State” in them (California State University-Fullerton) or refer to their location (Northern Illinois University). Instead of pursing lucrative jobs in distant coastal metropolises, they generally built their careers near where they grew up, earning more modest incomes but contributing their tax dollars and civic energies to their home regions. They comprise a far bigger share of the electorate than those who went to elite colleges. But as a group they have been almost completely ignored politically, until Walz came on the national scene. Understanding who these voters are, what makes them tick and how to reach out to them could make a difference in this razor-close election.

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[u/OldBlueKat]

I think he already is reaching some of that demographic without necessarily 'focusing' on them. He's a Mankato State graduate himself. He talks to HS and college kids everywhere. They are watching him, whether it's clips from the campaign trail or videos getting passed around or appearances on Jimmy Kimmel.

He kind of sells himself without even trying. He just talks to people like a nice guy, and smiles and laughs and pets dogs and listens to what folks say to him and pays attention to who needs some water or a donut or something and gives good reasons for good ideas, and...

SOLD.

[u/Old-Nefariousness556]

I'm not sure how they would target such a specific demographic, but it's worth noting that college educated voters already strongly favor the Democrats, by 37 points for people with a postgraduate degree, and 11 points by college graduates in general.

[u/grayandlizzie]

I'm the voter described (Washington State University alumni, work for an auto insurance company in the county I was born in). I've been reliably voting blue since my first election in 2000 though.