DeSantis' blue collar problem: He rails against elites, but they're his biggest supporters

As he campaigns for president, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis touts himself as a “blue collar kid” and rails against elites.

Blue collar GOP voters aren’t responding, though.

Instead, it’s the elites that DeSantis often denigrates who are most supportive of his campaign.

Polling indicates that DeSantis’ support is highest among Republican voters who are wealthier and better educated.

Some polls even show DeSantis running ahead of former President Donald Trump among college-educated voters.

Yet Trump dominates among voters who lack a four-year college degree, and that overwhelming advantage with working class Republicans has him well ahead of DeSantis in early primary polling.

DeSantis’ blue collar problem is persistent in recent polls, and it represents a mortal threat to his campaign.

Thanks to Trump, working class voters have become increasingly important to the GOP coalition, and they remain loyal to the former president.

Failure to dislodge a sizeable portion of these voters from Trump could doom DeSantis’ campaign, something he seems to recognize. References to his blue collar roots are an integral part of his stump speech.

DeSantis graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School, but now derides those institutions as liberal enclaves and he's leaning into his humble upbringing as the son of a nurse and television ratings box installer.

“I was a blue collar kid growing up,” DeSantis told a crowd in North Carolina earlier this month. “My parents were working class, they worked hard. They told me you’re not entitled to anything, you gotta work.”

Unlike Trump, DeSantis does not come from wealth and has working class roots that trace back to the industrial Midwest.

Yet Trump’s combative personality and emphasis on issues that resonate with the working class has endeared him to many blue-collar voters, according to pollsters and GOP leaders.

DeSantis has tried a similar approach, portraying himself as a fighter who won’t back down. His culture war battles also could be key to winning over this demographic, some believe.

Some analysts, though, wonder if there are aspects of DeSantis’ personality and pitch that leave working class voters cold, such as a tendency to get in the weeds on the latest conservative policy trends and questions about whether he connects with people.

“He has to figure out visually and also policy-wise how he can identify with the problems of regular people in the language of regular people and he hasn’t done that yet,” said David Paleologos, Director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.

Blue collar blues

A CNN survey released last month highlights DeSantis' struggles with blue collar voters.

The survey found that DeSantis actually leads Trump among registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who have a college degree, with 33% supporting the governor while 29% back Trump, although that's within the 9.2 percentage point margin of error.

But 55% of voters without a college degree back Trump in the CNN poll, which was conducted by SSRS, and he is beating DeSantis by 32 percentage points with this group.

A recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll also found that Trump and DeSantis essentially are tied among Republican primary voters with a four-year degree, but among voters without a four-year degree Trump leads DeSantis by 41 percentage points.

Multiple surveys show that the most educated GOP voters – those who have postgraduate degrees – are the most likely to back DeSantis, while he struggles to attract voters who are the least educated, those who only have a high school diploma or less.

An Emerson College survey from June 19-20 found just eight percent of Republican primary voters who have a high school diploma or less back DeSantis, while Trump is winning 73% of these voters.

A Yahoo! News poll conducted last month also captures the education divide in DeSantis' support, with him winning 17% of registered Republicans and GOP-leaning independents with a high school diploma or less, 21% with "some college" education and 32% with a bachelor's degree or higher.

Some of these surveys have relatively small sample sizes of GOP voters, and the margin of error when dividing them into even smaller groups based on education levels can be high. The trends, however, are consistent across recent polls and show that DeSantis faces a big challenge in trying to win working class GOP voters away from Trump.

Thanks in part to his overwhelming support among GOP voters without a college degree, Trump leads DeSantis by 38 percentage points in the Emerson poll, by 25 points in the USA TODAY/Suffolk survey, by 21 points in the CNN poll and by 24% in the Yahoo News survey.

Working class GOP voters “connected with Trump and they’re still locked in with him,” said Emerson College Polling director Spencer Kimball.

“Where you start to see DeSantis making up ground is with college educated,” Kimball added. “And the post grads is where he’s strongest. The problem is they make up a small percentage” of voters.

Trump famously helped realign the political landscape by moving more working class voters toward the GOP. Breaking his grip on these voters may be difficult.

“If you’re DeSantis you have to figure out a way,” Paleologos said. “And maybe this whole anti-woke thing is a possibility, in terms of trying to get his foot in the door with the non-college educated Republican primary crowd.”

Many Republicans are attracted to Trump's broadsides against political correctness, and DeSantis’ anti-woke agenda taps into that. He stridently opposes diversity initiatives and using pronouns that conform with a person’s gender identity.

Yet DeSantis’ approach to these issues can seem wonky at times, raising questions of whether he’s resonating with average voters.

Acronym Olympics

While DeSantis likes to say that he rejects the “pronoun Olympics,” his approach to battling woke can sometimes resemble the acronym Olympics.

Without always explaining what they mean, DeSantis routinely throws out terms such as ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) , DEI (Diversity, equity and inclusion) and CRT (critical race theory).

These terms are regularly used by conservative influencers on television and online, but it’s not clear how much they mean to the average GOP voter.

DeSantis can seem more focused on intellectual arguments than emotional ones, while Trump's appeal often has been described as more gut level.

“It would explain why he’s doing better with more educated voters who are probably more familiar with the inside baseball of diversity equity and inclusion, CRT, they’re going to be more familiar with that and you see that in the numbers,” Kimball said of DeSantis.

A recent article in Washington Monthly speculated about DeSantis being a “wine track” politician, someone who appeals to higher educated voters with intellectual arguments but struggles to attract the beer-drinking crowd.

The article notes that DeSantis kicked off his presidential campaign with a livestream event on Twitter “alongside two figures who may prove representative of the Republican wine track: Elon Musk and fellow tech industry titan/social media commentator David Sacks.”

DeSantis’ launch event drew a favorable response from some conservative intellectuals, with one writing that “DeSantis is more esoteric than Trump,” the article notes.

Lee County GOP Chair Michael Thompson said Republican voters care about anti-woke arguments in the broadest sense, but “if you want to get in the weeds of that absolutely not.”

“They care about jobs” and affordability concerns, he added.

DeSantis often talks about economic issues, but they are much less central to his political identity than his anti-woke agenda. He has been aggressive in promoting vocational education while playing down the importance of a college degree, even as his Ivy League resume helped boost his political career.

The governor also frequently reminds voters that he comes from a working class background. Asked during a New Hampshire radio interview last week about the difference between him and Trump, DeSantis answered: "Look, I'm a blue-collar kids, worked minimum wage jobs to get through school."

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DeSantis campaign spokesman Bryan Griffin also emphasized the governor's "blue collar roots" in a statement and said the candidate "understands the challenges facing working families who are struggling to get by."

"Ron DeSantis received historic support from working class voters in 2022 because he fought for their jobs when the biomedical establishment wanted to shut down Florida's economy, and he will fight boldly against the elites of DC while in the White House," Griffin said.

Sarasota resident Bob Long ran a boat manufacturing company for many years. He believes Trump’s strength with the blue-collar demographic comes down to one thing: “toughness.”

“In my mind that’s the biggest thing … his toughness appeals to a lot of people,” Long, who has a bachelor's degree in engineering and a master's in business administration, said of Trump. “DeSantis seems like a much nicer guy, which appeals to me.”

Long has been involved in GOP politics for decades. While he has plenty of praise for DeSantis, he’s still undecided in the race.

“I’m watching it all very carefully,” he said.

Trump’s stranglehold

Even if DeSantis refines his pitch to working class voters, it’s not clear anything can shake Trump’s stranglehold on this group.

The CNN poll found 72% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents without a college degree view Trump favorably, compared with 52% of those with a college degree.

DeSantis is doing best among a segment of voters who are more likely to view Trump unfavorably and may see Florida's governor as the most viable option among a GOP primary field that also includes figures such as former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott.

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“My sense is that it’s partly an anti-Trump vote and the reason we know that from the data is because Nikki Haley and Tim Scott also do fairly well among those people who are college grads or better educated,” Paleologos said. “That informs us there’s fertile ground to be explored for a non-Trump primary candidate."

DeSantis is struggling to consolidate these college-educated GOP voters seeking an alternative to Trump, but as the race evolves he may be able to grow his share of these voters simply by being the strongest non-Trump candidate.

He can’t count on anti-Trump sentiment to win over working class voters, though. Instead, he needs to present a more compelling vision, and so far that’s not happening.

Thompson said blue collar voters are “are the ones that suffer the most” in a political and economic system that often favors elites. They want somebody who embodies their anger at the system.

“Those people that have that type of frustration level are on Trump,” he said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Polls: DeSantis struggles with working class voters as Trump dominates