Politics & Polls #5: Courting the Working Class

Jul 28 2016
By Julian Zelizer & Sam Wang (Produced by Sarah M. Binder)
Source Woodrow Wilson School

Within the grand speeches at this week’s Democratic National Convention lies a central message — Clinton and the Democrats, not Trump, can better serve struggling working and middle-class voters who have felt excluded from both parties. When both candidates return full-throttle to the campaign trail, they’ll be competing for these voters in key states such as Pennsylvania.

How has the Democratic Party’s relationship with these voters evolved in the past? What messages should the candidates deliver to sway them, and in what ways? Professors Julian Zelizer and Sam Wang debate this issue and more in episode five of Politics & Polls.



Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 
Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has been one of the pioneers in the revival of American political history. He is the author of several books including, most recently, "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society." Zelizer is a frequent commentator in the international and national media on political history and contemporary politics. He has published over six hundred op-eds, including his weekly column on CNN.com

Wang is professor of neuroscience and molecular biology at Princeton University. He is known for his books "Welcome to Your Brain" and "Welcome to Your Child's Brain" and for his founding role at the Princeton Election Consortium, a blog providing U.S. election analyses. In 2004, Wang was one of the first to aggregate U.S. presidential polls using probabilistic methods. In 2012, his statistical analysis correctly predicted the presidential vote outcome in 49 of 50 states. He has also developed new statistical standards for partisan gerrymandering. A neuroscientist, Wang's academic research focuses on the neuroscience of learning, the cerebellum, and autism.