Those who have been following the conversation around the "realignment" on the right won't find a ton to catch them off guard in this work by Ruffini, a well-respected D.C. pollster. But his breakdown of precent-level data, and the rumbles it shows of a Republican party that is less college-educated, less white, less religious, less "conservative" [at least according to the conventional standards of 1980s/1990s-era Republican thinking], and more popular provides evidence that the much-discussed transformation of the GOP shows signs of bearing fruit on the ground. Ruffini is right to underscore the class divide - predominantly between four-year-plus college graduates and those without a BA - as becoming the most important fault line for politics and culture today. (He also accurately points out that a popular pro-working class GOP will not simply adopt Bernie Sanders' economic agenda - not because donors will stand in the way, but because working-class voters don't want big government even as they want government to watch out for them.) The book's thesis - like so much political punditry about the "realignment - may only be fully tested after Trump leaves the scene. But as combination mea culpa and tea leaf reading exercise, it provides some gristle for political junkies to gnaw on.

I’ve been noticing something in the last 3 election cycles that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. There was the “the two parties are basically the same” rhetoric of 2012 and early 2016, and the “we’ve never been more polarized” nonsense of 2020, but underlying all of that is this sense that what we see in the media and what we see amongst normal people is vastly different.

I’ve experienced this myself recently. I’ve never felt more like a political outsider, despite working in campaigns for 10 years. My ideologies and beliefs haven’t changed, but the parties and their ideologies have changed vastly, pulling the rug out from under me - and I’m assuming thousands of other Americans. Whereas I used to be a solid moderate democrat, possibly even a little to the left, I now occupy this wide chasm between what the two parties claim to stand for.

Ruffini posits that there are a lot of people like me, and he suggests that the lions share are those without college degrees. We’ve known that the education gap was the single greatest determinant in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, and what is shocking to a lot of people who’ve focused so much on identity politics is that minority groups actually shifted towards Trump in the 2020 cycle.

Ruffini makes the case that this is because of messaging around politics (especially the oppressor/oppressed mindset) and a significant values shift since the 1990s. Whereas when I was working in politics in 2008, getting more people to vote meant greater democratic gains, now the average non-voter is likely to vote Republican if offered the chance.

While I’m not totally convinced on some of his arguments, I greatly appreciated the survey data and the major trend lines he saw forming what he calls the “multiracial populist coalition.” He believes it will recreate the GOP, but I’m hoping a viable third party will finally appear to bring both fringes back to center.

This book carefully (and I do mean carefully) documents the shift among working-class Americans of all races from the Democrats to the GOP. Because of the author's thoroughness, most general readers will be overwhelmed and bored by the countless numbers and percentages. Still, for an avid political junky, "Party of the People" is a must-read. The other serious problem with this book, other than the endless statistics, is Mr. Ruffini's ideas regarding his recommended shifts in Republican public policy positions that are, in my opinion, far off base. If the existing policy prescriptions are attracting non-college voters in droves, why does the author recommend changes?