After Trump was re-elected the liberal media was hysterical about a supposed “shift to the right” in the US population. The swing towards Trump among Black, Latino, women, youth, and low-income voters led them to draw sweeping conclusions about rising support for “authoritarianism.”

But as we’ve seen from events like the election of Zohran Mamdani and the mass anti-ICE movement in Minnesota earlier this year, the liberals were entirely wrong. A recent article in the reformist magazine Jacobin titled “Workers Are Leaving the Trump Coalition” provides additional data proving this point.

The authors of the article conducted a survey in March 2026 to take stock of the attitudes of 2024 Trump voters. It found that more than one in five Trump voters are not planning to vote Republican in 2028. The researchers labeled these voters as “waverers,” and noted that they are disproportionately poor and non-white.

“These are the very groups whose support was supposed to signal that Republicans had successfully consolidated a working-class majority,” they write. Their survey gives a picture of the breakdown of the Trump 2024 coalition:

• 57% of respondents who voted for Biden in 2020 and for Trump 2024 “do not plan to vote for the Republican presidential nominee in 2028.”
• 70% of Biden-to-Trump “switchers” do not identify as Republicans
• 31% of Trump voters earning less than $15,000 a year are “wavering,” compared to just 13% of those earning over $200,000.

The authors summarize: “The ‘working-class realignment’ [towards the Republican Party] starts to look less like a durable shift and more like a fleeting transaction—one that delivered little in return.”

Their survey also finds that 50% of Black Trump voters and 45% of Latino Trump voters earning under $50,000 a year say they do not plan to vote Republican in 2028. Again the authors summarize: “Working-class voters across racial lines who gave Trump a chance and are finding his presidency has not delivered for them … the very people whose shift toward Trump was most celebrated by Republicans are the most likely to leave.”

Reformists propping up the Democratic Party

After providing some useful empirical data, the authors proceed to draw political conclusions. This is where their liberal-reformist blinders really become apparent.

“Democrats should resist the temptation to read this data as good news,” the authors warn. In liberal-think-tank-speak, they explain that this breakaway from the GOP is leading to “disengagement” rather than “conversion.” As they say:

Most wavering Trump voters are not becoming Democrats—they are disengaging from politics entirely. Of the 20% who are wavering, only 3% plan to vote Democrat. The remaining 17% say they will vote for neither party or are unsure.

This is the pattern that should alarm anyone who assumes that defection from Trump automatically signals support for Democrats: a large bloc of young, low-income, non-white working-class voters who tried the political system, found it wanting on both sides, and are now preparing to check out. These are not people moving left. They are people losing faith that politics can deliver for them at all.

Following the lead of the bourgeois media, the authors assume that politics doesn’t exist outside the bounds of the two capitalist parties. But the Democrats are not a left party, and there are plenty of people with political opinions who support neither the Democrats nor the Republicans.

Millions of disappointed Trump voters are rightly disgusted by the Democratic Party but open to a program fighting for high-quality jobs, housing, healthcare, and education. There’s just not currently any mass party for them to turn towards.

Instead of explaining that the issue is the Democratic Party and the capitalist system it upholds and defends, and that a new workers’ party is needed, the Jacobin authors argue that the problem is the so-called “standard Democratic playbook.” They hope that by adopting a left populist program of sorts, the Democratic Party could win these voters back.

Genuine socialists, on the other hand, regard it as a positive thing that huge layers of workers have broken with both bourgeois parties. It is a step in the direction of attaining class consciousness. We can only welcome this, though unless and until a mass lead is given to start organizing a new party, it will not translate into a clear left alternative to the Democrats.

Tens of millions want a mass workers’ party

One of the coauthors, Jared Abbott, was once a member of the DSA National Political Committee, and is now the director of the “Center for Working-Class Politics.” As we’ve seen, the Jacobin article he co-wrote with liberal law professor Joan C. Williams advised the Democratic Party to shore up its support by tacking left. But another article co-authored by Abbott and Les Leopold, nine months earlier, drew a more astute conclusion.

They designed a YouGov survey in effect gauging support for independent working-class politics. It asked 3,000 adult residents in the rust-belt states Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin “Would you support a new organization, the Independent Workers Political Association, that would support working-class issues independent of both the Democratic and Republican parties?” It clarified that such an organization would run independent political candidates committed to a platform that included policies such as legal restrictions on corporate layoffs, a federal jobs guarantee, raising the minimum wage, and price controls on food and pharmaceuticals.

Abbott and Leopold summarize the result: “We find strong overall support for the program in these pivotal working-class-heavy states. A substantial majority of respondents (57%) in the Rust Belt said they would support or strongly support a new workers political association, while just 19% expressed opposition.” The idea of an “independent workers’ political association” also had support from the following groups:

• 60% of respondents making $30k to $59k per year
• 66% who make less than $30k per year
• 68% of renters
• 66% who say they are “much worse off” than their parents
• 74% who say they are “very insecure” in their jobs
• 67% of Black respondents
• 68% of Hispanic respondents
• 62% who did not vote in 2024
• 71% under the age of thirty

These findings are remarkable. Polls about a “third party” are common enough, but the question of whether people would support a workers’ party is rarely asked. Evidently, on the rare occasion that workers can actually register their desire for a workers’ party, the result is clear: overwhelming support.

This is the real “silent majority”—the millions of people who want an independent workers party. And we have no reason to doubt that the same mood exists across the country. When the RCA points out the need for a mass workers’ party, we’re not advocating a niche opinion. Rather, we’re articulating the majority political opinion in this country, which the Democrats and Republicans constantly aim to conceal.

If Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, and AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler held a press conference to announce the launch of a campaign for such a party—even if just to start laying the groundwork—it would spark tremendous enthusiasm from coast to coast. Hundreds of thousands, or millions, would support the effort. It would split working-class voters away from both the Democrats and Republicans and upend US politics entirely.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely, as all three are all firmly wedded to the Democratic Party. Their efforts to prop up the Democrats are the only reason that working-class discontent with Trump’s policies is not yet translating into a self-evident mass shift to the left. But while the reformists and the labor bureaucrats will hold the working class back for as long as they can, eventually the working class will find a way to build its own mass party.