That's ok. The Republican Party is changing, too.

America’s political realignment is not simply a story of Democrats abandoning the working class or Republicans abandoning the affluent. Both parties are assembling new coalitions for a new age.

In 1996, Republicans represented 20 of the country’s 30 most affluent congressional districts. Today, the opposite is true: Democrats represent 23 of the 30 wealthiest districts, according to a recent analysis based on Census income data.

This does not quite mean that Democrats have become “the party of the rich.” Congressional districts are places, not people. A prosperous metropolitan district may contain technology executives, government contractors and highly paid lawyers, but also immigrants, renters and service workers. Donald Trump’s support is hardly confined to the poor: Republicans remain strong among business owners, affluent voters without college degrees and prosperous communities in Texas and Florida.

Nevertheless, something profound has happened.

Thirty years ago, Republicans were the natural home of corporate managers, suburban professionals and college-educated voters. Democrats depended heavily on organized labor, industrial cities and working-class voters. Today, education is a better predictor of partisanship than income alone. Democrats have a 13-point advantage among voters with at least a bachelor’s degree, while Republicans lead by six points among those without one. Nearly half of Kamala Harris’s 2024 voters held college degrees; two-thirds of Trump’s voters did not. Pew Research Center

Geography followed education. The Democratic coalition now dominates central cities, university towns, wealthy inner suburbs and the knowledge-economy corridors surrounding Washington, Boston, New York, Seattle and Silicon Valley. Republicans have consolidated rural America, small towns, exurbs and much of the old industrial heartland. In 2000, the GOP held only a six-point advantage among rural voters. By 2023, it had grown to 25 points. Urban voters favored Democrats by a similarly overwhelming margin.

Race complicates the picture further. Democrats remain far more diverse: Black voters are still overwhelmingly Democratic, while Hispanic and Asian voters continue to lean left. Yet Republicans are becoming less white. White voters constituted 93 percent of the Republican coalition in 1996 and 79 percent by 2023. The Hispanic share tripled from 3 percent to 9 percent — and Trump subsequently made additional gains among Hispanic voters in 2024. Democrats cannot safely assume that demographic change automatically produces permanent Democratic majorities.

The parties’ cultural identities have changed alongside their electorates. Democrats increasingly speak the language of educated institutions: expertise, inclusion, climate policy and complex administrative solutions. Republicans increasingly emphasize borders, public order, religious liberty, manufacturing and resistance to cultural direction from above. Neither agenda is fraudulent. Both reflect the voters now sitting at each party’s table.

Each coalition also contains a contradiction. Democrats advocate economic redistribution while representing most of America’s richest districts and many of its most credentialed citizens. Republicans champion tax reduction and deregulation while depending increasingly upon communities damaged by deindustrialization, addiction and economic decline. Democratic voters often trust institutions that have served them well. Republican voters increasingly distrust institutions they believe have ignored or condescended to them.

Change is not betrayal. Franklin Roosevelt’s Democrats were not Bill Clinton’s Democrats, and Ronald Reagan’s Republicans were not Donald Trump’s Republicans. Parties are not churches with immutable creeds. They are coalitions competing to represent a changing country.

The Democratic Party has changed. So has the Republican Party. The useful question is not which party has remained ideologically pure. Neither has. It is whether their leaders understand the people who have joined them — and the people quietly walking out the door.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)