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A top Senate Republican has warned that the same voting bloc that propelled the Republican Party to power over the past decade risks turning its back on the party during this election cycle.
For decades, white working-class voters often aligned with the Democratic Party, giving Democrats a stranglehold on Congress until the 1990s and often favoring the Democratic candidate at the top of the presidential ticket.
President Donald Trump’s entrance onto the political scene and his victory in 2016 solidified a shift that had been brewing for years, giving Republicans a solid base of working-class support. But given the state of the economy, Sen. Bernie Moreno, Republican of Ohio, one of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill, warned that the Republican Party’s stable base could be headed for the exit.
FOX NEWS POLL: SQUEEZED BY COSTS, FRUSTRATED VOTERS TURN TO DEMOCRATS
President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally at F&M Bank Arena in Clarksville, Tennessee October 10, 2026. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
“That’s the whole deal,” Moreno told Fox News Digital. “That’s the whole problem. If we don’t hold on to these working-class voters, we’re dead as a party. That’s why I say without hyperbole that if President Trump hadn’t won in 2016, the Republican Party would be dead. Because the Republican Party had abandoned working-class Americans.”
“Ironically, the Democrats abandoned American workers and there was a void that President Trump filled,” he continued. “That’s why he won.”
Trump has consistently performed very well with white, working-class voters every time he has run for office, receiving between 66% and 67% of their votes between 2016 and 2024, according to various exit polls.
Redistricting gives Republicans an edge, but affordability will decide midterm elections
Some Democrats acknowledged that after the 2024 elections, their party struggled to engage the working class. Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, circulated a memo urging Democrats to embrace economic populism after stunning losses in all areas of power in Washington.
“No one, including me, has all the answers right now, but what we do know for certain is that Democrats must reclaim our identity as the party of the working class,” Murphy wrote.
Yet Republicans face political headwinds heading into this midterm election cycle, in which affordability issues dominate headlines and voters’ concerns.
FOX NEWS POLL: MOST EVALUATE THE ECONOMY, INCLUDING HALF OF REPUBLICANS
Sen. Bernie Moreno, Republican of Ohio, warned that the Republican Party could be on the verge of losing working-class voters. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Trump and the GOP once again became the dominant party in Washington, D.C., after the 2024 election, delivering a message aimed at rectifying the economy that the president accused of being “destroyed” by former President Joe Biden.
But a Fox News poll released earlier this month found that nearly 60% of voters said their top concern was the economy. Another Fox News poll released in May found that 67% of white voters without a college degree disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy.
Republicans hit the ground running this fall touting their economic successes, including the colossal “big, beautiful bill,” and trying to instill in voters that the cost of fuel, for example, is only temporary while the war with Iran continues.
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Moreno, however, argued that working-class voters “hate” the war.
“They obviously hate gas prices because, look, they’re already in trouble. I mean, you talk to some of these American workers, they’re one vehicle engine failure away from bankruptcy, and it’s a disaster.”
“So I think what we need to do is explain, this is a very, very necessary thing that needed to happen,” he continued. “Iran has been attacking us for 47 years, and we have not eliminated it. They would have used a nuclear weapon. I don’t know if this matter is sufficiently penetrated, and this gas price situation will be very temporary.”
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