If Donald Trump cannot convincingly deliver white working-class voters to the polls in 2020, the election will be over before it starts. As has been widely reported, college-educated whites largely abandoned Republicans in November, leaving the vast majority of congressional suburban districts in Democratic hands. But if Trump's support among less-educated white voters collapses in any way, the foundation of his coalition will crumble.
New analysis of the midterm elections shows Democrats did indeed cut into some of that coalition, reducing the GOP's dominance among the demographic in 2016. CNN's Ronald Brownstein writes:
Democrats, the analysis found, ran particularly well this year among white working-class women who are not evangelicals, a group that also displayed substantial disenchantment in the exit poll with Trump's performance. Those women could be a key constituency for Democrats in 2020 in pivotal Rust Belt states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where relatively fewer blue-collar whites are also evangelical Christians.
In fact, nearly 60 percent of non-college white women who aren't evangelical cast a ballot for Democrats in November. And while more than one-half of white working-class men who aren't evangelical voted for Republicans, Democrats still did twice as well among that demographic than they did with working-class evangelical men. (Actually, there was almost no difference whatsoever between college-educated and non-college evangelicals: Republicans won evangelical men in both categories by 78 percent and won evangelical women in both categories by low-to-mid 70s.)
In other words, Trump's iron-clad coalition isn't quite so iron-clad. That means Democrats do have the potential to make further gains among non-evangelical working-class voters in 2020, which would be absolutely deadly for Trump since he's so reliant on the white working-class demographic.
The trick for Democrats will be welcoming GOP defectors and Democratic newcomers while also energizing the liberal base. That's certainly possible, but it will take some skill and diligence.