From Bluegrass and Blue Collar to Red Hats and Red States: How Trump Sealed the GOP’s Grip on Kentucky and the Working Class

The 2024 election has been widely hailed as one of, if not the most, impressive turnouts for the Republican party in recent memory. Among the most apparent factors that contributed to the GOP’s overwhelming victory were (1) The Republican party’s political messaging selling like hot cakes to male voters (even across racial lines) (2) The Democractic party’s inability to decide on a candidate (or a message,) and (3) An overall seismic shift in cultural values and those values’ alignment with either of the two major parties. However, when you dig deeper than New York Times headlines or Associated Press statistics, there’s a more complex story to be told concerning the overall “Trump Effect” on Republican politics and national politics at large. Namely, how did Trump, a New York Billionaire, convince working-class people, more specifically working-class whites, that he was on their team?

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tax-bill-affect-blue-collar-workers-2017-12

To be clear, I’m no expert in politics. Hell, I’m no expert in working a blue collar job either. But, I did grow up in a household where I only got to buy a hand-me-down Xbox 360 from my neighbor because my dad made a decent living working out of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall. And hey, I also studied Political Science as an undergrad at the most prestigious, ultra-competitive, and world-renowned University of Kentucky. And, I’m a white guy! So maybe I am the foremost authority on why working class whites decided that Mr. Frozen Steaks and branded hotels was the answer to all our problems. Either way, it’s rare that someone like me even opens a Substack account, and even rarer that they write an essay on something like this, so maybe I can give some decent perspective.

So let me get back to what I was saying now that I’ve validated my credentials. How is it that Donald Trump won the hearts of so many working class white folk? Moreover, how did that contribute to the other three factors I mentioned up top? Well, I’ll start with the place I know best, the only state that matters, Kentucky. As recently as 2020, the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s voter registration was dominated by the Democratic Party. In that year, there were 1,667,174 registered Democrats, compared to 1,577,561 registered Republicans. That’s 89,613 more dirtbag Democrats than Republicans. Mind you, that was five years ago in a state best known for ultra-processed fried chicken and old money horse racing, not a common recipe for a Democratic stronghold. In 2022, the GOP emerged victorious in the registration race, taking the lead with 1,612,060 registered Republicans and 1,609,569 Democrats. That’s a 2,491 person lead, which is a margin that is likely only going to continue growing with the new age of American politics. So what happened? How in the world did Democrats even have a majority in 2020? Is Louisville that big? Has hell froze over? No. To understand what I’m getting at and why any of this matters, it’s important to go back a bit further on these numbers for more context.

As is relatively common knowledge, the Democratic party historically was the party of slavery, the party of segregation, and I guess the party of evil back in the day. Of course, there was a pretty sizable realignment later on, and arguably since then. Political parties in the states are as wishy-washy as they are stubborn. Some paradox, huh? As legendary Democrat Woodrow Wilson put it, “Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.” You can imagine that the white people in southern states who were staunchly anti-integration (and likely anti-union) loved this. Thus was the case. Democrats held the south like you hold your cousin’s 2 month old baby after you promised cousin Emma you wouldn’t drop her. This lasted a long time, up until 2022 in the Commonwealth of Kentucky in fact. And yes, Kentucky is a southern state (sorry Kenton, Campbell, and Boone County.)

Democrats dominated Kentucky politics for many decades. Look no further than our current Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s father, Steve Beshear. Kentucky Nepotism at its finest. Steve Beshear was elected in 2007, one of three gubernatorial elections in that year, the only one won by a Democrat, replacing Kentucky’s Republican Governor from 2003-2007, Ernie Fletcher. All three were in southern states; Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The latter two electing Republicans. Steve served his four year term and was reelected in in 2011, when all three of these states again had elections with the same party-aligned results. This time though, West Virginia also had an election that bore a newly elected Democratic governor to replace the old Democratic governor. All that’s to say, the Commonwealth has had an addiction to the democratic party for sometime, kind of like her addiction to coal, basketball, and opioids. But, let’s not get sidetracked.

So how did that change? How did Republicans steal the Bourbon capital of the world? Is it because they’re alcoholics? Probably not. It has more to do with promises. All the time, working class and low-income households in the Commonwealth are promised things by both parties. Promises of jobs, promises of healthcare, promises of better schools, cleaner drinking water, more respect for the working man, less government red tape, lower taxes, more taxes (but only on the rich), you name it. And every time, it’s some guy in a vest with a lapel pin and a crisp haircut saying the same thing that the last guy said. If you squint hard enough, they all sort of start to blur into one human-sized campaign flyer.

So yeah, Trump sold steaks and hotels and gold-plated toilets. But what he really sold was a story. A story that said: they don’t care about you, but I do. And in a country full of people who’ve spent years feeling left behind, that was the best-selling story in town.

To really grasp how that story took root, let’s zoom back in on Kentucky — and then out across the South. Because what happened here didn’t come out of nowhere. Kentucky’s flip wasn’t a one-election fluke; it was the final leg of a long, winding political migration, one paved with broken promises and cultural drift.

Start with this: in 1996, Bill Clinton — yes, saxophone-playing, centrist Bill — won Kentucky with over 45% of the vote. Flash forward to 2020, and Trump crushed Biden here by more than 25 percentage points. That’s not just a swing. That’s a whole damn demolition. And it wasn’t just about Trump. Kentucky voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 by 22 points. McCain before that. The groundwork was already being laid by a Democratic Party that, over time, became more closely aligned with urban progressivism and elite liberalism, and less with the economic populism that used to appeal to rural and working-class voters.

And that trend wasn’t unique to Kentucky. In 1992, Democrats won five of the eleven states of the old Confederacy. By 2024? Just Virginia. And even that one’s hanging on by a Northern Virginia-thread. The South didn’t become Republican overnight. It became Republican because over the years, Democrats slowly stopped speaking to the values (and vibes) of culturally conservative working-class folks, particularly whites.

And no, this isn’t just a story about race, although that’s part of it. This is about class. About identity. About what kind of work matters in America, and what kind of life gets celebrated. When Democratic messaging started to orbit college-educated urban voters and Wall Street-adjacent technocrats, working-class whites (and, more recently, nonwhite working-class men too) looked around and asked, “Where the hell do we fit in?” Trump didn’t create that void. He just saw it, sprinted toward it, and filled it with a bullhorn and a red hat. Here’s a fun stat: according to Pew Research, Trump actually gained ground with every major racial group in 2020 except white men (because he already maxed them out back in 2016). And in 2024, the GOP doubled down on that trend. In Florida, Texas, even parts of Nevada, Latino men broke Republican in droves. Why? Because the same story that worked on Kentucky coal workers worked on warehouse workers in Miami and oil hands in West Texas. The story that said, You build stuff, you work hard, you don’t get respect, and they think you’re the problem. And let’s be real, "they" is a flexible term. It can mean liberals, it can mean the media, it can mean government, it can mean your HR department.

That resentment? It's bipartisan. But only one party spoke to it plainly. And again, the kicker is that Trump didn’t invent this frustration. Democrats have been bleeding working-class white voters for decades. But they used to lose them slowly — the way an old car leaks oil. Trump came in and crashed it into a telephone pole. And it’s not just federal politics. In 2010, Kentucky’s State House was controlled by Democrats. Now? The GOP has a supermajority. The state legislature isn't just red, it's tomato soup. Trump didn’t flip Kentucky. Kentucky was already flipping, and Trump was the cherry on top of the red velvet cake.

So when people act like Trump’s success with these voters is some kind of inexplicable cult phenomenon, they’re missing the bigger picture. He didn’t hypnotize the working class. He told them what they already believed: that they were getting screwed, that no one in power was listening, and that he was the only one who could say it out loud without flinching. Now, whether that was true (or whether it’s even working) is another question. But by the time Trump came around, the dam had already cracked. He just blew it wide open.

So where does that leave the Democrats? Honestly, at a crossroads. The path back to relevance in states like Kentucky, and with voters who used to form the backbone of the party, isn’t through more think pieces on equity or carefully curated messaging from coastal consultants. It’s through a candidate who sounds like they’ve actually been to a union hall. Someone who can walk into a VFW bar on a Friday night and not immediately get booed. Someone who’s not afraid to say the word “working-class” without turning it into an academic category. In other words, a moderate-to-left populist who doesn’t just talk about fighting for the little guy, but actually looks and sounds like they’ve been in the trenches. Think Sherrod Brown in steel-toed boots. Or even a Fetterman-type in Carhartt, but without making it feel like cosplay. Or maybe, just maybe, a Kentucky boy like Andy Beshear (albeit he’d probably need a bit more edge) could do the trick for the Democrats. The Democratic Party doesn’t need to become Republican-lite. But if they want to win back the South, and the thousands of disenfranchised voters who feel like politics left them behind, they’re going to have to meet people where they are. Not where Twitter says they should be. Until then, the GOP owns the story. And in politics, as in life, the one who tells the best story usually wins.