Ron DeSantis and the ‘Scaffle’ Vote

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If Ronald Reagan were to live again, he would likely be confused by the leftist tone he sometimes took in the 2024 Republican presidential campaign.

After Ron DeSantis announced he was holding a fundraiser last night at the Four Seasons hotel, an official close to Donald Trump derided the event as “uber elite” and “out of touch.” Trump also criticized DeSantis for supporting past Republican bills in Congress to shrink the government by cutting Medicare and Social Security.

DeSantis, for his part, has favored government action to lower health care prices. He criticized the Biden administration for blocking cheaper prescription drugs from Canada — a country that has long been a symbol of big government inefficiency among Republicans. This month, DeSantis, Florida’s governor, signed a bill that tries to lower drug costs there by cracking down on companies known as pharmaceutical benefit managers.

What’s up?

Trump’s trouncing of the Republican establishment in 2016, and his continued popularity among the party’s voters, has exposed the weakness of the laissez-faire economic approach known as Reaganism. That is, it is very unpopular with most voters, including many Republicans.

With DeSantis announcing his candidacy last night, I’d like to use today’s newsletter to highlight the most important fact of US politics: Americans tend to be more progressive on economic issues than social issues. If you can remember, you will have a better understanding of the 2024 campaign.

It explains why DeSantis and Trump are competing with each other to sound populist, even if it means favoring government regulations and benefits. This explains why Trump’s criticism of free trade struck a chord with voters — and why President Biden has promoted his own “buy American” economic policy, offending centrist Democrats. It also explains why the current Republican campaign is about social issues like immigration, crime, gender and religion; most Americans are more conservative on these subjects than the Democratic Party.

There is indeed a subset of voters, many of them affluent, who like to describe themselves as “social liberals and fiscal conservatives.” If you read this newsletter, you probably know some people in that category. But it happens to be the most common combination in American politics. Typical swing voters instead of “social conservatives and fiscal liberals.”

The 2024 presidential election is likely to be, at least in part, a battle for those voters.

This chart – originally created by political scientist Lee Drutman, using a large poll taken after the 2016 election – remains the best visualization of the situation:

It presents the respondents, each of whom is represented by a point, on two scales. One scale is based on economic issues like trade, taxes and safety-net programs, while the other is based on social issues like abortion, immigration, race and pride in the United States. Economic progressives appear on the left side of the graph, and economic conservatives on the right. Social conservatives appear at the top, and social progressives at the bottom. The dots are colored based on the 2016 vote, be it for Trump, Hillary Clinton or a third party candidate.

Not surprisingly, those who are liberal on both types of issues (lower left quadrant) overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, and consistent conservatives (upper right quadrant) are solid Trump voters. The social liberal and fiscal conservative quadrants are mostly empty. And the opposite quadrant is the American political battleground.

These socially conservative and fiscally liberal voters — you could call them Scaffles, for an acronym — have voted for progressive economic policies when they appear as ballot initiatives, even in red states. Arkansas, Florida, Missouri and Nebraska, for example, have passed minimum wage increases. Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Utah have expanded Medicaid through Obamacare. Republicans who don’t have college degrees are often the party’s biggest offenders in these ballot initiatives.

At the same time, Scaffles is the reason that a Times poll last year showed that most voters, including many Latinos, preferred the Republican Party’s stance on illegal immigration to the Democratic Party. Or consider a recent KFF/Washington Post poll on transgender issues, in which most Americans oppose puberty-blocking treatments for children.

Yes, public opinion has nuances. Most Americans also support laws that ban discrimination against trans people, the KFF poll shows. Sometimes, parties may overreach. When Democrats talk positively about socialism, they alienate swing voters. In abortion, the Republicans have gone far right – passing almost a total ban, which issue has become a drag in the party.

But don’t confuse nuances and exceptions with the big picture. DeSantis and Trump know that the old Republican approach to economic policy is a vulnerability, so they often sound like populists. And while they emphasize cultural conservatism, they are not only catering to their base. They also often attract voters.

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