Kaiser Family Foundation/CNN Working-Class Whites Poll

The latest Kaiser Family Foundation/CNN partnership poll explores the views and experiences of white Americans without college degrees (a group defined in this survey as “working-class whites”¹), including how they feel about their own lives and the direction of the country, their attitudes towards government, their economic priorities, feelings about immigration and increasing racial and ethnic diversity, and personal experiences with employment and finances. It also compares this group’s attitudes and experiences with those of whites with college degrees, as well as those of blacks and Hispanics without college degrees (working-class blacks and Hispanics). Finally, the survey explores the views of different subgroups within the white working class, including variations by partisanship, age, income, region of the country, and religious identification.

This report summarizes key findings from the survey, organized into four themes:

1. Conventional wisdom: Ways the poll findings confirm conventional wisdom about the white working class and areas where the results contradict the common narrative about this group;
2. Race versus class: Areas where whites without college degrees differ from and are similar to their working-class black and Hispanic counterparts;
3. Not a monolith: the most interesting subgroup differences in attitudes within the white working class; and
4. Politics and partisanship: Key findings related to the political alignments of the white working class and how they differ from white Americans with college degrees.