These Democrats won over working-class voters. Here’s their advice for candidates.

Voting booths at a polling location. | CJ Gunther/Getty Images Throughout the Trump era, Democrats have wrung their hands about how they can win over working-class voters .

Why not ask the Democrats who’ve actually done it? That’s what Robin Johnson — a political consultant based in rural Illinois, and a part-time political science professor at Monmouth College — set out to do after Donald Trump first won the presidency, asking Democratic state legislators who won tough districts how they pulled it off.

But after Trump’s shocking second win in 2024 revived concern about Democrats’ working-class woes, the time seemed ripe to ask legislators about how they’ve managed to cope with the challenges of a new decade.

So, working with the center-left Progressive Policy Institute and co-authors Stuart Malec and Jolie Libert, Johnson interviewed 28 state legislators who won in heavily working-class areas in the seven main presidential battleground states.

They include Nevada state Assemblymember Max Carter, a retired union electrician; Michigan state Rep.

Tullio Liberati, a construction small business owner; Arizona state Rep.

Lorena Austin, a self-described “five-time college dropout” with sleeve tattoos; and Wisconsin state Rep.

Karen DeSanto, a nonprofit executive and former professional circus clown .

The report, which Vox reviewed exclusively ahead of its publication, comes amid a factional debate within the party between rising left-wing and socialist candidates who have argued for more far-reaching policy proposals, and more moderate Democrats who have pushed for concessions to working-class cultural sensibilities.

In the report, the authors said that lawmakers they focused on “could hardly be more different from the left-wing populists who’ve captivated the national media this summer.” Generally, the legislators in the report focused on pocketbook issues, though in different ways — some embraced populist causes, while others positioned themselves as business-friendly.

And they broadly agreed that cultural issues were Democrats’ biggest challenge in reaching the working class.

“It’s really interesting how common the themes and the challenges are from rural Georgia, right down to the border of Arizona, to Las Vegas, northern North Carolina, and then up in the ‘Blue Wall’ states,” Johnson told me.

I spoke to Johnson last week about his findings, and about what these state legislators’ experience has to tell us about the debate over the Democratic Party’s future.

Our conversation, which has been condensed and edited, is below.