'Them vs. US': Divide among elites and rest of country widening ahead of 2024 election: Rasmussen

The divide between the country’s "elite" and the rest of America is growing and it will have a substantial impact on the 2024 elections, according to a survey conducted by Scott Rasmussen and RMG Research, Inc. 

The survey also found the most highly educated voters with advanced degrees are liberal-leaning and their policy positions are at odds with the rest of the electorate, which Rasmussen and conservative economist Steve Moore said during a briefing about the results on Friday.

There were 1,000 members of the "elite" interviewed September 11-26, 2023, and September 14-29 of 2023 for the survey.

The poll defined elites as "those having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, and living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile. Approximately 1% of the total U.S. population meets these criteria."

Among the 1,000 elites surveyed, 73% of the elites were Democrats, and 14% were Republicans. The study also examined adults who attended either Ivy League colleges or "elite private schools, including Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Chicago."

Also, roughly half of those classified as "elites" attended one of those schools, according to the Committee to Unleash Prosperity's report on the findings released on Friday, titled, "Them vs. U.S."

Comparison results for registered voters came from "independent surveys of 1,000 registered voters, each conducted between May and September 2023."

The survey asked the respondents if their personal finances were "getting better or worse these days."

"Only about 20% of all Americans say they believe their finances are getting better now. But among the Elite, that number more than triples to 74% who say they are better off," the report says. 

The survey found a similar divide when it came to individual freedom.

"When Americans are asked if there is too much or too little freedom, Elites are three times more likely to say that there is too much individual freedom in America than all Americans. Almost six out of ten of the graduates from Elite colleges think there is too much freedom," read the report.

The poll results found climate change to be an "obsession of the very rich and highly educated," given that 77% of the elites – including nearly 90% of the elites who graduated from the top universities – favor rationing of energy, gas, and meat to combat climate change." However, 63% of registered voters oppose this policy.

In addition, 70% of elites indicated that they would "pay $500 or more each year in taxes and higher costs to reduce climate change, while nearly as many average Americans (72%) said they would only be willing to pay $100 or less a year."

Elites were at odds with the other registered voters when it came to the issue of banning gas stoves, gas-powered cars, air conditioning, SUVs, and “non-essential air travel."

Based on the survey results, "more than two-thirds of the Ivy Elite school college grads would ban each of these" but less than one in four of average voters were in support of such bans. Also, 70% of the elites surveyed "trust the government to do the right thing most of the time," which Rasmussen's report said is "more than twice the nationwide average."

The report on the findings concludes that the elite, a group of Americans with "extraordinary political and societal power, have views and attitudes that are wildly out of touch with the American people."

Rasmussen said the "administrative state as well as the regulatory state" have grown over the last few decades and the "elite no longer thinks they have to have permission from voters" to enact new rules and regulations.

"They think if they decided something is right, it should be done. So highlighting the views of this group, I think, will have a big impact, not just on this election, but on what happens in the next presidential administration," he told reporters during a briefing. "Every single thing about their perception is wildly out of touch with everyday voters."

Rasmussen warned that Biden and the Democratic Party might lose middle class voters on due to their focus on a rapid transition to clean energy sources as a way to fight climate change. He said the survey results show that the climate change issue motivates elites much more than the rest of the electorate. 

"I think some of what happens is this group is not recognizing the issues that are motivating those swing voters, and certainly the more populist voters in the country," he said. "When they talk about climate change and imposing these ideas that seem very normal in the elite 1%, they are turning off a lot of voters in suburban America and obviously, in rural America."

Moore said Democrats "seem somewhat contemptuous of middle class Americans and in terms of their daily concerns." He mentioned the record amount of illegal crossings at the border as an example.

"Yet people in Washington don't seem really at all concerned about it," he said. "My advice to Democrats is pay attention to what people are telling you because they have a different set of concerns about what's happening in America than the elites in Washington and Silicon Valley and Manhattan."

Moore credited Trump with turning the GOP into more of a "blue collar working class party," noting that "he lost all the wealthy counties" in 2016 and 2020 with "maybe a couple of exceptions."

Moore said the "two America story is true" but it's not just the ultra-rich versus everyone else.

"To say that the divide is between rich and poor is not exactly true. It's more people who are educated, live in, for example, this urban rural divide. You certainly see that in voting results now, where Republicans do really well, in the rural farm areas, and the Democrats do very, very well in our cities. So the two Americans story is true, but it's not just the very rich versus everybody else, it's broader."

Moore emphasized that he doesn't think it's a "healthy thing for America to have this" and it "seems to be a more recent phenomenon, the gap between these two groups of people."