“The biggest thing that came out of this election was that education polarization – the gap between college-educated voters and (non-college-educated voters) – actually increased, rather than decreased like the polls predicted it would,” said David Shor, a Democratic polling and data expert who advised liberal political action committees this cycle. “(Democrats) basically treaded water in the least-educated areas and gained a lot in the educated areas.”…

Because the Electoral College and Senate representation is “biased” toward voters in less populated states where Republicans dominate, Shor said Democrats would need to win 54% of the popular vote for the next six years to gain control of the Senate and keep control of the House. Democrats must start winning rural, mostly white states like Iowa and Montana to change that trend. Shor predicted this year Biden would need to win the popular vote by 4% for a comfortable Electoral College victory.

“It is mathematically almost impossible for our current coalition to wield electoral power,” Shor said. “There’s a lot of people in the party who are uncomfortable with the implications of the idea that we really have to adopt a maximalist attempt to appeal to (white) working-class voters.”

“But we don’t really have a choice,” he added. “Our path to holding power is that we have to get somebody who voted for Donald Trump twice in Montana to vote for us. And if we don’t, we won’t be able to pass any laws.”