How The Simpsons Explain America's Political Realignment
How the Democrats lost Homer Simpson but gained Mr Burns
Hello there! 😀
In 2025, academics Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte and Markus Wagner published a very fun paper showing how people love projecting their own politics onto fictional characters. Unsurprisingly, everybody tends to think that the good guys agree with them politically and the bad buys support the other side.1
I could spend this whole article arguing about whether Homer Simpson is a MAGA Trump supporter or not, but we don’t have to rely on vibes alone. We know roughly how old characters in The Simpsons are, whether they work, their education, income, religion, race, family situation etc. For those demographics, we have decades of real survey data on how people like that actually voted.
If there’s one thing I like more than political data analysis, it’s The Simpsons.2 So, this piece is me finally getting to live out the dream of combining the two. Using American National Election Studies (ANES) data, I model how characters from The Simpsons would have voted in every US presidential election since 1972.
It sounds silly, but it also turns out to be very revealing about US politics. When you track Homer, Marge, Mr Burns and the rest across time, you learn how the demographic coalitions of the Democratic and Republican parties have often completely rearranged themselves over the last 50 years.3
Homer Simpson
Male
White
Working
Homeowner
Married
Homer looks like the typical swing voter in the 20th century. For his demographic profile, the predicted vote share mirrors the country as a whole in this period. In 1976, Jimmy Carter won 50.1% of the national vote to Gerald Ford’s 48.0%. Among Homer’s demographic, Carter edges it 51.6% to 48.4%. In 1984, Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory is slightly exaggerated: Reagan wins 58.8% nationally, but 62.4% among Homer’s group.
There were early signs of populism. In 1992, Ross Perot wins a plurality among Homer’s demographic, even though he comes third nationally. By 1996 (the year The Simpsons runs the “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos” halloween special of that election) Homer’s voting profile again looks close to the national picture. Bill Clinton wins 49.2% nationally and 45.5% among Homer’s demographic.
The big change comes in the 21st century. From 2000 onwards, Homer stops being a swing voter and becomes a much more reliable Republican. Even in 2008, when Obama won comfortably with 52.9% of the national vote, Homer’s demographic backed McCain 65.0%. By 2020 the gap is even wider. Joe Biden wins the election with 51.3% of the vote, but Homer’s demographic votes 70.1% for Donald Trump and just 27.3% for Biden.
At this point, Homer’s profile looks tailor-made for modern Republican politics: White, male, lower-middle-class, union-connected but not precarious, doing OK but not especially comfortable, living outside big metropolitan centres, and deeply sceptical of elites. This is the Trump voter. Not the poorest Americans, but not the winners of globalisation either. People who have a house, a job and a sense of status, but are worried about losing it.
There is also a cultural element too. Homer is, quite literally, the kind of person a Harvard-educated writers’ room makes jokes about. His tastes are bad, his opinions are blunt and his impulses are unrefined. In the hands of the golden-era Simpsons writers, this was done sympathetically. Homer was the protagonist you were meant to root for, human, with his heart in the right place.
However, in the hands of modern Democratic politicians (who seem to lack even basic emotional intelligence) this same figure becomes something else: an embarrassing problem to be managed or corrected. In short, a deplorable.
That feeling of being mocked by people who think they know better turns politics into a choice between those who sneer and those who at least promise to defend you and your social status.
If you want one book to understand how this happened, I cannot recommend Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland strongly enough. On the surface, it’s a book about Richard Nixon’s electoral success in 1968 and 1972. Underneath that, it’s about how the US split into two broad cultural camps: the “Franklins” and the “Orthogonians”.4
The Franklins are educated professionals, comfortable with expertise, institutions and social change, and increasingly dominant in the Democratic Party. The Orthogonians are lower-middle-class homeowners and workers: people who value order and effort, and who are deeply sensitive to being talked down to.
Over time, the Democrats came to sound and look more like the Franklins. Not just in policy, but in tone, language and cultural signals. As that happened, voters like Homer (Orthogonians who had once been reliable parts of the New Deal coalition) began to drift away, because the party stopped feeling like it was on their side. That slow cultural realignment was something Nixon first exploited and later Republicans perfected.
Marge Simpson
Female
White
Also aged 38 (they were in the same school year)
High school education
Homemaker
Lives in a union household
Homeowner
Married
Like Homer, Marge is a swing voter through much of the 20th century, even if she tended to lean a little more Democratic. In 1976, Jimmy Carter won 50.1% of the national vote, but Marge’s demographic backed him by 54.9%. In 1988, Michael Dukakis won just 45.7% nationally, yet Marge’s demographic voted 55.1% for him.
There are limits to this, though. Despite Lisa suggesting Marge voted for Carter again in 1980, her real-world demographic tended to not. That year, Ronald Reagan won 50.7% nationally, but Marge’s demographic voted 54.6% for Reagan.
However, like Homer, she was still very much a swing voter, responsive to context and candidates rather than locked into a party. As with Homer, though, the big shift comes in the 21st century.
From 2000 onwards, Marge’s demographic moves sharply to the right. The most extreme example is 2016 where Donald Trump won 46.1% of the national vote, but 77.2% of people like Marge.
Why did Marge become so Republican in the 21st century? I think the key is that “high school-educated homemaker” means something very different in 1972 than it does in 2024. In the late 20th century, this category covered a large and socially broad slice of the population. Many women left school at 18, did not work full-time after marriage, and households could survive on a single income. That meant Marge’s demographic included a wide range of women with a, therefore, wide range of political views.
Over time, educational expansion and women’s increased participation in the workforce dramatically shrink this group. By the 21st century, being a high school-educated homemaker is no longer typical. It is now coded with cultural conservatism, traditional gender roles and Republican identity.
In modern terms, Marge Simpson looks a lot like a “trad wife”.
That helps explain the sharp rightward turn after 2000. In 2020 and 2024, however, Trump still wins this group comfortably (68.8% in 2020 and 62.2% in 2024) but the Republican margin clearly narrows. Marge remains disproportionately Republican, albeit less so.
Marge is also now cross-pressured. Her education level and work status pull her towards the Republicans, but her race and gender now pulls her in the opposite direction. Since 2016, White women in particular have shifted away from the Republican Party and towards the Democrats. In 2024, when the Democratic presidential vote fell nationally, it rose among White women.
Marge is a neat encapsulation of that tension. At the moment, the Republican pull still wins out, but it’s weakening.
Mr Burns
Male
White
Working
Homeowner
Unmarried
Lives in a non-union household
Household income in the 96th to 100th percentile
Before looking at Mr Burns’s voting profile, there’s an important caveat that the ANES data does not include a variable for business ownership. If it did, it would almost certainly push Burns further towards the Republicans and reduce his Democratic vote share.
With that in mind, the results are still striking.
Yep, Mr Burns is now a Democrat!
Until very recently, Mr Burns was overwhelmingly Republican. In 1972, his demographic backs Richard Nixon by 89.9%. In 1984, Ronald Reagan wins 83.7% of this group. Even the early 21st century, Mr Burns’s demographic votes 83.1% for John McCain in 2008.
This is exactly what you would expect. For decades, White, college-educated, very high-income voters were the backbone of the Republican Party. That was true when The Simpsons first aired in 1989, and it remained true throughout the show’s golden era.
Then something changes. After 2008, Republican support collapses. In 2012, Mitt Romney still wins a majority, but it drops sharply to 57.4%. Donald Trump then accelerates the decline. In 2016, Mr Burns’s demographic gives Trump just 50.8%, by 2020 that falls to 34.0% and, in 2024, it reaches a low of just 19.1%.
From 2008 to 2024, Republican support among this group drops by roughly 64-points. Even allowing for the missing business-ownership variable, the direction of travel is unmistakable.
What Burns shows is just how changed the politics of White, college-educated, high-income voters have become. For much of modern American history, this group was synonymous with Republicanism. Today, it’s one of the Democrats’ strongest constituencies.
Donald Trump’s style, rhetoric and disdain for institutions are highly effective at mobilising lower-middle-class voters like Homer. He speaks in plain language, treats politics as a personal fight, and frames conflict in terms of winners and losers rather than processes and norms. For voters who feel ignored, talked down to, or culturally sidelined, this reads as authenticity. At the same time, that same style actively repels people like Mr Burns. Wealthy, college-educated, institutionally embedded voters are comfortable operating within elite norms, not burning them down.
There is a useful parallel inside The Simpsons itself. When Mr Burns meets Larry (his biological son) he is deeply embarrassed, because Larry does not behave like the elite. He is uncouth, loud, unpolished, indiscreet and incapable of operating within the social codes Burns takes for granted. Burns ultimately rejects him not because Larry threatens his wealth, but because he threatens his sense of status.
Trump plays a similar role in American politics. He may promise tax cuts and deregulation, but his manner, language and disregard for institutional etiquette make him feel like Larry Burns in the Oval Office. For voters like Mr Burns, that is intolerable.
This realignment is not just about Trump, but also about how the Democratic Party has changed. By 2016, there was no serious risk that a Democratic victory would produce some fundamental or irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of the working-class. The party was culturally liberal but economically cautious, rhetorically pro-redistribution but institutionally deferential. Its leadership was deeply intertwined with professional, financial and legal elites.5
That matters for voters like Mr Burns, because supporting Democrats no longer carries a credible threat to their material interests. In fact, the Democrats increasingly look like the party of global integration, and technocratic management, which are things that suit high-income, highly educated voters perfectly well.
In The Simpsons’ early years, Burns’s politics were obvious and stable. Today, they are also obvious and stable, but in the complete opposite direction. In a single generation, one of the most reliable Republican demographics in American politics has crossed the aisle.
Ned Flanders
Male
White
Working
Homeowner
Married
Lives in a non-union household
Protestant
Attends church every week
Some things in American politics really haven’t changed, though. White Protestants who attend church every week remain one of the most solidly Republican groups in the electorate. When we model Ned Flanders’ demographic profile across elections, the numbers barely move over half a century. In 1972, this group backed Richard Nixon by 90.2%. Forty years later, in 2012, they backed Mitt Romney by 89.7%.
There’s a modest softening in the Trump era. Republican support falls to 84.1% in 2020 and 76.9% in 2024. But, even after that decline, this remains one of the most reliably Republican demographics in the United States.
Most books on religious voting tend to focus on White evangelicals, which can be misleading in Ned’s case, because Ned is a mainline Protestant. The distinction matters, because mainline Protestants are often more institutional and historically more politically swing-y.6
Despite this, Ned is still a good example of a socially conservative religious voter. This is the story told, from different angles, in Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory and Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne.7 They agree on the core point: conservative Christianity became politically mobilised in response to cultural change. From the 1960s onwards, a series of Supreme Court decisions and congressional actions pulled religious Christians into politics. School prayer, abortion, sexual permissiveness, gay rights and the broader cultural liberalisation of American life convinced many church leaders that neutrality was no longer an option. Politics became about defending a moral order.
That mobilisation facilitated the Republican Party’s strategy of “fusionism”: a coalition that combined social conservatives, free-market capitalists, and military hawks. Each group got something it cared deeply about, and together they formed a durable winning bloc.
Ned fits cleanly into that coalition. As a devout Protestant, social conservatism is central to his identity. As a small business owner, he is also naturally sympathetic to free-market capitalism and suspicious of regulation and unions.
If there’s movement here recently, it’s at the margins. The Trump-era does introduce some discomfort among gentler, more civically minded Protestants, but not enough to break the bond. For voters like Ned Flanders, the Republican Party remains the natural political expression of their values and has been for a very long time.
Carl Carlson
Black
Male
Age 35-44
College education
Working
Lives in a union household
Unmarried
If Ned Flanders is the most stable Republican, Carl Carlson is the most stable Democrat. The lowest Democratic vote share for Carl’s demographic is 91.9%, in 1980. The highest is a near–North Korean 99.6% in 2008, Barack Obama’s first election.
Unlike Homer or Mr Burns, there is no real “turning point” here. Carl is college educated, is in a union and has a master’s degree. All of those traits correlate with Democratic voting, but the main driver is race.
In Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird’s Steadfast Democrats, they argue that Black political unity cannot be understood in purely ideological terms. Instead, it’s rooted in the specific social experience of being Black in America.8 As they point out, Black Americans are, by a large margin, the most politically unified racial group in the United States. Since the civil rights era, between 80-90% have consistently identified as Democrats. This is especially striking because nearly a third of Black Americans identify as ideologically conservative.
White and Laird argue that centuries of slavery, segregation and discrimination forced Black Americans to develop unusually strong social bonds as a means of survival and resistance. Those bonds did not disappear after the civil rights movement, but continued to produce and enforce political norms. One of those norms was the expectation that supporting the Democratic Party is part of the collective struggle for equality.
In this framework, party choice is not just an individual preference. Black voters are uniquely influenced by the social expectations of other Black Americans to prioritise the group’s long-term interests over short-term ideological alignment. Supporting the Democratic Party becomes a way of affirming group solidarity in the face of ongoing racial inequality.
Carl embodies this dynamic. He is educated, employed, union-connected and socially integrated. However, his political behaviour is almost entirely fixed. This is not because he has never changed his views, but because race (and the social meaning attached to it) remains the most powerful political identity shaping his vote.
Abe Simpson
Male
White
Age 75+
High school education
Retired
Unmarried
On the surface, Abe looks like a fairly typical Republican voter: an older white male without a college degree. In 1972, his demographic backed Richard Nixon by 73.9% and in 2016, it backed Donald Trump by 65.9%.
But Abe’s voting profile has an interesting wrinkle. Between roughly 1988 and 2000, his demographic becomes noticeably more Democratic than before or after. In 1992, Bill Clinton won 43.0% of the national vote, but won 50.0% among Abe’s demographic. In 2000, Al Gore won 48.4% nationally, but 53.6% among this group.
To understand why, you need to separate three things that are often confused: age effects, period effects and cohort (generational) effects.
Age effects are about where you are in the life cycle (i.e. how old you are).
Period effects are about what is happening at a particular moment. Recessions, scandals or popular leaders happen to everyone at once.
Cohort effects are about when you were born (i.e. what generation you are part of).
When we look at voters aged 75+, the age category stays the same, but the people inside it change from election to election. From the late 1980s through to 2000, the 75+ group was dominated by the “Greatest Generation”.
Generations formed by the same historical experiences often carry those political instincts with them for life. This generation grew up under Republican President Herbert Hoover, whose administration became synonymous with economic collapse. They then experienced the New Deal and victory in World War II under the Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As a result, the Greatest Generation developed a durable attachment to the Democratic Party that did not fade with age.
Political scientist Patrick Fisher has studied these generational effects in detail. He finds that, late in their lives, members of the Greatest Generation actually became more supportive of Democratic presidential candidates than they had been earlier.9
Fischer concludes:
At the end of the Twentieth Century, in fact, it was more accurate to view the country’s oldest citizens—the Greatest Generation—as voters whose memories of the Great Depression and World War II lead them to have a lasting faith in the government activism and those more supportive of the Democratic Party. In the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections, for example, the oldest Americans were actually the age group most likely to vote Democratic.
That is what we see in Abe’s data. Once the Greatest Generation begins to pass out of the electorate, the 75+ group changes. It becomes dominated by cohorts shaped less by the Depression and New Deal, and more by post-war prosperity, Cold War conservatism and later cultural backlash. Abe’s demographic shifts back towards the Republicans.
The lesson here is that age matters, but generation can matter just as much. Abe Simpson’s voting record is a reminder that voters carry the political imprint of their formative years with them, and that when generations move through the electorate, the politics of “old age” can change completely.
Waylon Smithers
Male
White
Age 35-44
Working
Unmarried
LGBT
There is the limitation that the ANES only begins asking about sexual orientation in 2008, so we can only observe Smithers’s true demographic profile from that point onwards. Even with that constraint, the picture is clear.
Like Carl, Smithers is a staunch Democrat. From 2008 onwards, his demographic votes overwhelmingly for Democratic presidential candidates, with very little variation. The Democratic vote share ranges from 84.3% in 2012 to 88.1% in 2020.
This is not just about party voting. Being LGBT is associated with a broader cluster of left-leaning political beliefs. Political scientist Philip Edward Jones shows that LGBT Americans are distinctively more liberal than otherwise similar straight respondents. Across multiple surveys, LGBT respondents are more supportive of government-provided health insurance, more strongly opposed to the death penalty, more likely to oppose Donald Trump’s travel ban, and more likely to oppose Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.10
The obvious explanation can sound trite, but it’s also true: people tend not to vote for parties that threaten their civil rights.
For LGBT voters, the Republican Party has, for decades, been associated with opposition to same-sex marriage, restrictions on gender identity, and a broader politics of moral regulation. That creates a powerful and durable incentive to support the Democrats, even for voters who might otherwise be cross-pressured by class, income or education.
It’s Not 1989 Anymore
The Simpsons first aired as a full episode with Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire on 17 December 1989. At that time, many groups (like Homer, Marge and Abe) were genuinely up for grabs, whilst others (like Mr Burns) were seemingly not.
Over the past 37 years, some demographics are broadly similar. Carl is still a rock-solid Democrat and Ned remains a reliable Republican. Others, however, have moved dramatically. Homer drifts from archetypal swing voter to a core part of the Republican base. Mr Burns flips entirely, from caricatured plutocrat Republican to dependable Democrat. Marge has had her politics reshaped by education, work and gender in ways that did not apply in 1989. Even Abe’s story turns out to be less about old age than about which generation happens to be old at a given moment.
These shifts reflect deeper changes in American politics: the collapse of class-based voting, the rise of cultural and identity politics, the sorting of parties by education, and the importance of race, religion and social status in shaping political loyalty.
A lot can change in 37 years.
Demographics can shift just as much as certain shows can decline in quality…
Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J., and Markus Wagner. “Heroes and villains: motivated projection of political identities.” Political Science Research and Methods (2025): 1-21.
There is more than one thing I like more than political data analysis.
Based on their demographics of seasons 1-10. I am unfortunately aware that episodes exist outside of this period.
Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. Simon and Schuster, 2008.
Frank, Thomas. Listen, liberal: or, what ever happened to the party of the people?. Macmillan, 2016.
Shenk, Timothy. Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics. Penguin Random House, 2024.
Olson, Laura R., and Adam L. Warber. “The mainline Protestant vote.” Religion and the Bush Presidency. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2007. 69-93.
Alberta, Tim. The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Harper, 2024.
Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Liveright Publishing, 2020.
White, Ismail K., and Chryl N. Laird. Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior. Princeton University Press, 2020.
Fisher, Patrick. “Generational cycles in American politics, 1952–2016.” Society 57.1 (2020): 22-29.
Jones, Philip Edward. “Political distinctiveness and diversity among LGBT Americans.” Public Opinion Quarterly 85.2 (2021): 594-622.
One of the underrated “blink and you’ll miss it” references in The Simpsons is the revelation that Homer worked for Alexander Haig’s ill fated run for president in 1988, and got himself beat black and blue for it.
Love this