The (roughly) three percent

At one time, it was often said that almost all Americans thought of themselves as part of the middle class, regardless of their actual economic circumstances.  It turned out that when asked if they belonged to the "middle class" or "working class," about half chose middle class and half chose working class--this is still true, despite the social and economic changes since the question was first asked more than 80 years ago.  But this post isn't primarily about either the middle class or working class:  it's about the people who say they are "upper class" if that option is offered.  They are a very small minority--usually less than 5%--so they are generally ignored or lumped in with the middle class.  But one of the surveys that includes the upper class option is the General Social Survey, and over the years they have accumulated a fairly large number of them (about 2,500).*

The figure shows party identification (proportion Republican minus proportion Democratic) by class in the GSS data.  For the lower, middle, and working class, the changes are pretty much parallel--more exactly, they have the same shape but slightly different slopes, so they have converged.  In the 20th century, Democratic identification was highest in the lower class and lowest in the middle class, with the working class in the middle, but now it's almost the same in all three.  The upper class has followed a different path--unlike the other classes, it's been moving towards the Democrats in the 21st century.  Because of small numbers in the individual samples, it's not possible to say much about the exact timing--the smoothed line shows it starting around 2000, but you could argue that it was a more sudden change that started later, somewhere around 2010.  But there's definitely been a change--in 2021, 2022, and 2024 samples Democratic identification has been highest in the upper class.  

I can think of two possible explanations.  One is that the images of the parties have changed:  Republicans are seen as less sympathetic to the upper class and/or Democrats are seen as more sympathetic, so people who regard themselves as part of the upper class are less likely to see the Republicans as the party that will serve their interests.  The other possibility is that the way that people who say they are part of the upper class see themselves has changed:  they're more likely to see their position as partly a matter of "privilege" or luck, and therefore more likely to think that the public interest is different from their class interest.  

Who are these people who think of themselves as part of the upper class?  When the GSS began, income, education, and occupational prestige were about equally important.  Over the time since then, income has become more important relative to the other two factors--about 4 or 5 times as important in recent years.  That is, the (self-identified) upper class used to be people with high incomes, high levels of education, and professional jobs; now it's closer to being just people with high incomes.  I think this makes the first potential explanation less plausible:  Republican criticism of "elites" is directed at educated people and people in professional occupations, but not at people with high incomes.  Morever, the extent to which the Republican party serves the immediate interests of high-income people has increased:  in the 1970s and 1980s, they sometimes accepted higher taxes on high-incomes as an unfortunate necessity; since then, support for tax cuts on high incomes has become an absolute.   That leaves the second possibility, which is consistent with these data and has support from other data.  

*It also includes "lower class" as an option--it's chosen by about 6%.