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Polling makes clear why Democratic are searching for the right messenger.

White men make up typically make up about one-third of the electorate. In 2018, 41 percent of them voted for Democrats, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of the national electorate. While Democrats’ strength among women won headlines and was often credited with Democrats’ strong showing, white men also moved to the Democrats column. VoteCast showed Democrats won the votes of 46% of white male college graduates, a figure that has given some in the party hope.

“The revolt in these suburban districts wasn’t just about white women, it was also about white men,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster advising the campaign of former Gov. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo. “Just as there’s been a movement of white, college-educated women, there’s been a movement of white college-educated men.”

That shift is part of a long-term trend.

According to the American National Election Survey, white men without college degrees have consistently supported the GOP over the past two decades, while those with degrees — roughly one-fifth of the 2018 electorate — have increasingly moved toward Democrats. In 1996, when President Bill Clinton overwhelmingly won re-election, he only received 36% of the votes of white male college graduates, according to ANES. Hillary Clinton lost her race in 2016 but won 43% of them.

Strategists generally find that college-educated white men are more moved by social issues and Trump’s violations of political norms, while those without degrees are more concerned about economic issues and like candidates who may shake up the establishment. In Pennsylvania, Democrats have gained ground among both groups since Trump’s election, but some see the college-educated cohort as the most promising.

Democrats picked up three U.S. House seats in Pennsylvania in November, flipping suburban districts while also easily defending a U.S. Senate seat and the governor’s mansion.

“The current coalition — urban, suburban women and these college-educated males — will likely put Pennsylvania back in the Democratic column,” said Mike Mikus, a veteran Democratic strategist who lives in the affluent suburbs of the 37th state Senate district.

Trump won the traditionally Republican district by 6 percentage points in 2016. But after its Republican state senator was elected to Congress in November, Democrats targeted the seat. They counted on flipping its educated populace of lawyers, consultants and doctors who fill its colonial-style houses and shopping centers that spill over the ridgelines outside Pittsburgh.