For a century or so — since the Great Depression and the New Deal — the Republican Party has been “the party of business,” with Democrats drawing their strength from organized labor and the so-called working class. That has been changing in recent years, or at least there is a growing sense that a realignment might be underway.

Many corporations, right-wing critics say, have been “going woke,” embracing stakeholder capitalism while supporting causes that conservatives view with great skepticism — environmentalism, for example — and taking public positions on issues of racial and social justice.

Casting aside the divisive rhetoric, research from Tufts University and the University of California, Berkeley, finds this realignment is no mirage. It has been in the works for some years, accelerating as the Trump presidency “opened wide the divisions between business elites and populists.” The technology sector, “one of the more influential sectors in contemporary American business,” leans Democratic, with Democrats taking a “much more favorable” view than Republicans of what was once known as Silicon Valley.

But business leaders across the board are also moving left, as the research indicates, with this conclusion: “The ongoing development of the Democratic Party as a party not of labor but of socioeconomic elites, and the ongoing development of the Republican Party as a party not of business but of working-class social conservatives represents a major, perhaps the major, American political development of the twenty-first century.”