Is artificial intelligence coming for your job? It may depend on who you voted for in the 2024 presidential election.

If you voted for Donald Trump, your job is likely safe. If you voted for Kamala Harris, you have reason to be concerned.

Quietly last month, Microsoft released a study of the jobs most and least likely to be replaced by artificial intelligence. The study results track closely to the socioeconomics of the 2024 presidential election and the political realignment sweeping the nation.

The jobs most likely to be displaced by artificial intelligence fit the profile of the college-educated elite who are backing the Democratic Party. These jobs include writers and authors, journalists, historians and political scientists.

These are roles rooted in so-called knowledge work, which is the gathering and interpreting of information, producing written content, and communicating ideas. These are the tasks artificial intelligence currently does best.

The jobs least likely to be displaced are the blue-collar workers who are building the new Republican majority. These jobs include highway maintenance workers, cement masons, painters and truck drivers. All roles with a high physical component and minimal overlap with AI’s current capabilities.

Nationwide, about 8.5 million jobs are at the highest risk of being replaced by AI. Based on an analysis of Microsoft and state data, in Pennsylvania, that represents a little under 300,000 jobs. Conversely, about 5.5 million jobs nationwide, and roughly 240,000 in Pennsylvania, are in categories least likely to be affected.

The Microsoft study’s methodology is worth noting. Researchers analyzed 200,000 anonymized conversations between Americans and Bing Copilot, classifying the “user goals” and the “AI actions” according to work activities defined by the U.S. Department of Labor’s O/NET database.

By measuring how frequently AI assisted with or performed these activities, how successfully it did so, and how broad the potential impact was, they created an “AI applicability score” for each occupation.

These roles share a heavy reliance on information gathering, writing, editing, and communicating, which are areas where AI already demonstrates high task completion rates and broad applicability.

From a political standpoint, the study’s findings mirror the cultural and economic realignment of the last decade. The Democratic coalition has grown more white-collar, more urban, and more dependent on credentialed professions. The Republican base has grown more working-class, more rural or exurban, and concentrated in the skilled trades.

In short, the jobs that AI is poised to displace are concentrated in the Democratic coalition, while the jobs still untouched by AI are clustered in the Republican one.

The implication? AI disruption may accelerate the realignment – replacing jobs in industries that overwhelmingly vote blue while leaving red-leaning jobs largely untouched.

But the study also warns against simple “automation doom” narratives. Many of the most at-risk occupations are not necessarily destined for elimination; they may instead be transformed. AI can assist rather than replace, potentially boosting productivity and changing job descriptions rather than eliminating them entirely.

Still, the scale of potential change is enormous. The biggest concentration is in customer service (2.85 million nationally) and sales representatives (1.14 million nationally), which are fields where AI can already answer questions, present information, and resolve issues with impressive fluency.

AI’s trajectory may mirror past innovations, such as ATMs, which reduced the need for tellers but also enabled banks to expand and redeploy staff. The Microsoft study suggests we may see similar patterns with AI.

Yet the cultural dimension is new: automation risk is not spread evenly across the political spectrum. It clearly clusters along partisan lines.

Pennsylvania, poised to become the “AI capital of the United States,” will be both the factory floor and the test lab for this disruption – producing the tools that may displace thousands of its own white-collar workers while expanding opportunity for skilled trades.

For policymakers, the challenge is twofold: they should provide soft landings for those being displaced while ensuring our educational system is producing enough workers with the necessary blue-collar skills to usher in the economy of the future.

During the era of globalization, policymakers demonstrated they either did not care or could not help the millions of displaced industrial workers who anchored the American middle class.

This is an opportunity for GOP policymakers to rise to the occasion to bring even more Americans into its Big Tent by providing solutions for these soon-to-be displaced workers, largely concentrated in the suburbs.

The study ends on a note of humility as AI’s impact is a moving target. Capabilities will evolve, jobs will adapt, and new occupations will emerge. While truck drivers are on the “safe” list today, self-driving trucks are not far away.

Want to know if AI is coming for your job? Pull up a county-by-county map of the 2024 election. You might find your answer in red and blue.

(Athan Koutsiouroumbas is a managing director at Long Nyquist and Associates and a former congressional chief of staff.)