Let's not ignore that there are data amid the outrage

[drwex]

Amid the insanity of a 130+ day Gish Gallop that's still emanating from the dumpster fire it's hard to keep a handle on the idea that there are actual facts to be reviewed and data to be analyzed. Let's turn for a moment to one such story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/05/its-time-to-bust-the-myth-most-trump-voters-were-not-working-class/?utm_term=.112ef36b9f08

This weekend, the Post's Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu put together another attempt to bust the "working class for Trump" meme. This has been one of the most popular stories since the election - or even the campaign. The story has been fueled by the fact that the machine Democrats as I ranted yesterday picked a candidate who seemed to have no ability to connect with actual working-class (blue collar especially) voters.

Carnes and Lupu put it directly - most primary Trump voters were affluent, and so were his election-day supporters. Data show that only about 1/3 of his support came from people who have household incomes below USD 50,000 - the current median. A similar number (1/3) had household incomes above $100k. That holds true particularly for non-Hispanic white voters, supposedly the core of Trump's support.

Carnes and Lupu also looked at education levels - Trump voters were reported famously to be people without college degrees. True, but a broader analysis shows that something like 70% of all Republican voters don't have college degrees. Trump drew voters from the high-school educated in line with the voting membership of that party.

Bottom line: the "prototypical" white non-Hispanic voter without a college degree who makes below the median income accounts for only 25% of Trump's vote tally. This "prototype" is a creation of (imo) lazy media looking for an easy story and angry supporters of other candidates looking for an easy scapegoat. Reality, as usual, is more nuanced than easy and if we're going to get rid of this cancer before it kills us we need to start by getting rid of bad myths.

Comments

[mizarchivist]

Yes! Thank you.

[corylea]

Thanks for the link to that article; this is hugely important!

[jducoeur]

Interesting. I'm curious whether the analysis I heard not long after the election holds up: that the strongest single predictor of having voted for Trump was being white-evangelical. That absolutely *mystifies* me -- Trump is about as good an anti-Christ figure as I can think of -- but I gather that that's still much of his loyal hard core.

The Economist had a rather interesting column on this the other week, speculating the the fondness of the evangelicals for Trump makes a lot more sense if you focus on the whole Prosperity Gospel schtick...

[drwex]

I think that's certainly part of the issue, but I also think Trump captured a large number of single-issue (abortion) evangelicals who were petrified Hilary would appoint multiple pro-abortion SCOTUS justices and they would never overturn Roe. Trump promised them he'd appoint anti-abortion justices and that was enough for them to overlook other things.

This supposition of mine is based in large part on the disproportionate share of the white female vote that Trump got.