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"It’s been extremely common for news accounts to portray Donald Trump’s candidacy as a “working-class” rebellion against Republican elites. There are elements of truth in this perspective: Republican voters, especially Trump supporters, are unhappy about the direction of the economy. Trump voters have lower incomes than supporters of John Kasich or Marco Rubio. And things have gone so badly for the Republican “establishment” that the party may be facing an existential crisis.
But the definition of “working class” and similar terms is fuzzy, and narratives like these risk obscuring an important and perhaps counterintuitive fact about Trump’s voters: As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.
These figures, as I mentioned, are derived from exit polls, which so far have been conducted in 23 primary states.1 The exit polls have asked voters to describe their 2015 family income by using one of five broad categories, ranging from “under $30,000” to “$200,000 or more.” It’s fairly straightforward to interpolate a median income for voters of each candidate from this data; for instance, we can infer that the median Clinton voter in Wisconsin made about $63,000.2 You can find my estimates for each candidate in each state in the following table, along with each state’s overall household median income in 2015.
Trump voters’ median income exceeded the overall statewide median in all 23 states, sometimes narrowly (as in New Hampshire or Missouri) but sometimes substantially. In Florida, for instance, the median household income for Trump voters was about $70,000, compared with $48,000 for the state as a whole. The differences are usually larger in states with substantial non-white populations, as black and Hispanic voters are overwhelmingly Democratic and tend to have lower incomes. In South Carolina, for example, the median Trump supporter had a household income of $72,000, while the median for Clinton supporters was $39,000.
Ted Cruz voters have a similar median income to Trump supporters — about $73,000. Kasich’s supporters have a very high median income, $91,000, and it has exceeded $100,000 in several states. Rubio’s voters, not displayed in the table above, followed a similar pattern to Kasich voters, with a median income of $88,000.
Many of the differences reflect that Republican voters are wealthier overall than Democratic ones, and also that wealthier Americans are more likely to turn out to vote, especially in the primaries. However, while Republican turnout has considerably increased overall from four years ago, there’s no sign of a particularly heavy turnout among “working-class” or lower-income Republicans. On average in states where exit polls were conducted both this year and in the Republican campaign four years ago, 29 percent of GOP voters have had household incomes below $50,000 this year, compared with 31 percent in 2012.
The median income for Clinton and Sanders voters — $61,000 for each candidate — is generally much closer to the overall median income in each state. But even Democratic turnout tends to skew slightly toward a wealthier electorate, somewhat validating Sanders’s claim that “poor people don’t vote.” I estimate that 27 percent of American households had incomes under $30,000 last year. By comparison, 20 percent of Clinton voters did, as did 18 percent of Sanders supporters. (Those figures imply Clinton might have a bigger edge on Sanders if more poor people voted, although it would depend on whether they were black, white or Hispanic.) Both Democratic candidates do better than the Republicans in this category, however. Only 12 percent of Trump voters have incomes below $30,000; when you also consider that Clinton has more votes than Trump overall, that means about twice as many low-income voters have cast a ballot for Clinton than for Trump so far this year.
Class in America is a complicated concept, and it may be that Trump supporters see themselves as having been left behind in other respects. Since almost all of Trump’s voters so far in the primaries have been non-Hispanic whites, we can ask whether they make lower incomes than other white Americans, for instance. The answer is “no.” The median household income for non-Hispanic whites is about $62,000,4 still a fair bit lower than the $72,000 median for Trump voters.
Likewise, although about 44 percent of Trump supporters have college degrees, according to exit polls — lower than the 50 percent for Cruz supporters or 64 percent for Kasich supporters — that’s still higher than the 33 percent of non-Hispanic white adults, or the 29 percent of American adults overall, who have at least a bachelor’s degree.
This is not to say that Trump voters are happy about the condition of the economy. Substantial majorities of Republicans in every state so far have said they’re “very worried” about the condition of the U.S. economy, according to exit polls, and these voters have been more likely to vote for Trump. But that anxiety doesn’t necessarily reflect their personal economic circumstances, which for many Trump voters, at least in a relative sense, are reasonably good."
-Nate Silver, "The Mythology Of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support", Five Thirthy Eight, 3 mai 2016: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/
"The evidence just keeps growing: It wasn’t simply the economy that led to Donald Trump’s rise. Instead, another survey has confirmed that racism and xenophobia were much bigger factors.
The new survey, by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) for the Atlantic, focused on white working-class voters (those without a college education or salaried jobs), who were part of the key demographic behind Trump’s rise. It looked at how much of their support for Trump correlated with, among other factors, “fears about cultural displacement” — a polite way of describing fears of immigrants from other countries and people of other races.
PRRI concluded: “White working-class voters who say they often feel like a stranger in their own land and who believe the U.S. needs protecting against foreign influence were 3.5 times more likely to favor Trump than those who did not share these concerns.”
Economic factors played a much smaller role, suggesting that Trump’s rise was shaped more by cultural and racial concerns than by economics. For example, white working-class voters who displayed economic fatalism — measured through the belief that getting a college education is “a gamble” — were only twice as likely to prefer Trump.
And economic hardship among white working-class Americans actually predicted more support for Hillary Clinton, not Trump: Although not highly statistically significant, the survey found that “[t]hose who reported being in fair or poor financial shape were 1.7 times more likely to support Clinton, compared to those who were in better financial shape.” This finding rebukes the common sentiment that poor white Americans came out in droves to put Trump over the top in 2016.
Identifying as a Republican, as one would expect, played a massive role in predicting support for Trump, with white working-class voters who identified as Republican being 11 times more likely to back the GOP candidate. Other factors, including gender, age, region, and religious affiliation, were not significant in PRRI’s model — which Dan Cox, research director at PRRI, said is likely explained by the fact that white working-class voters are “already somewhat homogenous,” creating less room for attributes like region and religious identity to stick out.
PRRI reached its conclusions through a series of four focus groups in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a national survey of more than 3,000 adults living in the US — a fairly large sample size. PRRI researchers then broke down the survey into different demographic weights to pull out lessons from the data.
Together, the PRRI findings contribute to a consistent theme in the story of Trump: While economic struggles may have played a role in his rise, the bigger factors seem to be racial and cultural resentment. If Democrats hope to defeat Trump, then, they’re going to have to find a way to deal with that resentment — hopefully in a way that doesn’t pander to it.
The PRRI survey uncovered several signs of racial and cultural resentment among white working-class Americans:
About 65 percent “believe American culture and way of life has deteriorated since the 1950s.”
About 48 percent say that “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.”
About 68 percent “believe the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence.” In comparison, 44 percent of white college-educated Americans reported a similar view.
About 68 percent “believe the U.S. is in danger of losing its culture and identity.”
About 62 percent “believe the growing number of newcomers from other countries threatens American culture,” while 30 percent “say these newcomers strengthen society.”
About 60 percent “say because things have gotten so far off track, we need a strong leader who is willing to break the rules.”
Much of this isn’t totally new information. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild uncovered a similar theme in her 2016 book on Tea Party members in Louisiana, which is, notably, titled Strangers in Their Own Land.
In the book, Hochschild provides an apt analogy to explain the feeling of neglect that many white working-class Americans feel: As they see it, they are all in this line toward a hill with prosperity at the top. But over the past few years, globalization and income stagnation have caused the line to stop moving. And from their perspective, people — black and brown Americans, immigrants, women — are now cutting in the line, because they’re getting new (and more equal) opportunities through new anti-discrimination laws and policies like affirmative action.
In this view, many white working-class Americans have seen their stature fall in the past few years, while they think that other demographic groups have continued rising. One can pick the basic facts here — particularly since black and Latino Americans still trail white Americans in terms of wealth, income, and educational attainment. But this is how many white working-class Americans feel, regardless of the facts.
The PRRI survey suggests this type of sentiment is common: It found that only 17 percent of white working-class Americans who still live in their hometowns said the quality of life in their hometown has improved since their childhood days, while 45 percent said that quality of life has gotten worse and 37 percent said it’s about the same.
This sentiment has created a lot of cultural and racial resentment. Based on PRRI’s new survey, this all played a big role in the lead-up to Trump.
Generally, you shouldn’t make too much out of one survey or study. Any single analysis, after all, could be influenced by statistical bias or unscrupulous methodology.
But PRRI is very reputable, and its findings are far from the first to suggest racism and xenophobia led to Trump’s rise.
For one, PRRI’s findings are very similar to an analysis from last year by Jonathan Rothwell at Gallup. That survey also found that Trump supporters are actually richer, not poorer, than average, although they tended to be blue-collar and less educated. Trump supporters also tended to live in racially segregated areas, particularly those that were not especially hard hit by trade or immigration. As for their socioeconomic struggles, they weren’t about income inequality, but rather relatively high mortality rates and worse intergenerational mobility. All in all, this suggested that something else — not typical economic hardship — was behind Trump’s rise.
Another paper, published in January by political scientists Brian Schaffner, Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta, found that voters’ measures of sexism and racism correlated much more closely with support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction after controlling for factors like partisanship and political ideology.
As the paper acknowledged, clearly economic dissatisfaction was one factor — and in an election in which Trump essentially won by just 80,000 votes in three states, maybe that, along with issues like the opioid epidemic and poor health outcomes, was enough to put him over the top. But the analysis also shows that a bulk of support for Trump — perhaps what made him a contender to begin with — came from beliefs rooted in racism and sexism.
Several polls also found that Trump supporters were more likely to profess negative views of black people, Muslims, and Latinos, as well as concerns that immigrants threaten US values. One telling study, conducted by researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Stanford University shortly before the election, found that if people who strongly identified as white were told that nonwhite groups will outnumber white people in 2042, they became more likely to support Trump.
Another set of studies, conducted by researchers Carly Wayne, Nicholas Valentino, and Marzia Oceno, found that measures of benevolent sexism — meaning more traditional, chivalrous views of women and men’s proper roles in society — didn’t correlate closely with support for Trump. But measures of hostile sexism did, suggesting that sexism in support of Trump seems to be more about hostility toward women than old-fashioned views on gender roles.
There is a reasonable question about whether economic anxiety led to racial resentment or vice versa. But as University of California Irvine political scientist Michael Tesler explained in the Washington Post, the evidence suggests that racial resentment came first:
Partisan identities aren’t the only thing that matters. In my book, Post-Racial or Most-Racial?, I show that racial attitudes have increasingly structured public opinion about a wide array of positions connected to Barack Obama, including subjective perceptions of objective economic conditions.
For one, racially sympathetic white Americans were far more likely than racially resentful whites to correctly conclude that the unemployment rate was declining in the year leading up to the 2012 election. Before Obama’s presidency, racial attitudes were uncorrelated with perceptions of the election-year unemployment rate.
None of this is too surprising, given that Trump ran a campaign in which he made explicitly racist and sexist appeals.
He characterized Mexican immigrants as criminals and “rapists.” He called for banning Muslims — an entire religious group — from the US. He said a US judge should recuse himself from a Trump University case due to his Mexican heritage. He referred to black and Latino people’s lives as hell, calling for police to adopt “stop and frisk” — a practice deemed unconstitutional in New York City because it was used in racist ways — to help protect “inner cities.” He suggested Fox News host Megyn Kelly was tough on him at a debate because she was menstruating. He was recorded on tape bragging that he could sexually assault women (“grab ’em by the pussy”) because he’s a celebrity. And that’s far from all.
At some point, you might start to wonder why journalists keep writing about the link between Trump’s support and bigoted beliefs. The election is over. Do we really need to analyze what happened over and over again ?
The point, at least for me, is not to demonize Trump voters. The point is to understand them in order to better grasp what motivated them to vote for someone who ran a clearly bigoted campaign and who most voters agreed is unqualified for the nation’s highest office.
As Schaffner, MacWilliams, and Nteta write in their paper, there’s growing evidence that 2016 was unique — in that racism and sexism played a more powerful role than in recent presidential elections. “Specifically, we find no statistically significant relationship between either the racism or sexism scales and favorability ratings of either [previous Republican candidates] John McCain or Mitt Romney,” they write. “However, the pattern is quite strong for favorability ratings of Donald Trump.”
The concern, then, is that this is the beginning of a modern trend in which politicians like Trump directly and explicitly play to people’s prejudices to win elections — and it works.
If that’s really what’s happening, it’s important for progressives and anyone interested in limiting the power of bigotry in US politics to know and demonstrate what’s going on. Studies like this put a bigger imperative on getting to the root of the problem and figuring out ways to reduce people’s racial or gendered biases.
To this end, the research also shows it’s possible to reach out to Trump voters — even those who are racist or sexist today — in an empathetic way without condoning their prejudice. The evidence suggests, in fact, that the best way to weaken people’s racial or other biases is through frank, empathetic dialogue. (Much more on that in my in-depth piece on the research.) Given that, the strongest approach to really combating racism and sexism may be empathy.
One study, for example, found that canvassing people’s homes and having a 10-minute, nonconfrontational conversation about transgender rights — in which people’s lived experiences were relayed so they could understand how prejudice feels personally — managed to reduce voters’ anti-transgender attitudes for at least three months. Perhaps a similar model could be adapted to reach out to people with racist, sexist, or other deplorable views, although this possibility needs more study.
But all of this involves a lot of legwork, outreach, and a kind of empathy that people may not be comfortable with in an era of highly polarized politics. Knowing what caused Trump’s win is crucial to gauging whether all of this work and effort is worth doing. And given the growing amount of research showing the major role of bigotry in Trump’s win, it certainly seems like the work and effort are needed."
-German Lopez, "The poor white working class was, if anything, more likely than the rich to vote for Clinton", Vox, 9 mai 2017 : https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/9/15592634/trump-clinton-racism-economy-prri-survey
