I wanted to post it this morning when I read it, but work kept getting in the way and then I forgot.

Facts matter and a lot of people are blurring the facts to fit their narrative.

Example:
"supporters were mostly people without college degrees. There were two problems with this line of reasoning, however. First, not having a college degree isn’t a guarantee that someone belongs in the working class (think Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg). And, second, although more than 70 percent of Trump supporters didn’t have college degrees, when we looked at the NBC polling data, we noticed something the pundits left out: during the primaries, about 70 percent of all Republicans didn’t have college degrees, close to the national average (71 percent according to the 2013 Census). Far from being a magnet for the less educated, Trump seemed to have about as many people without college degrees in his camp as we would expect any successful Republican candidate to have."

There’s just one problem: this account is wrong. Trump voters were not mostly working-class people.

During the primaries, Trump supporters were mostly affluent people.

The misrepresentation of Trump’s working-class support began in the primaries. In a widely read March 2016 piece, the writer Thomas Frank, for instance, argued at length that “working-class white people … make up the bulk of Trump’s fan base.” Many journalists found colorful examples of working-class Trump supporters at early campaign rallies. But were those anecdotes an accurate representation of the emerging Trump coalition?


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

Mahalo, emulatorloo

Tens of thousands.. millions.. of computer created cyber people replaced hundred thousands of purged humans.

voters?


Hi Cha

This false narrative needs to die. The sooner the better!!

the false narratives get a life of their own and we end up not dealing in reality because of the M$M and certain blowhards.

herding

The problem was they were all morally bankrupt

Suburbs have taken the major economic hit over the last 10-15 years and now are poorer than cities. People living there are house rich but often just scraping by, the lady of the house bringing home a larger part of the bacon, something neither sex is thrilled about.

They wanted a real change in the direction of the country. So they voted for a fat blowhard and con man who promised them all sorts of stuff in the most general language possible, with few specifics except getting rid of people he didn't like.

Many of them got it together enough to get a four year college degree. I have to hope they start waking up to the colossal mistake they made.

They didn't even bother to compare to previous elections, specifically the most recent one. Instead they got hung up on the word and concept of "majority." Who cares about that? It's how the demographics differed from typical.

Trump's victory was indeed fueled by lower income voters. In 2012 Obama won the Under $50,000 category by 22 points. Hillary won that category by 12 points. However, wealthier voters were not even close to as pro-Republican as in 2012. In the $100,000+ category, Romney prevailed by 10 points while Hillary and Trump were even.

The exit poll questions from cycle to cycle aren't always identical. I wish they were. But from logically extracting it was glaring that white working class males were indeed the pivotal demographic for Trump. Single males were most decisive of all.

Marital status and shifting allegiance didn't receive nearly enough scrutiny. Hillary actually did better than Obama with married voters, regardless of gender. But she fared considerably worse than Obama with single voters.

These were the numbers. Married men were the only block among the four who preferred Trump, but it was enough:

* Married men favored Romney by 22 points and Trump by 19
* Married women favored Romney by 7 points but shifted to Hillary by 2 points
* Unmarried men favored Obama by 16 points but plummeted to only 2 point edge for Hillary
* Unmarried women favored Obama by 36 points and dropped somewhat to +31 for Hillary

Married men make considerably more money, on average, than unmarried men. Most studies indicate that unmarried women make somewhat higher salaries than married women. Extracting again, since unmarried men had the greatest change of the four categories toward the Republican side, and unmarried men make less money than married men, it was indeed the shift of lower income males that pushed Trump over the top.

Anyway, I'm looking at your post and trying to figure out how any of that refutes the point of the OP, even if the demographics differed from typical. They still don't say that Trump won on the backs of the working class. Putting quotation marks around a word doesn't magically erase the concept and make it not exist anymore. If married men went for Trump, then I don't even get what you're trying to say.

I saw a graph last week showing that he received large support by the very wealthy.

salaries of people like kellyanne and twitter spamming is free. The Republican party paid for him, supported him so their candidate would win to progress the Republican party corporate agenda on America.

The meaningful concept is "margin of victory", and the most relevant aspect of that involves demographic shifts. No Republican or Democratic Party candidate for President has gotten less than 37% of the vote since Alf Landon fell slightly short of that mark back in the 1930's - eve when strong third party candidates were running also.

So yeah, while some commentators may have been lazy in talking about working class voters making up "most" of Trump's support - that misses the real point. If you start out assuming that both the Republican and Democratic Party candidates start out with roughly 40% of the vote no matter who they are - the entire election swings on the decision made by less than a fifth of the general electorate. When a Democrat outperforms their typical support with white men for example, that candidate generally does very well overall even if they still only win a minority of the white male vote. Likewise when a Republican outperforms their typical level of support from working class voters, that candidate (in this case Trump) greatly increases their chances of winning overall. In 2016 there was a significant shift of working class votes away from Democrats and to Trump. That factored heavily into the ultimate margin of victory (in the Electoral College) for Trump.

Attempting to minimize the OP as just a few lazy pundits missing the real point doesn't change the fact OP is still absolutely correct. These lazy pundits are wrong and a lot of people believe that what they're saying is right. And then, just like with the other poster I addressed in this thread, nothing you say actually refutes the OP. A candidate doing well with white people, the majority in this country, increases their chances? Wow, who knew. How does that refute the claim that Trump, a Republican, actually won with affluent voters the same way the GOP always does, and not with the working class the way the lazy pundits claim? And there was no significant shift of Dems to Trump. There were Dems who stayed home. That may be what you're thinking of.

We agree that the OP is correct, but I believe that in a way it is misleading none the less. Misleading because Trump or any Republican never needs a majority of working class voters to coast to a victory, he just needed some inroads in this case. By the way, I didn't say "white people", I said "white men" - because although Democrats tend to hold their own among white women if not actually win a majority of them, among white men Democrats typically lose by a significant margin. So the white male vote for Democrats becomes like the Hispanic vote for Republicans. The trick isn't so much for either party to win the respective demographic, but to keep the losing margin relatively close compared to norms. If a Republican wins close to 40% of the Hispanic vote, for example, chances are he or she is coasting to victory.

You wrote; "And there was no significant shift of Dems to Trump." In regards to the popular vote that may be true, but the popular vote doesn't determine a Presidential victory, the Electoral College vote does. Due to how that is factored, and the winning margins in a few key states, I think the shift of Dems to Trump in those instances proved to be very significant. Of course so were Dems staying home.

I truly feel it's that shallow of a thought process.

We know a lot of them have anger issues, mental problems, cognitive defects or are sociopaths. So I think it's an apt diagnosis.

Never had to wait in line before and people I never saw before were wearing trump shirts...dirty people who didn't know how to use the voting machines. Asking for receipts because they had to show them to someone so they knew they voted. The trailers still have trump signs in front of them and the pick up trucks still have their bumper stickers. I guarantee there were plenty of rich people who voted for him because of taxes but the stupid in these rural areas were out in full force.

where the supposedly 'smart people' live.

guess money trumps smarts

I was unpleasantly surprised to see that.

But my city is heavy on bankers and lawyers. Not to mention NASCAR and NBA stars.

Sigh.

based on reading the exit polls. Media memes are one thing. To then use that false narrative to remake the Democratic party is another.

in 2012, Mitt Romney had a higher percentage of voters in the $100,000+ category than Trump did in 2016. Trump benefited bigly from an increase in white working class voters. A good part of that was due to racism and/or sexism.

For example – in my upper middle class town in Connecticut, Romney won in 2012 by almost 7 points. In 2016, overall turnout in my town was up a tiny bit over 2012 and Clinton won by almost 12 points.

In the depressed Housatonic River Valley towns of Ansonia, Derby and Shelton, Obama won by less than 1% in 2012. However, in 2016, Trump won by over 13 points. Democratic turnout was down a small amount overall, but Trump won over 18,000 total votes vs Romney getting just under 15,000, an improvement of about 3,400 votes. This was a story in numerous locations in Connecticut – Clinton winning the cities by slightly less than Obama, winning the suburbs by more than Obama, but Trump making big gains in rural or depressed areas.

So, maybe it did not play out that way everywhere, but the rural voters in CT made it closer in 2016 than it was vs Romney in 2012. But, in remembering election night, the panhandle towns in Florida voted very heavily for Trump with higher turnout than in 2008 and 2012 as well. So, I'm pretty sure Connecticut was not alone.

Trump won the 50-100k crowd, the tradesmen who are just as arrogant and lazy as the Conman.