Trump Voters Are Not
Who You Think They Are
During
this past presidential election season, pundits and pollsters were tempted to
draw a demographic picture of an average Donald Trump supporter and put them in
a box that would be easy to categorize. The adjectives “poor,” “white,” “old,”
“uneducated,” “rural” and “racist” tended to come up again and again.
Unfortunately
for the pollsters and pundits, the spectrum of people who actually voted for
Trump ended up being much broader and more diverse than they had anticipated.
And in the end, there were also a healthy number of defectors from the
Democratic Party who decided in this election cycle to support Trump.
Perhaps
the biggest notion that pollsters miscalculated was the median household income
of the Trump voter. Following the election, that number was judged to be
$72,000 per year.
At first
it was estimated to be much lower, but as state totals rolled in and Trump
ended up winning over states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania that no Republican
had managed to declare victory in since 1988 it became obvious that Trump’s
message on jobs and the economy resonated not just with poorer voters but also
middle-class ones, who in many cases have seen their inflation-adjusted incomes
stagnate or fall over the last 20 years.
In fact,
when you think about it, do you know anyone with a job paying more than $20 per
hour where the wage is higher now than it was 20 years ago, adjusted for
inflation? It’s true that minimum- and low-wage job pay has risen, but not at
the same rate as inflation. For all these jobs, wages have remained steady or
gone down while rent, food, health insurance, tuition and virtually all other
costs have skyrocketed.
Effectively,
these people lost ground financially, and this has resulted in a tremendous
anger at Democratic politicians and policies that have enabled this. Popular
books such as the runaway bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance have
pointed out the huge inequities that have resulted in poverty and a raft of severe
social ills that have particularly afflicted working-class communities where
support for Trump was strong.
In
addition, lower- and middle-income voters could see that Trump’s commitments to
lower taxes and terminate free-trade agreements would benefit them more than
Hillary Clinton’s vague promises of things “staying the same” and ominous hints
at passage of the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) and other free-trade
agreements.
Not only
was the writing on the wall regarding jobs and wages, but it was also clear
that Trump was serious about fixing immigration policy. This issue not only
affects employment, but it also impacts safety, a huge concern for minority and
inner-city voters, who voted for Trump in volumes that were double what Mitt
Romney’s numbers were in the election of 2012.
Women also
voted for Trump in larger-than-expected amounts because of Trump’s promises to
overhaul Obamacare and deliver maternity leave programs championed by his
daughter Ivanka. In addition, there was likely a revulsion for Hillary Clinton,
who claimed to be a defender of female liberation but turned out to have taken
money from groups and countries that are among the worst abusers of women’s
right in the world.
The myth
that people voted for Trump because of racism is just that — a myth. At the end
of the day, racism (or the lack thereof) doesn’t put money in people’s pockets,
and that was the number one issue for most Americans.
The idea
that Trump voters are made up of groups of Ku Klux Klan and other hate group members
is a patently false one that just isn’t supported by facts. First of all,
sympathizers and members of hate groups make up only about one-tenth of one
percent of the U.S. population, and secondly, Trump has thoroughly repudiated
their support time after time.
If Trump
was really a racist, would he have a “New Deal for Black America”? Would he
have retained Dr. Ben Carson as an advisor to his campaign? Why weren’t all the
contestants on The Apprentice program white?
The
connections between Trump and racism are nonexistent, and it’s repugnant to
suggest that there are any; this is a smear that’s been invented by Democrats.
For the Democratic Party, it’s much easier to say that racism is the reason for
Trump’s election because then, racism can become the main topic of
conversation, rather than jobs, wages or the economy — issues that they’re
lacking any credibility in after the horrific last eight years of the Obama
administration.
The
impression that Trump voters were less educated than the average American
citizen is also wrong; exit polls showed that roughly 44 percent of Trump
voters have college degrees — that’s roughly 50 percent higher than the
national average for all Americans, which stands at 29 percent. It’s clear that
Trump voters don’t fit into the stereotype of people who aren’t fully informed
about the nation’s ongoing political issues.
And
finally, although Democrats are loath to admit it, there were former supporters
of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders who just couldn’t stomach voting for
mainstream, lobbyist-connected candidate Hillary Clinton. The idea of Trump as
a political outsider — a non-Washingtonian with anti-corporate and
anti-globalist policies — appealed to a certain percentage of these people and
drew their unexpected support.
Indeed, as
with “Reagan Democrats” in the 1980s, these so-called “Trumpocrats” switched
parties to vote for a candidate they felt was less corrupt, more honest, less
beholden to special interests and more connected to common people.
In the
end, Trump drew on a much wider array of voters than pundits expected and drew
more supporters from more areas in more states than pollsters had predicted. In
fact, if you look at the map of counties that Trump won, the only contiguous
clusters of Clinton-won locales appear to be on the West and East coasts,
reinforcing the idea that the Democratic Party is shifting from a national
organization to a regional one.
Although
Clinton claimed she won the popular vote by nearly two million people, if you
subtract the number of illegal aliens who voted, it’s highly likely that Trump
won this vote in addition to the electoral vote.
It’s easy
for Democrats to try to throw a net around Trump voters and claim that they’re
all alike and that they all fall into a bunch of neat, pre-drawn categories.
But the truth is that they’re drawn from all walks of American life, and that’s
what makes Trump’s support so strong. Moving forward, it’s important that Trump
hears from all these voices and can deliver solutions and policies that will enrich
and enhance their lives.
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