by Thomas Edsall
***Nate Silver, founder and editor of the FiveThirtyEight website, wrote “The Mythology of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support” in the midst of the primary fight for the Republican nomination.
“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,” Silver pointed out, “well above the national median household income of about $56,000.”
Silver’s argument is accurate insofar as it goes, but it does not go far enough.
In the primaries, Trump’s voters were more affluent than the general electorate. But among Republican primary voters, the core of Trump’s support was among those with the lowest level of education and, in most cases, the lowest income levels.
Take a look at the exit polls from the March 1 Virginia primary. Trump beat his closest competitor, Senator Marco Rubio, among those without college degrees, 43-25, while Rubio beat Trump among those with degrees, 37-27. Trump beat Rubio 39-25 among voters making less than $100,000 but Rubio beat Trump 40-27 among those making more than $100,000. The same pattern was repeated over and over again in primaries across the country.
Trump’s strongest support in the primaries and in the general election came disproportionately from the least well educated whites — those who, as Acemoglu and Autor argue, are most vulnerable to the economic dislocation resulting from automation, the rise of a robot work force, global trade and outsourcing.
In an email, Autor describes how the two explanatory models dovetail. He starts with a question:
Do you think non-college, non-urban whites would feel so dislocated if their job prospects were strong and their wages rising?
He then goes on to point out that
all of these observations — authoritarianism, racism, cultural dislocation — have relevance. The only claim that’s irrelevant because it’s already been disproved is that economic factors were unimportant to Trump’s victory.
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