Opinion | The 2016 Exit Polls Led Us to Misinterpret the 2016 Election - The New York Times

 White working class voters are now strongly "populist" - which is to me means racist and xenophobic.   But they carried the election (thanks to our unrepresentative system) for a minority candidate.

How to right that ship is the most vexing problem for liberals.

Why do more than 60% of white working class voters think that discrimination against whites is a bigger problem than that against African Americans or Hispanic Americans?  Can such attitudes be changed?  Obama had some success with his we're all in this together message.  The problem grows in severity as Trump "normalizes" blatant racism.  - gwc

Opinion | The 2016 Exit Polls Led Us to Misinterpret the 2016 Election - The New York Times

by Thomas Edsall

The Pew study, in contrast, found that the white working class cast 44 percent, or 60.1 million votes, of all the 2016 votes for president — 13.5 million more votes than in the Edison Research exit polls.

At the same time, Pew found that whites with college degrees made up 30 percent of the total electorate, not the 37 percent reported in the exit polls. In other words, Pew found that white working-class voters outnumbered white college voters among all voters, while the exit polls reported just the opposite.

These numbers have powerful ramifications for both Democrats and Republicans preparing for the 2018 and 2020 elections.

By showing that the white working class makes up a larger proportion of the electorate than previously reported, the Pew report — taken together with similar results in a study sponsored in November 2017 by the liberal Center for American Progress — strengthens the case made by Democratic strategists calling for a greater emphasis on policies appealing to working class voters and a de-emphasis on so-called identity issues.