Much of the analysis about the 2016 election has focused on Democrats’ failure to connect with a particular group of economically-marginalized voters: white working-class Americans. The analysis of Democratic performance in this context offers some accurate observations, while failing to provide a comprehensive assessment of the role of one’s economic status in voting behavior.
There have been countless news stories analyzing the role of the white working class in this election, but what do analysts, politicians, and the media mean by this term? Some use whites without a college degree as a basis. Others focus on income levels, like people earning less than $50,000 per year. By the first measure, Trump trounced Clinton. According to exit polls, white voters without a college degree composed 34 percent of the electorate and Trump wont 67 percent to Clinton’s 28 percent among them. If you assume about 130 million voters turned out last Tuesday, that amounts to about 29.6 million voters from this group casting ballots for Trump, as opposed to just 12.4 million for Clinton.Defining “white working-class”
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