Per a recent study of Trump’s 2016 general election supporters, only about 1/3 of them were what might be considered working class or lower middle class (making at or less than the median national income of $50,000). A previous study mentioned in the same article made similar findings for Trump’s primary supporters within the GOP.
This seems to make sense, since despite Trump talking about coal miners as though they were a huge section of the U.S. workforce, they were a relatively small group even before Obama took office (70,000 in 2003 on a steadily declining trend).
I wish the article had a little more detail. Did Trump get more previously non-voters who fall in the high school education but with income over $50,000. Also, did he receive a larger percentage of high school educated voters, making $50,000 than Romney.
From my very small sample size, I’ve noticed that the loudest Trump supporters come from that group of people who have a decent job, but don’t have a college degree.
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This seems a very unremarkable stat. By and large Trump got the same kind of voters GOP presidential candidates have generally gotten in recent elections. By and large Clinton got similar ones to what Democrats usually get. Most people in the US are not ‘economically disadvantaged’. And as to partisan split, to simplify somewhat, the Democrats generally have an advantage at lower incomes levels, though along with an advantage among a smaller number of voters at quite high (not necessarily at extremely high) income levels. And the GOP typically has the advantage in between.
There was obviously some change in voting pattern from 2012 or else Trump wouldn’t have won. But the changes were at the margin as they usually are in ‘startling’ results in US politics.
I don’t see any reasonable inference prior to reading the ‘study’ that would have predicted an outright majority of Trump voters were ‘economically disadvantaged’. 1/3 sounds like it could be justified depending how you define it. I think you could probably say it was a smaller proportion with other reasonable definitions of ‘economically disadvantaged’.
There was a bunch of polling stating this during the election - I’m sure I brought them up at the time.
That said, not I have the same definitions as these researchers. A plumber or electrician can easily make over $50k and I would have thought most people would still consider them “working class”.