Racism and anti-immigrant fervor were obviously an important factor in the 2016 election, but I don't think they explain everything. For example, I'd like to see how popular Donald Trump's TV programs and beauty pageants were in Dravosburg, Elk County and similar rural/small town, nearly all-white areas in the Midwest. My guess is that they were very popular there, and those people essentially voted for a TV star. They thought he really was the forceful, super-competent leader they saw on the screen. Essentially, they were taken in by a con man. And Trump was able to win their votes by stirring up hate and anger.
9
It is interesting that the author of this piece as well as the authors of the study choose to ignore the fact that support for Trump was higher than for Romney across the board in PA, MI, WI and OH. Clearly it is about more than race if communities with only 10% white voters chose to vote for Trump at a higher rate than Romney. The tired saw "It's the economy, stupid" seems an apt assessment of the facts.
Figures don't lie - liars figure.
6
Liberals talk about white working class people the way republicans talk ghettos: as though there is something irredeemable wrong with them that only exclusion and shaming can remedy the problem. Opioid addicted former steel workers are liberal version of the 'single mothers addicted to crack' sneer.
11
White + voting for Trump does not necessarily equal racist. Even Michael Moore, who I do not care for, on Meet the Press warned that his "Michiganders" were supporting Trump and he was begging them not to. He said "I understand wanting to burn the system down. I want to burn the system down too! But don't burn it down with this guy (Trump)!". I think Clinton was seen as corrupt system insider that so many voters detest regardless of race.
This article is a ridiculous over simplification and paints people as 2 dimensional. Many black voters did not like Hillary Clinton and did not vote for her for the same reason that white voters did not. The difference was the white voters voted for Trump and the black voters either voter third party or did not vote.
Oh BTW, thanks 2016 election for making me quote Michael Moore in a positive light!
11
"In 2012, Dravosburg backed Barack Obama over Mitt Romney 441 to 312, or 53.4 percent to 44.8 percent.
Four years later, the men and women of Dravosburg abandoned their Democratic loyalties and backed Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, 56.3 to 41.1."
Maybe they didn't like the idea that Hillary, who lived in a town that had a 0.94% African-American population, was busy calling her opponent's supporter racists. Why were they racists? Many wanted their neighborhoods and towns to have, oh I don't know, less than a couple percent African-American residents. They wanted to keep their towns looking like Chappaqua New York - no harm in that is there?
6
White minority rule in the House, Senate and White House, coupled with ongoing widespread efforts to suppress the minority vote. Welcome to South Africa circa 1965.
7
56 to 41 isn't the same as 98 to 2, which is what see for Black-on-Black voting for Obama. So who are the bigots?
11
So a certain cohort of white voters were OK with a black man but not OK with a white woman. Must be racism.
16
So, apparently wanting a SAFE neighborhood and a job means one is racist, right?
11
Color of skin is not the issue, but crime is. Why don't you like in the South Bronx?
7
same could be said for black on black or Hispanic on Hispanic voting Yawn.
9
So what do you suggest Mr. Edsall? Sending all us white folks to Relocation, uh I mean Reeducation camps?
7
Any different from blacks voting for Obama?
6
Conclusion : More White an area, more fearful they are of others. Areas that ar 97-100% white are the most fearful of others and flocking to a most depraved liar and fraud, Trump.
4
NYT is a bastion supporting ethnic pride...provided you’re not white.
Your op ed section would drive even fairly moderate whites away from the Democrat Party.
10
As a white myself, I guess I can say this: Whites are stupid. To elect a reality-show star to the presidency is incredibly stupid; yet people are not presented with good voices, ever. Presidents just get worse over time. So do candidates.
3
And they will very likely all get what they voted for. A massive tax cut for the wealthy paid for on their backs. Polluted air and water. Racism. Sexism. And, if their really lucky, a globe destroying WWIII.
This is what happens when you combine ignorance and deer-in-the-headlights true believers. These people couldn't care less that Trump is a Russian.
Ironic that Trump is holding a child in his hands. A child doomed to a scorched earth thanks to it's parents massive stupidity.
Morons the lot. And we all get to pay for it when the planet dies.
12
The new "White Flight" ....?
1
Ho-hum. More White Shaming.
Not surprising.
BTW...genius.......when Barrak "dont call me Barry" Obama was running.....it was the so-called "white" vote that elected him, too.
The 10-15% so-called "black vote" was a given. Only because times have changed and most "white" voters are willing to consider a candidate packaged as "black"......did Barrack "dont call me Barry" Obama become President.
Fun Facts to consider....
1790....1st US Census......finds America to be 75% "White"...and 25% other(slave, indin, foreigner)..........
Over the years, the DNC has learned to incorporate numerous other classifications to create faceless tribal identities and control voting patterns. The so-called "white" vote has resisted all those tribal categories.
2010....22nd US Census.....America remains 75% "White"... and 25% black, gay, asian, hispanic, native american, non-white hispanic, handicapped, etc, etc.............
The DNC has done a fantastic Tammany Hall vote of convincing the 25% that they emphatically dont want to be classified as "white".
But In America....you still cant win an election without appealing to the so-called "White" Vote.
3
So, how many blacks supported Clinton and Obama, perhaps the is a racial motive lets investigate!!!!
4
I don't think so. Yes that is there but they voted for Obama twice. Veteran suicides. Opioid overdoses. Suicides. Well paying jobs. The dems did not recognize that these people have been hurt and they need and deserve to be acknowledged.
It is amazing how Trump has screwed up the whole dynamic of trade with asia. We need world trade. We need it regulated.
It scares me too but I think we need a revival of the union movement.
1
Thank you for a well-written and enlightening article.
I wondered what Trump supporters meant when they said they liked Trump because Trump was plain spoken and not PC. Nicholas Valentino's paper explained that so clearly. Republican presidential candidates from Nixon to Romney had used racial dogwhistles because explicit, racially hateful statements angered and disturbed voters who viewed themselves as racially tolerant and were reluctant to identify themselves as supporting, or even condoning, a candidate's explicitly racist statements.
What Trump supporters call PC, many would call hypocritical -- they would respond to a racially hostile dog whistle but considered themselves racially tolerant because they rejected politically incorrect, explicit appeals to racism. In 1980, CBS would have denounced Ronald Reagan as a racist if he would uttered the same remarks as Donald Trump did in 2016. Fox cheered Trump remarks in 2016 while CBS and the mainstream media played soundbite after soundbite without ever denouncing Trump as a racist.
5
It’s a year already since Trump was elected . When will I stop saying , “ I can’t believe Trump is POTUS “ ? To add to it all , I actually know people who voted for him ! I think one big issue that I haven’t seen discussed are people who did not vote because they figured no one is gonna vote for Trump and didn’t think their vote would make a difference or was needed . I thought Trump , tops , would get of the vote !!!
1
As a scientist I can recognize when an author has to "torture the data" (as we called it) in order to support his or her hypothesis. If those charts convince you of the argument made in this piece, then I guess you're a lot more generous than I. How about this hypothesis: Those voters in these white places who voted for the black Barack Obama saw a charismatic candidate who gave them something to hope for, but then later they simply were less enthusiastic about the white Hilary Clinton who did not impress them with her message. Maybe not everything is about race.
8
I long for the end of the excessive demographic analysis trying to unearth why a precinct/town/city/state voted a particular politician into office.
6
"As the public discourse around issues of social welfare, immigration,"
Public discourse around immigration? Try and raise the issue illegal immigrants and see how many NY Times OP-ED supporters refuse to even say the words "illegal immigrants" - like Reagan refused to utter the acronym "AID".
4
Edsall has hit upon a really fascinating relationship to think about: the whiter the community, the more noticeably its voting jumped from Obama to Trump. But his analysis is pure speculation, grasping at straws, and targeted to find a racial motivation. The statistic cited is the percentage increase from a tiny minority to a somewhat larger tiny minority. Put your mathematical hat on. Edsall's racial factor grows mathematically larger and larger when the minority population is smaller and smaller. If a community has only one, lonely minority resident, its rate of growth is 100% if that doubles to two.
The 2016 election wasn't about Trump, alone, nor his racist, sexist, xenophobic, nationalistic appeals. It was also about Hillary Clinton. In the weeks following the election pundits commonly asserted that the election was a vote against Hillary (a known quantity), more than it was a vote for Trump (a then-unknown quantity). Where has this analysis gone? Anti-Hillary thinking was fueled by fake news. Remember all of those murders Hillary was reported to have committed? The statistical relationship that this essay explores is interesting. So lets analyze it with the depth that it deserves and consider all of the relevant possibilities.
2
'" Put another way, anger, fear and animosity toward immigrants and minorities was most politically potent in the communities most insulated from these supposed threats ". They just can't say it . The Media ( mostly White males ) will admit that women still face discrimination and increasingly will agree that homosexuals encounter harms ,but when it comes to racism they just can't say the word .
So , while the Media has promoted the lie that Trump ( I prefer calling him Hump ) won because all of a sudden the middle class was fed up with the status quo and rebelled it was obvious that his victory signaled that racism and the number of racists in our Country remains strong and numerous . This research was an exercise whose result was already known. White Americans are and have always been the reason the church , the neighborhood , the schoolhouse , workplace , and social club continue to be segregated and their willingness to ignore the opportunity to elect the first woman and elect someone so unfit as President ( the national disgrace ) proves racism remains just as popular as Apple Pie , but the Media is loath to say it .
3
if these very high percentage white municipalities vote trump because they were concerned about the rapid influx of minorities then this is actually cause for hope. the influx of minorities was highly apparent because the initial number was low, but the next time around the same influx of minorities well be less noticeable and over time even less noticeable. as these high percentage municipalities come to resemble their more diverse counterparts we can expect that their voting patterns will change to match them.
I'd be more impressed with Edsall's "racial" explanation/analysis, if he had also compared how these towns voted for George Bush and then Barack Obama. If 70 more votes (approximately the change in Dravosburg) went for Obama than for Bush (which they may or may not have), what would he have concluded? That it was somehow an anti-racist wave? People complain that we are increasingly polarized -- which we are -- yet this column feeds into that narrative and, worse, without supporting evidence.
Edsall makes it about Left vs.Right, as well as about white vs. everybody else. Perhaps he should talk with the 70 people whose votes shifted and ask them why they switched from Democrat to Republican in 2016? Perhaps his "analysis" should factor in such things as Obama's charisma, a nation tired of Bush's Iraq War, the 2008 economic meltdown, the choice of Sarah Palin, the aura of entitlement projected by Hillary Clinton's campaign, the fact that in 2016 neither party offered much in the way of solutions but the Republicans were much better at slogans, the fact that even in the alleged Democratic wave in the recent Virginia election more than half the people didn't even bother to vote.
Edsall might also consider the fact that, while we are all hyphenated Americans of one sort or another, the Democrats in the past several decades have tended to identify (and organize) around the adjectives preceding the hyphen, while the Republicans have largely identified as the noun, American.
5
Concerned Citizen - You miss the point of the analysis. It isn't the person for whom you are voting, it is the issues. White enclaves might have voted for a black man, but as population shifts, the issues of crime and immigration resonate with the people who fear change.
1
I don't want to believe that counties that elected Mr. Obama turned out 4 years later and voted for Trump because of race.
Voters last year and in the near future are looking for insurgent candidates. France elected Mr Macron. Voters in Central Europe and even in Africa, Asia are electing anti-establishment candidates.
The signal was sent here in the U.S during the primaries. Trump and Sanders were the candidates drawing the most grassroots support. Republicans tried hard to destroy Trump support but couldn't.
Democrats (the DNC & superdelegates )who voluntary or involuntary suffered from CAS (Clinton Addiction Syndrom) were successful in barring Mr. Sanders from getting the nomination.
Second, Clinton gender was, in my opinion, a good reason why some people did not vote for her. Most voters who went for Trump after voting for Obama in 2012 were male. In small and rural communities, whether it's here in the U.S, in Europe, Africa or Asia, people (mostly men )would not vote for a woman as commander in chief.
The third reason is CLINTON. People just don't like her and it's not like she 's done anything to change that. From using a private email server to giving $400.000 speeches after leaving the Obama administration, to her lack of authenticity, she was too toxic, too establishment in a year when voters were looking for a candidate that will change a system that they think is rigged against them.
Trump won because Ms. Clinton wasn't the right candidate.
4
Correlation is NOT causation.
Example : US Spending on science, space and technology correlates to
R =99.79% with death by hanging , strangulations and suffocation
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
3
Not really. See white towns did vote for Trump. And the whiter the town the more they voted.
I’d love to see the connection between hanging and science spending
Ha! Wonderful! Not sure the "progressives" will get it though.
Thank you. Your essay nails it, Mr Edsall. I’ve had this observation myself since post-Election Day, pouring over state and county demographics online, because I study the two Americas.
I was born and raised in this very Trump belt, Upstate NY, which would have also gone Red be it not for NYC, and lived my adult life in the great coastal city. So I get both. And I see this election as a huge tipping point as you say, because now the Northern Tier demographic, the furthest from the Wall that Trump campaigned on, is the last part of the country where a majority of working class whites voted against their traditional party.
The bloc is complete - white people that have spent their lives living among nothing but other white people like them voting to keep it that way at all possible costs. Add algorithmically constructed voting districts to take advantage of the great rural real estate advantage, and you have a country that could be locked in this atavism for years to come. This change began with Reagan and now peaks with Trump. They played a very long game and won.
It going to take a long game to get back on track.
Again.
9
But of course, the same people who VOTED FOR OBAMA -- hence, were not racists 8 years ago -- are now racist for voting for Trump.
They BECAME racists just recently.
Also: if you vote for an old rich white WOMAN...you are not a racist. If you vote for an old rich white MAN...you ARE a racist.
Got it.
24
it's certainly arguable that some (many?) voted as they did based on economic considerations. But it's hard to escape the fact that only one of the candidates insisted tbat a judge couldn't be objective since he is of Mexican heritage!
1
No. Their communities started to change and they began to be AWARE of that change. As people of color became more dominant in their visual landscape they decided maybe they didn't like it at all.
It wasn't about a rich old white man or white woman. It was about the MESSAGE. That "those people" were the cause of all their problems. That if we could just go back to the 1950s "when things were good" and "those people weren't causing so many problems then everything would be better.
It is telling that the very people who have the LEAST diversity in their lives were the most moved by the "build the wall" message. They weren't clamoring for jobs! They were clamoring for people to stick it to those "those people" whom are different than us.
1
Well yes, they've always been racists. Just like the white racist, anti Catholic Southern bigots voting for Jack Kennedy in 1960. " Lets get this country moving again" and "hope and change" promising economic prosperity to all attracted enough whites willing to put aside their prejudices, fears.
1
"In 2000, Elk had a population of 35,112 ... By 2016, Elk’s population had fallen to 30,480 ..."
I'd say that much of the electoral reversal in these places is a result of brain drain. Don't know how to verify that, but maybe Edsall could explore it. Sure, the grave claimed some of those brains, but where did the others migrate to?
2
Also: good paying jobs drying up.
2
When I visit the small, extremely white town where I was raised in Iowa, I go for long walks and rage at the Trump signs in the yards (still up). But these people are also part of my history and I want to understand them. My town looks like a Disney set: literally white picket fences line yards with happy dogs and smiling children. My sense is that these people, my neighbors, feel like this way of life is slipping away from them. I also know from comments shared with me - certainly because I'm white -
that the influx of minorities from Chicago and other cities are perceived as hastening the decline. Now stay with me because this next part is tough. The diversity happening in this town does not appear to be a positive one. There is increased crime. I think theoretically these people know all people are created equal but that in reality our first murder happened when they started seeing brown people. I AM NOT SAYING THIS IS ACCURATE AND CORRECT. But the people in my town have not been exposed to racially diversity in the same way I have (living in Atlanta, NYC, Las Vegas and Miami). I don't know how to get them to see the larger picture, to understand that success and failure comes in all different colors and nationalities. But I do know that writing them off as racist idiots is going to accomplish nothing.
20
Sharp comment
Since beginning of time, people naturally, understandably want their leaders to look like, to represent them. Modernly, it’s called identity politics. Nothing wrong or new about this. For this reason, it is blindingly clear why homogeneous societies survive, mongrelized societies do not.
9
When you make racial and cultural identity a centerpiece, why assume that whites are, or should be, immune? The civil rights movement in the 60s was for more effective because it stressed the universality of human experience, rather than the localized hypersensitivity that is so alienating these days.
I do not view civil rights leaders these days as doing anything but trying to carve out the inviolable territory of "their" group. How inspiring.
11
From inside the echo chamber Mr. Edsall cannot see other ways that “that previously forbidden “overt expressions of racial hostility” have become acceptable in politics.”
I voted against the man I know to be an extreme psychopath. But seeing Hillary on stage with Al Sharpton and the parents of attempted cop killer Michael Brown - of the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie - made her even more racially inflammatory than Trump. And lauding Black Lives Matter?
What do we want?
Dead cops.
When do we want it?
Now.
10
BLM is not about killing cops. That is perverse logic. When blacks don’t want to be killed by cops for no reason or flimsy reason, how is that same as dead cops? Yes, Cops have a difficult job to separate the black thug from a regular black guy. But that’s the job they chose and the risk they chose to take. They can’t kill innocent blacks and expect to get away with it like they did before the cell phone camera days.
Whether you like it or not this country is diverse and can’t be reversed. So it is better that we all grow to respect everyone else and be open to learning about the others .
2
Completely agree. And BLM IS a hate group, whether NYT admits it or not.
1
What is the lie of hands up don't shoot?
1
I believe that there are many white people out there (and some in here) who are in denial about the extent that racism and bigotry still exist in this country.
I'm not saying that a huge swath of white Americans are tiki-torch burning, Hitler hair wearing, out-loud racists, but there a lot more than people probably realize who look at those 'crackpots' in Charlottesville, nod, and find at least some common cause. And many older white Americans who preferred it when 'folks' weren't so 'uppity', didn't 'complain so much', and 'knew their place'. Like my own grandfather who used the N word so much that when I was 3 years old, thinking that it was a perfectly normal word, used it to address a black boy at the playground in front of his parents. My mother apologized to them profusely and a while later laid down the law to him - cut it out or you'll never see your grandchildren again. Then there was the firearm and hunting outfitter store, whose owner thought it was perfectly fine to have some mannequins displayed dressed in authentic historical military uniforms - including the one wearing an original Nazi uniform, and the one right next to it in a creepily accurate looking white cloak and hood of the KKK.
These stories I describe from my childhood happened in deep blue Connecticut, by the way.
The first step in solving any problem is admitting you have one.
11
I heard a black rapper said white people are being afraid. I though he was crazy, but he was right.
4
The liberal press is obsessed with white and Christian voting, conducting endless poll and analyses often with the hidden implication that there is something not politically correct about it. Why don't they give the same attention to other races and religions?
10
Here is one of the unmentionable reasons why Clinton lost the last election: this is an article that appeared in the Times last November. This was in a “battleground” state and these were African American voters. They did not vote in the past election : https://nyti.ms/2k1R3os
3
Mr. Edsall often spends his time studying white voters like lab rats. When will he scrutinize, analyze, and otherwise parse black voters, Hispanic voters, or Asian voters with the same intense detail, the “what makes them tick?” sort of detail? In other words, do they vote along racial lines? I think they do, and it’s pretty obvious when 90% of blacks vote for the Democrats who regularly demonize “working class” whites as “racists”, etc. If Trump sent racial dog whistles to white folks last year, the Democrats sent out their own to non-white people - and just as the Times does nearly every day, including today with this dog whistle to non-whites by Mr. Edsall.
The racial divide and hostility in this country is like a divorce, folks: the other spouse is always at fault until both realize it takes two to tango.
14
How can minorities vote for a party that has the entire white supremacists and klan voting for it? How can the minorities vote for a party that never even bothers to listen their issues and offer solutions? How can the minorities vote for a party that demeans them at every chance by looking down at blacks as thugs and Hispanics as illegals?
The sad thing is the GOP used to split the educated And wealthy Asian vote. But they lost the Asian vote by being so anti-science, anti- minority in general(see above), anti- abortion and anti-LGBTQ,
It’s the GOP that has won only 1/7 most recent elections and even that lone win is by one state. So the majority is not with them. How long can they continue to win by using the slavery era EC?
3
Times as usual leaving out 21st American Version of the Invisible Man: Asian representations. Perhaps too awkward including disparate highly successful Indian, Korean Americans? And why zero full time Asian opinion Columnist?
14
Meant 21st Century.
1
so much for any illusion of a post-racial society
5
These “most insulated” white towns probably did not stay non-white only by accident, but by attitude and effort
8
You want to legislate other people's "attitudes"?
1
....how the last gasp of a small fraction of the electorate set the nation on such a dangerous and destructive course.
What an offensive diatribe! Obama received 95% of the black vote in 2008 & 93% in 2012, but you have no issue with that statistic.
The NYT is perfectly fine with voting along racial lines, as long as it benefits democrats.
13
The blacks have been voting for a white man who kept them enslaved, put them through Jim Crow and segregation for decades. when they have the first black man on a major party ticket ofcourse they are gonna vote for him. How is that wrong?
On the other hand the white people have been voting for a white person forever and when they found a black man on a major ticket many didn’t vote for him or voted for the white man in the opposite party. Go check the data, before you deny.
Why do you expect minorities to vote for a party that demeans them, their culture, mocks them? And ofcourse the party has the supremacists block who vote for the GOP. If anyone is playing identity politics it is the GOP. Why are they not even making a basic attempt to reach out to the minorities? They have even lost the Asian vote.
Democrats are too focused on the electoral impact of immigration along the southern border, focusing on CA, AZ, TX while ignoring the impact of immigration in the states mentioned here.
However, when an increase in a town's black population of just 29 people is enough to send the white folks running to vote for a NY City real estate billionaire, then there is little the Democrat can do or say or propose to change that. You can't teach stupid and the time is coming when it must no longer be politically incorrect to call voters stupid.
But not all voters.
Persons of color were elected mayor in predominantly white cities like Helena, MT., St. Paul, MN., and Topeka, KS., last week.
2
Liberals constantly miss the point and as a result an idiot like Trump gets in. The issue was illegal immigration and he was the only one that addressed that issue. The result, we are running backwards into a swamp that will take years to paddle out of. Until all the holier than thou liberals stop lecturing, many white voters will put their hands over their ears and hum. We are a constituency as well and many of us voted for and liked Obama. We are not all racists, we are not monolithic and until liberals get that and run a candidate who understands that being politically correct is not getting the job done.
22
And are they happy with the greedy man-baby they elected? He tried but failed to take away their health care, he is raising their taxes and he hasn't built that wall they fantasized about. Was all this turmoil really necessary so that they wouldn't have to see Hispanic men mowing their lawns or painting houses? Expect to see "Are we Great Yet?" bumper stickers soon.
5
Yet they all voted for Obama (*whispers* he wasn't white!) Interpretation: they voted for the "change" candidate both times (Obama and Trump), and against the business-as-usual candidate (Romney, HRC) both times. Whose got the racial blinders on?....
12
Didn't Obama receive something like 90%+ of the black vote? Talk about voting your race!
13
So the blacks shouldn’t vote for the first black man on a major party ticket? This when the blacks have for all their life only voted for a white man who has enslaved them, segregated them, denied them civic rights etc. If you are the better person among the GOP then any wonder why the blacks don’t vote for the GOP?
2
The NYT and the Washington Post along with CNN spen a whole lot of effort rationalizing the lear election> The answer is simple but little is asked, Why did the Democrats run Hillary? The Russians, the FBI. they DNC din't cause the loss.
9
Has it ever occurred to Thomas B. Edsall and the New York Times that articles such as this one and the countless others that have appeared in the NYT is a major factor in driving these people into voting for DT. Nobody likes to be tossed around the way the NYT does to poor “white” communities. It is not fair, it is not right AND it puts the likes of DT in office.
17
Are you suggesting that ordinary people in these off-the-beaten-path white communities actually read articles like this? And even if they did, why would the take offense? Do you think they would prefer to be ignored? In any case, “Nobody’s listening to us” seems to be a common refrain, whether in rural Pennsylvania, the North of England or Saxony. I would have thought they’d welcome the attention.
Surely there is a self-selecting element here. The research published would bear out, I venture, that whites who are most racist will live in or migrate to places that are almost uniformly white. It's a bit of a chicken and egg story.
2
Of course racism plays no part in the clown being elected, its just a populist movement. Build that wall, build that wall, build that wall........!
1
The problem was Hillary. these same people voted for Obama four years earlier. But please keep up the race baiting nonsense you will guarantee Trump gets re-elected.
13
The problem was Hilary, is most clear when you consider that 53% white women voted for Trump. Hillary just wasn't authentic.
1
Such a bizarre line of thought. It's the author who is trying to push a race war. Maybe the people voted for Trump because, to condense it to a few words, Hillary is a crook.
But maybe the white voters were reacting to the overt and truly dangerous acts of those who where vociferously agitating for non white power and influence, like the riots of the Black Lives Matter movement, or the deadly attacks on police in Dallas, Texas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or the other deliberate smaller attacks on police in other cities. Of course the terrorist attacks on behalf of the Islamic faith have nothing to do with people's perceptions.
Or maybe they were reacting to the monolithic liberal media that absolutely refused to acknowledge that Michael Brown was indeed a violent thug who viciously attacked a white police officer in his car and tried to take his service weapon. Maybe they remember that the Obama White House sent representatives to this thug's funeral to honor his memory.
Or perhaps they are reacting to the narrative that has curiously sprung into life coinciding with the nation's first black president that the Constitution was written for and by white supremacist plantation owners whose sole purpose was to keep the black slaves on the plantation. Or maybe it is the rewriting of history in regard to Civil War monuments to honor the Confederate war dead.
What's the crime rate in the white enclaves of America you complain about?
12
As long as you're re-writing history, you neglected to mention that Trump took out full page ads in New York newspapers calling for a restoration of the death penalty for the Central Park Five who were convicted of assaulting a female jogger. Years later when the real criminal confessed to the crime, they were freed from prison and the tax payers of New York paid 40 million dollars in compensation. Did Trump admit his error, or did he condemn the police and prosecutorial misconduct which led to their sentence? No. In fact he, as usual, doubled down, claiming that they may have committed other crimes. And, what honor should we confer on those traitors whose criminal behavior amounting to treason? Should we also point out that many southern soldiers violated the laws of war by murdering black Union soldiers who had surrendered, as at Fort Pillow? Didn't the southern delegates argue that unless the 3/5's section was excluded from the constitution, they would leave the convention? Or, don't they teach these truths in southern schools for fear of upsetting juvenile myths?
2
How dare a black man BE President. Trumps campaign, and " election " in one sentence. Thanks, GOP.
3
And I'm certain that areas more than 85 percent black voted for Barack Obama...
10
Blacks voting for a black candidate - encouraged, no problem, a good thing, logical, etc. A Hispanic voting for a Hispanic candidate, same thing. A white person voting for another white person - aha, racist, hateful, must be addressed, can't be for any other reason than purely bad motive.
Ok, got it.
17
Last time I checked, Hillary is also white.
1
You miss the point. The issue isn't Trump's whiteness it is the racist, mysogonistic, xenophobic, phony person he is. There was nothing else remotely appealing about him. If there was something we missed please tell us.
2
Multiculturalism isn't easy nor is it natural. The most stable countries tend to be pretty homogeneous. Younger people have an easier time with societal changes like what's happening in our country because it's all they've known. Older Americans struggle because the world of their youth is gone and they don't understand their place in this new world.
These communities deserve compassion not contempt. Now that we understand what's going on perhaps we can find a way to reassure them. What we absolutely must not do is dismiss them.
We've all been there. You have a nice little community of friends and then all of a sudden a small group of people with completely different views comes in and all of a sudden your world is shaken and you don't know how to react. But you quickly realize that things will never be the same. Some of us adapt but many recoil.
9
You want multiculturalism then go to Canada when it is an accepted and promoted choice.
In the US we try for assimilation instead. We do want stability. We do want people who share our values.
What this shows is that the "republican" message has no appeal for these communities. That is why they did not vote for Romney who embodies ir (whatever you may think of it) with a certain integrity. What we saw in the last election is that the ideological and ethical bankrupts loosely referred to as the republican party can only get out a vote by waving the bloody flag of bigotry racism and the most hypocritical remnants of religiosity.
3
Why is it "bigoted" to want to live in a crime free neighborhood - to care about your own personal safety?
The damage is, also, the increased risk of racial polarization. African-Americans from 2016 onward, will trust white Americans -- all white Americans, even those who did not vote for Trump -- less than ever. The Republican Party may never recover even its small share of African-American voters; plus, as the recent elections in Virginia showed, white voters equally disgusted with the Republicans' growing reliance on racial resentment. In short, America is being pulled apart again just eight years after the election of Barack Obama seemed to offer at least the hope of a more united future. Donald Trump won an election, but the country lost. And the Republicans may end losing everything.
3
Why should I worry that blacks won’t trust whites, when they show time and again that they will vote purely along racial lines. 95% & 93% for Obama in 2008 & 2012, respectively?
We can't have a social safety net without border control. The world population is exploding and the US is the ultimate escape valve. People in shrinking circumstances sense it a lot earlier than others. At some point everyone will sense it.....
9
Mr. Edsall disappoints in this most recent effort. It would be far more interesting, in my view, to analyze how both parties use racial appeals and arguments.
For example, blacks are virtually a house organ of the Democratic Party, particularly when it presents a black candidate. Yet whites' far more cautious embrace of white candidates, particularly white Republican candidates, is viewed as sinister. Whites' support of Obama, which far exceeded black support of McCain and Romney, proportionately, is deliberately overlooked.
Also, we are told that Republicans are the benighted uneducated. Yet blacks, as a group, have considerably less formal education than whites. They, in turn, vote almost exclusively for Democratic candidates. What does this say about them, and about the Democrats who persist in making the "uneducated" argument?
10
Are you at all familiar with the southern strategy? The dog whistle politics the Republicans have engaged in over the past 50 years. If you were you probably wouldn't be wondering why the black vote is so heavily in favor of the Dems. We really have nowhere else to go.
3
White people may well be the victims they think they are, but it's not EEO and Affirmative Action or a competent black president they have to fear, it's the Republican party taking away their health care and giving their tax dollars to global corporations.
Civic ignorance grows thick when people don't understand how government works, whom to complain to, and how corporate tax policy trickles down to stiff the working class.
5
Are you sure you are reaching the right conclusion? The evidence may seem suggestive but it’s not conclusive. There are other issues potentially at play.
4
When you get a group of ' like ' people together, it is generally easier to get them to ' group think '. Years of progressive slow progress can be easily upended by a ' like ' firebrand politician. Especially when there is no local counter weight to them. Perplexing is the swing from Obama to Trump? Actually not so much. Without an immediate / local cultural threat it was easier to vote Obama, after all, what could he do to us here. He'll only muck up the cities. Bring in a Trump who peals away any inhibitions to blame others and then provides the bogeymen to target, well you've sown the seeds for a self reinforcing group think. This has been done over and over before.
3
This is Neo-Racism at the peak. Racism never died but it was minimized. Trump did not start the Neo-Racism . It started after Obama won the white house. The FOX TV, the right wing talk radio and the social media have been working hard for long time to raise the sense of white nationalism among the poor and middle class white Americans and Trump helped to bring to the peak. Neo-Racism is scary and dangerous for the country. We as a nation not going forward but going backward. Some people dream that slavery be back. The right wing and the Republicans know how to win the elections. The liberals and the Democratic Party know how to loose election. I am frustrated and scared.
3
Mark my words, Democrats; voters and politicians alike, who continue to grasp at conspiracies, foreign influence, racism, and any every explanation for this election that avoids even cursory self-examination, will come to regret this in 2020. You are far from blameless in the 2016 results.
- The attempts at forced orthodoxy on all political and social issues.
- The contempt for free speech in disagreement on any of said issues.
- The alienation and scapegoating of whites for all social ills
- The never-ending pandering of news and entertainment to progressives
- The knee-jerk accusations of "isms" and "phobias" to shut down arguments
- The demonization of all religions (short of one)
- The constant melodramatic outrage over every perceived thought-crime
- The self-righteousness that lets you justify even political violence
- The clearly hypocritical moral policing under the guise of "social-justice"
- The conflating of social-justice for social-revenge against "privileged"
The list of progressive excesses seems to keep growing, and yet, rather than reflect on it and make improvements so that actual policy shine though, most seem content to simply double down on insufferably.
It doesn't matter what your policy platform is when you are so intolerable that people are willing to throw the dice just to keep you from having power over them.
I personally don't want another four years of Trump, but if you don't wise up, we are going to get it!
9
I didn't know there are rules for how one votes. Scores of women voted for Bill Clinton because they thought he was sexy. I could have voted for Trump because he is a golfer, and I like golf. I'm sure Trump got votes because of his TV show. Obviously many women voted for Hillary because she's a woman. All I know is there was two candidates - both lilly white.
4
You attribute to much to race, a problem for democrates. Bad candidate who blew off all working class people cost the election. Working class people of all colors are looking for a break. Give it to them and you have a chance.
6
In this age of finding racism in everything, will the author do a study of black-on-black voting? or, the surrogate, black-on-democrat voting? It would be good to see all sides of this argument. Incidentally, blacks voting in a block is anything but diversity. Ditto for women (liberal women, anyway) voting for women because they are women.
How far do people such as Mr. Edsall want to take this thing? We are already becoming a country balkanized by race and extreme political positions.
9
Comparing how demographics voted for Obama doesn’t provide insight into election-over-election trends because his was (so far) a unique presidency that pitted our first African American major party candidate for that office against all comers. People voted issues that weren’t likely to come up again for a long time. It’s far more likely that we’ll see another female contender emerge long before we see another black one emerge, based purely on populations.
But Tom sees in Trump’s victory the left’s excuse for blowing it so badly in 2016: instead of being a complex mix of reasons, it was primarily one reason, that of color, that resulted in Trump’s victory. It wasn’t. While white fear undoubtedly played its part, the bigger reason was that both our parties clearly had failed to establish and maintain the conditions by which individuals could build contented and sufficient lives. Both parties were as decisively rejected in Trump’s election in places like Dravosburg, PA as in our black communities that went for Trump in larger numbers than the pollsters predicted.
Not surprising that both parties are re-thinking what they really represent, and some (like me) suggest that they’re in the process of dual burnings to the foundation with the contours of whose reborn Phoenixes we can’t yet predict. But if you focus excessively on “white-on-white voting”, you’re going to bury the lead and miss the train.
Trump wasn’t about skin color in a decisive way, he was about parties.
6
No, Trump was about anger - whether justified or not.
3
Tomorrow I'd like to see the same article about black on black voting and how they overwhelming moved towards Obama in the Democratic primaries.
15
Just shows the ignorance and racism in rural and suburban US. What an exceptional country.
1
Anyone who thinks there is not a strong element of racism in Trump supporters
is sadly deluded.
6
The article ended with "...the last gasp of a small fraction of the electorate set the nation on such a dangerous and destructive course." The last gasp? Oh, how much better we will all feel when the last gasp is over and these people have passed away. Is that your message? When Dems make warm and fuzzy statements about our increasingly diverse society, I hear the corollary about how it will be good when white people become just another minority. Trump is blowback for this contempt.
And note the last graph in the article. The red line representing the average change in Republican votes shows that the whitest 5% of communities voted 5-10% more for Trump than Romney. And these are the communities you claim are the "small fraction of the electorate set the nation on such a dangerous and destructive course." What rot! Clinton should have carried Ohio by 5%, not lost it by 5%. If she couldn't move the Ohio vote by such a margin she was doing something seriously wrong. Trump is a dangerous narcissistic blowhard, but Hillary dropped the ball for the Democratic party. The arrogance and stupidity of the Democratic Party lost this election. Stop blaming rural white people.
16
These communities are not immune from crime. They have less crime committed by non-whites. Drug abuse is rampant. Child abuse and domestic violence occur everywhere. Cars are stolen. And, some crime goes unreported and unrecorded.
4
Please compare the violent crime RATE of Salt Lake City or Iowa City or Grand Island, NE to the violent crime rate of Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans.
What a dismal picture of the state of white America this piece paints. I knew the election of Trump and this extreme Republican congress said many things about us we'd rather not know but the analyses since then, together with the rock solid almost cult-like support of many of these same whites for him, demonstrates an ugliness in the American character that I would never have thought existed on such a scale. Shame on us.
2
Before NYT readers become apoplectic over these findings, remember that most of you recoil at the thought of Republicans entering your circles of friends, your workplaces and your communities.
In other words, you get it.
8
clinton was huge negative factor for dems, biden/booker would have won ezpz
5
Biden/Booker was my dream ticket. They probably would have won, too.
1
I'm guessing you prefer the Booker half of that ticket. Booker was for cutting SS benefits, btw.
"...how the last gasp of a small fraction of the electorate set the nation on such a dangerous and destructive course."
So if blacks vote for Obama at a rate of over 90% we should cheer but if whites vote for Trump the world is coming to an end. OK, I get it.
14
This is a racist opinion piece, tossing blame on whites and white towns. The reality is that Trump lost because our system, correctly so, does not allow three or four states to decide who will be president. The Electoral College was created for that very reason. What is it you want to do, institutionalize the forced migration of races throughout the country?
8
That probably is EXACTLY what libs want to do.
Dravosburg is clearly being totally overrun by minorities. 29 new black residents (presumably at least some of whom are children...) and 13 new Hispanic residents (again presumably at least some of whom are children) over a mere 10 years? Crazy!! I mean, are minorities in the U.S. even allowed to have children or move to places claimed by lower-middle class white people in rust belt states? If they are, I'm sure the GOP is looking into how to change that...
1
It seems to me that you shot your own argument in the foot. You suggest that enclaves of whites can be made to vote a certain way due to racist beliefs, but then you mention that many of these same people voted for Obama. So which is it?
This is sounding more like sour grapes from Hillary supporters (who btw, I voted for). For you are suggesting that racism suddenly changed these particular voters from voting 'black' to voting 'white' the next go around. Maybe it was that they simply went with the non-Hillary vote.
8
Really ? Who knew?
Since the 1964 Presidential election the Republican Party has been the partisan political party of, by and for the privileged voting white majority except for Jews. Culminating with 57%, 59% and 58% of the white voting majority in 2008-McCain/Palin, 2012-Romney/Ryan and 2016-Trump/Pence. Trump/Pence ran for President and Vice-President of the Republican white people in America. Joining the life long government dole employment and benefit white welfare queens Paul Ryan in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate.
While beginning in 1964 the Democratic Party has been the preferred partisan party of, by and for a minority of white voters and a majority of all colored voters. Led by African Americans voting 90% Democratic.
3
A destructive path indeed, caused by a vile demagogue smart enough to exploit the fears of a given population ('whites', in our case), based on racial bias; this, even if the danger of non-whites was nonexistent in the real world; just the appearance of the chance of it occurring was enough when a gullible group of people, misinformed and easily manipulated emotionally, was faced with a choice: highly competent cerebral Hillary, or deeply incompetent but smart charlatan Trump exploiting the emotions of fear, hate and division created by a vacuum, the feeling of being left behind by a rapidly changing world in it's shared economy and technological/digital prowess. As you said, we are embarked in a dangerous and destructive course, remediable only when the current thug in the White House (and his enablers) is ousted. This deadly malaise, of our own making, has no solution otherwise, as we are faced with an 'old twisted tree' spewing poisonous fruits, indigestible even in the best of times.Who says Trump is not a naturally lying politician, intent in robbing you of your conscience if not your pockets, a self-serving proposition?
2
OMG! At the rate these areas are integrating, it could be only by 2,385 by the time there are more than 10% minorities in them! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
I live in Marin County...The "whitest community" in California. 85% voters for Hillary. We even have our own ghetto and barrio...All kept at a respectful distance in our "Golden Gated Community." We define white progressive privilege at its finest...The exception that doesn't prove the rule?
3
But why wasn't it an issue when majority black communities overwhelmingly voted for Obama and then many of those Obama voters abandoned Hillary? Why can black people vote based off of race but not white people?
9
Correlation does not equal causation.
I find it extremely illogical that whites who were comfortable voting for Obama suddenly turned into racists over the course of four years. One does not simply start goosestepping with nazis, racists, or whatever else you continue to call them after being quite content to put a black man into the highest office in the nation.
Was even a second of analysis put into the economic situation of the communities? A declining population screams out to me that it is probable that the local economy has been in decline and people are leaving for the cities rather than sit in abject poverty. Perhaps the answer is, as numerous Trump voters and independent voters have stated, is tied more to a desire to shift away from globalism and pro-corporate economics?
It's about the economy and almost always has been. Trump will lose support at a much faster rate for hurting the middle class and enriching the 1% at a than he will for limiting access for foreigners. One issue affects people's livelihoods and ability to make ends meet - the other affects some ideologues' ambitions for a utopia. Guess which one matters more for the majority of everyday Americans regardless of race.
6
Please relate this to the Va. results.
1
A good article that completely missed the point with racial myopism. No mention of sexism. HRC was the first serious presidential candidate in our country's history. Pedominantly white districts voted for a black man in 2012 but didn't vote for a woman in 2016. You can trot out all the reasons you want for this but none of them erases the fact that race didn't get in the way in 2012 while gender did in 2016.
8
If it were sexism, why would 53% white women NOT vote for Hillary.
1
Another well-researched piece from Edsall. When the American Dream is vanishing for you, stick with your tribe; blame someone else. Emotion “trumps” reason. Identity politics destroys class politics. These working class whites have consumed so much of the American Dream Kool-Aid that they can’t see that it makes no difference if you are white if you can’t pay the rent or buy food. These people are drunk on the myth of upward mobility and can’t see that their white privilege ticket has been appropriated by capitalistic greed and that the real issue is CLASS and not RACE.
Viewing things through a class lens (or the dreaded “S” lens) forces one to clearly see the statistical, objective reality (1% own half the world’s wealth; they hoard their money in off-shore tax shelters) rather than to drunkenly stare into the fog of myth (upward mobility) – which, when perceived as an American entitlement, doesn’t become reality, triggers the need to shrink into homogenous clans and to find scapegoats.
Class is a forbidden subject in America. It is antithetical to the American notion of itself (“exceptional“) to talk of class because class means economic divisions, and in the American consciousness divisions don’t exist because, according to the myth, there are no barriers to success in America if you work hard. All men are created equal. Steinbeck said, "the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Sober up America.
4
"None of the nation’s whitest municipalities and counties — especially those in the Trump-voting Midwest — is immune."
Then, explain Vermont. Vermont is the whitest state in the nation. This is not hyperbole. Vermont is the whitest state in the nation at over 97% white. Vermont is also rural, and economically the middle/working class and has been devastated over the last 40 years.
You cannot get more white on white voting than Vermont.
So, explain the last three Presidential elections of:
2008: McCain 30%
2012: Romney 31%
2016: Trump: 30%
8
Vermont also has the coolest whites in the country. I am always so jealous when I visit there.
1
I wonder how statistics interpret a person like me.
White; middle-America; rural; some college; not racist or fearful of 'others;' lost my career and future when my industry (newspapers - an industry that tanked during the recession and digital-technology explosion yet no one ever laments the plight of newspaper folks who lost everything and never recovered professionally or financially when their jobs went away - and there are tens of thousands of us); voted Obama; noticed how no one of power or influence gave a fig about my plight or offered any type of feedback, guidance or assistance in rebuilding my life; reinvented myself and now work for less than half of what I made in my previous life - and yet I had enough sense to see Trump for what he is and didn't vote for him because I sincerely believe you don't reward the worst of human behaviour with the highest office in the world. No one notices people like me. Because of where I live, I'm automatically thought to be a redneck Trump supporter and am dismissed and ignored by one side; yet because of my profession, automatically considered an elite liberal and therefore dismissed and ignored by the 'other' side.
Talk about feeling lost and alone. Oh well, enough pondering about how I fit in this country and back to my $12.50 an hour clerk job.
12
Ok, first of all we need to acknowledge that the Pretend King Trump did not win the election, he bought it. It was easy to buy electoral college votes, I know it is hard for one to swallow that we had nothing to do with the outcome. Secondly, these "white" voters have an underlined racial reason since former President Obama was elected twice and accepted by so many countries as the crowning moment for this nation. Talk about anger. They were livid that an African American would be chosen as the poster child for the USA. They have embraced the Pretend King Trump because they are seeing their world change: so-called anti-Christian laws like allowing gay marriage, factory work going overseas, not being able to pull out the religion card at work like the elected official who denied gay marriage certificates and countless other gripes. These supporters will not give up after all they are Americans and we don't give up a fight. They are willing to give up everything to survive because they are in survival mode. So what about the rest of us? If we do not want our young to go to a fabricated War, another one I mean, or a nuclear weapon going off or our young not being able to go to college and fulfill their dreams we need to get into survival mode. This is a fight we cannot afford to lose. We must resist.
1
If the electoral college could be "bought", Hillary would be president as she outspent Trump 10-1.
6
Thanks for another excellent column. But, who's really surprised by these conclusions? Not me. "Last gasps" of white hegemony are going to be dangerous and hostile, we all get that. The damage, that's the question. Politicians stroking fear and resentment to get elected is anti-American, in my opinion, as well as immoral. But, as the column points out, voting tendencies change. Is the damage long lasting? How can it be assessed? Aren't Americans open to diversity, in the end? Or will this damage worsen? Those are my concerns, which will probably only be addressed in the next elections. Again, good research, thanks.
1
After reading the article, I am struck by the following.
Areas which voted for a black presidential candidate over a white one, but which later voted for a male candidate over a female one are presumed to do so for racial reasons? Occam's Razor states that the simplest explanation is the one most likely to be correct, what about the idea that these areas did not like the idea of a female president?
I see very little evidence to the claim that these areas changed their voting practices due to racial discrimination except the author's presumption that the white suburbs, which voted for a black candidate, suddenly became racist against another white candidate.
13
It amazes me the sort of gymnastics in which political scientists, policy planners, and the like will engage to avoid discussing the one through line: white supremacy. The fact that white voters previously voted for Obama or that there existed two white candidates in 2016 does not enervate the strength of white supremacy. For one, white voters overwhelmingly preferred the white candidate whose entire discourse relied on whiteness as prime. You can critique the poor messaging of the Clinton campaign (true) ad nauseam, but to suggest that Trump/GOP policies bare parity to Clinton/Dem policies is a laughable comparison. Trump garnered votes both from so-called economically frustrated whites and their well-to-do brethren as well.
No candidate until Trump has conceived an image so well-defined by whiteness and whose perpetuity hinges on its continual renewal. Economic anxiety is a convenient excuse, but disregards this country's rich history of racial animus at the cost of even self-destruction. Remember that a section of the country dared self-ruin and offered to spill blood to upkeep black bondage. Remember that white homeowners chose to uproot whole lives than countenance a black neighbor. And when a black body is shot in 2017, a certain section of people would rather defend state violence than afford the dead dignity, or give it form at all.
3
I this think it’s more complex than that. Those Obama-turned-Trump voters, in my anecdotal, unscientific sampling, felt betrayed by the “system”, which brought them only negative change and no hope. So they voted to break the system. I doubt a lot of them realized that was what the Koch brothers and Adelson and other traitorous, anti-American plutocrats wanted—or cared if they did. They were bomb-throwers, really, and the divisions we see, the massive increase in incivility and overt manifestations of white racism, serve the purposes of the .01% quite well.
Only a Democratic landslide, preferably a leftist one, will begin to rectify that. And as others have noted, and it must be repeated ad nauseam, to accomplish that, we need the biggest Democratic voter turnout ever, because we know the deplorables will turn out in droves to keep their Dear Leader and his mendacious minions in power.
3
Yeah, and I attended Stanford and MIT advanced degree programs, with less than 10% white students. The rest of us are working as fast to robotize/automate as many blue collar jobs as possible. Yeah, racial identity works both ways.
4
Anti-white messaging and coding like "whitesplaining" and "white privilege" has been a disaster for Dems. Like it or not, whites are still the majority and demonizing them is not the pathway to electoral greatness.
13
My white sister in rural white America had not voted for several elections, but when Hilary ran she registered and voted for Trump. She hates Hillary. She can't exactly explain why, but she's a Hillary Hater. Maybe this is what tipped the scale more than anything else mentioned in this study. A different Democratic nominee may have made all the difference.
44
It is remarkably myopic of this guest columnist to not address whether Hillary Clinton's real or perceived shortcomings account for voters willing to elect a black president voting for Trump, while suggesting those voters are at least partially racist.
7
I have to say, I rather believe that the swing in Obama voters to Trump was driven primarily by working class spite toward those they consider elitist, in-control snobs. That did Romney in (remember his "47%" speech), and Clinton's big money speeches prior to her candidacy likewise did her in. Tragically, it may also have done in our country. If the Democrats can grasp that they may ha e a chance to turn the tide, starting in 2018.
5
Outstanding analysis!
Those blue splats in the graphics are not explained. What are they?
Instead of just wringing our hands why not eliminate one the root causes of modern identity politics, affirmative action, before it is too late?
3
It's really about urban vs. rural voters. Urban people are exposed to diversity but more importantly, they tend to be better educated. The better educated will seek out information to understand reality instead of simply buying into what sounds good and supports their experience.
By framing this as another "stupid white people" problem the media is feeding the backlash. Prior to Trump's election victory I was commenting in a lot of places that the smug comments by Clinton supporters (I supported Clinton) -
who were convinced there was going to be a landslide Clinton victory - had the potential to cause a backlash. What we really need, to move forward as a society ,is greater understanding of what I call "backlash management."
4
This outsize number of votes for Trump in 85%+ white areas, where there are few people of different colors or ethnicities, demonstrates fairly clearly that a group’s fear or hostility to outsiders is often based on ignorance, lack of experience, and received wisdom, the latter especially from ideologically driven ‘news’ sources. To those of us in urban settings who rub shoulders daily with many different sorts of people the attitudes of these Trump supporters is pathetic. If they were not collectively such a destructive force I would find them merely pitiful.
1
According to Michael Moore: " 90,000 Michiganders voted for every office and every ballot proposal on both sides of the ballot — and refused to vote for president. "
Hillary lost MI by 11K, that's why we lost MI.
6
"None of The Above" would've won by a landslide.
3
Move to a city; buy a smaller house; learn to live with others who don’t look like you. When you’re on the operating table, the doctor doesn’t care what race you are; it’s all pink on the inside.
1
Suppose people LIKE their small towns? You want to force others to live the way YOU think they should live.
1
Trump did not run on an "anti-immigrant, racially motivated message" as your article states, he ran, especially in the areas you refer to, on an economic and jobs message. You never mentioned the high level of frustration endured for decades over the loss of good paying jobs in those rust belt areas. That, not racial concerns, is what Trump spoke to and, in the end, got him elected. Try taking a drive through these areas instead of pontificating from afar, you will be enlightened far more than that which e-mails from never-had-a-job academic egghead analysts will provide you. Many, including good old Back Up, commented to this socioeconomic development during the campaign, you and Hillary said "no way". You are a numbers cruncher Tom, you don't look and listen.
10
When an area is more than 85% black, support for the Democratic candidate skyrockets. For Barack Obama, it was off the charts. Heck, he won a huge portion of the white vote.
It is difficult to find anything alarming here other than a double standard.
15
Ignorance and fake news won these areas. How does one get a legitimate newspaper to these areas? When Fox is all that is on the television, people tend to sway 'stupid.' There really needs to be a way for this country to insure that every citizen has easy access to real news. Sinclair and Fox must be called out for what they are. Facts vs. fake news needs to be taught in high schools going forward, because fake news is now targeting our children on their cells phones. It's a national security risk at this point. Propaganda should be illegal in any source that claims it has an inkling of news worthiness.
2
One hopes this is a last gasp...
They rightfully heard the dog whistle of Make America White Again.
Trump (and Bannon, and the Russians, et. al.) were successful in stoking up fear and hate, and targeting that strategically.
Hillary never saw it coming, and thought the election was about issues that face everyday Americans. She addressed things with her mind, he attacked emotions.
3
Racists.
Brought out of the woodwork.
During the 2016 campaign I joined Facebook because my twenty something granddaughter suggested it. She said I could connect with friends I hadn't seen in over fifty years. She was correct, and for a brief time, it was certainly fun. Then I noticed that the attitudes exhibited by people who I had always knew were racist but figured would evolve with maturity, were now off the charts. The nasty stuff spilling from their comments stunned me, and I don't get stunned easily. I soon "unfriended" people, closed my short lived adventure on Facebook and returned to my boring, contemplative life. Now it is obvious that the hacking of our election by the Russians and their Trump cronies played on these ignorant fears of my childhood friends. I may not miss them.
2
Hey,scared white Christians--get over it. We (whites) are going to be in the minority from now on. I work with a diverse group of people--different religions, races, and immigrant backgrounds. We all respect one another and get along. It's great.
3
If other people don't want your life or to be like you, why is it your business? Why not just let them live THEIR lives?
1
yes the Republicans can crank up the lie machine in any direction, and this time they had also perfected fake news and had Russian support and trickery. We need to re-establish our nation of laws, and not allow lies and treason to masquerade as "freedom" and "protected speech".
Shame on this nation where we have begot ourselves. We need to be courageous and slay this foe of lies and deception, whatever it takes.
There is really nothing remarkable about this finding. I am sure if you investigated areas where 98% of the population are black the exact opposite would be true...or is it simply that you hold white people to a higher standard? Black people account for about 12% of the population and yet a black president was voted into power because the white majority felt he was a better candidate.
10
I'm sure if a significant percentage of black voters suddenly started voting Republican against their economic self interest in order to elect a black candidate with dog whistles and a track record of discriminating against whites there would be myriad studies and articles written. If you're going to compare, make sure you have two oranges.
"Flabbergasting" is the only word that comes to my mind when reading this preposterous article.
For two generations, at least, the only message coming from the political Left is race and class and race and class and race and class. And now, you are shocked that White people are responding to race and class?
And Mr. Edsall blames the very late-to-the-party Donald Trump?!
No, sir! The fault lies entirely with the political Left and the Democratic Party, who find their fortune in "rubbing raw the resentments of the people."
10
As a middle class, straight, formerly christian, forever entitled white male American it saddens me to see the way my similarly situated colleagues have abandoned any pretense of inclusion and acceptance, any once cherished value in the need for and power of diversity. When a population's 'other' community decreases whiteness by 1 or 2 percent, and residents panic into supporting a despicable ideologue like Donald Trump, something has died in my country.
3
Byron, it would be interesting to see if these voters would have voted for Bernie instead, he offered a vision that was not only popular but also a break from status quo.
4
Since the race term (American USCB) is appearing so often here I think I should remind everyone at the national white populations includes people that the Census Bureau considered assigning to a new "race".
The new "race" was to be called the MENA race where ME stands for all having lines of descent traceable back to the Middle East (Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Kurdistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia for example). NA stood for North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, for example).
Many American neo-Nazis thought this was a great idea as I learned from replies to some of my comments on MENA (indirect links, the Times did not provide much about MENA). But I also got a long comment from an American Assrian in which he devoted much to teaching my about these Christians what I already knew - Linköping has a large group of Assyrians, many of whom I know very well. This Assyrian replier thought MENA was a great idea, seemingly being unaware of support by neo Nazis.
This is my way of reminding you that each "race" was the fatal invention of racists, invented for political reasons. So too would MENA have been but the USCB tabled the proposal.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Dual citizen US SE
2
Do we know its the threat of future loss of White Demographic preponderance that drives these overwhelmngly White municipality as opposed to conformity to a White Trumpista inclination where there are few conflicting pressures (or lessons in the harmlessless if on-sIte) from non-Whites. Sounds a little like the concentration of White Supremacist militias in Idaho, though this phenomena could be self of selection into racially "pure" regions.
There has to be more to this blind support deal than being white. Rapidly accumulating evidence to the contrary I would like to think that Americans are not that stupid. With sports teams I get it...our red and white is superior to your blue and gold. Support to any degree you want and, unless it's South American soccer, there's a good chance nobody will die. Running a country (especially into the ground) is serious business and being so darn white, you're almost transparent is no predictor of success. Yet, a third of the country, despite daily, in your face demonstrations of adolescent stupidity, apparently have absolutely no interest in competency. Maybe it's the hair or the tough talk or taking down the system or the lack of decency or the name calling. Could even be the grabbing confession. Something is happening that has never happened before and the gutter has come to power. I was born in the 40's and I've seen the ebb and flow of America. From the low of McCarthy to the peak of the moon landing. From a hospital ship in the South China Sea to the birth of my grandson. Hopefully, this is just a historical hickup and we'll recover in time to drive myth and superstition back under a rock, but, I don't recognize my country anymore, and there's really nothing much here to be proud of.
3
Mr. Edsall: Hispanic is not a race! It is a linguistic group! There are Hispanics who are white! Some Hispanics are black! So these statistics are wrong. What most consider "Hispanic" are immigrants from south of the border who are Native Americans. Get your facts right.
10
This is appalling, shoddy analysis. We're to believe that people went from Obama to Trump in four years time, suddenly turning racist. Please. Coincidence is not necessarily causality. More likely, this small sample of people are not content with the status quo and were voting (mindlessly in my opinion) for change. Get a grip. Everything isn't about how terrible white people are--although you'd never know that by reading this, my home town paper (and I'm a left leaning independent).
14
If you were stripping paint off a large piece of furniture and made pass after pass with stripper and sandpaper to reveal the true color of the wood underneath, did the furniture "suddenly turn" or was what was already there massaged to the surface? I think that is what Mr. Edsall is suggesting.
The photo shown was very likely not taken in Milwaukee, whose largely nonwhite population basically did not vote in 2016. I would guess it was from one of the largely white Tea Party suburbs.
1
The simple answer to trump's popularity in forsaken white enclaves is FoxNews.
Their xenophobic, homophobic, everything-other-phobic message has been hammering away at people who have been witnessing their once financially secure lives decline. To call out the real causes - corporate greed, globalization and technology would not motivate disenfranchised whites.
Telling these angry people that immigrants are taking their jobs rings true to them, but do they really want to work in the fields or meat processing plants? Do they want landscaping or roofing jobs? Seasonal jobs with no benefits or legal protections?
Fox also scares their viewers into believing ISIS is around every corner when the real threat is angry white men with assault weapons. Just look at the numbers.
Blaming alleged-Democratic tax and social policies also plays well. GOP voters actually believe that blacks and undocumented immigrants are collecting benefits illegally while whites bust their butts to pay for it. Yet these same people see on irony in sitting back collecting their disability and Social Security while they complain.
The problem of angry white voters will exist as long as state-run outlets like Fox have free reign to keep viewers afraid.
This is not a difficult concept to accept. The MAGA crowd doesn't like to publicly acknowledge that racism (white superiority) is really what they are messaging when they think MAGA. When isolated from "others" people can blame all the problems on "them" which is what many of those who elected #45 do on a regular basis.
One can only hope that these white enclaves are the "last gasp" of this racism.
I may not be Black or Hispanic, Arabic or Asian, but there has, in the last year at least, been many occasions I wished I was not white. White folk should not feel threatened by anyone other than what we are all threatened by, this completely inept and incompetent racist and elitist president and the power he has been recklessly wielding to affect divisive and racist change in our multicultural nation. Since taking office, our nation has become radically more violent, and divided.
I guess the writer has never been to Vermont, one of the whitest states and hardly Trump country. And here is a factoid that doesn't fit into his narrative: Trump did better among minorities than did Romney our McCain.
7
Completely unconvincing. You have a town that was 97 percent white in 2012 and went for Barack Obama. By 2016, the white percentage had dropped from 97 to 95 and that's why it flipped and voted for Trump? That makes no sense. Better look at who the Democrats' nominee was if you want a better explanation.
50
According to over 50 years of research by the Oxford Research Group on behalf of the United Nations whenever a community becomes 7% other, it doesn't matter whom the dominant culture or the minority culture is, the 93% agree to "disinvest" in the whole. It looks like this "I'm not sure if those people over there share my values, so to be safe, I'll just hold my resources more tightly."
Every single one of the communities about which they are speaking are reaching the "tipping point." It is EXACTLY would would be expected. Textbook.
Coastal liberals cannot understand the real and justified anxiety that a town encounters when the homogeneity of their community is suddenly disrupted.
I saw it happen. Ive went every year between 1988 and today to Austin Minnesota to see my family. The Hormel meat plant basically employs the whole town of Austin, it's called Spamtown USA. There used to be a Spamjam every July that was so so much fun.
When I was a kid Austin felt like a real community. People all knew each other, everyone said hello, everyone had good jobs at the Spam factory, and the Spamjam was like an all-American fantasy.
Every single year though I started to slowly notice changes. More and more Hispanic laborers were moving in. The union lost power when Hormel restructured. Around 2000 the real decline begin.
I noticed that Austin was becoming two towns. The Hispanic kids never played with us and I noticed that my uncles who worked at Hormel kept talking about their wages going down and how they couldn't afford to paint the house this year or get a new car. Hispanic stores sprang up and suddenly Austin as a community ended. There was Hispanic Austin and White Austin after that.
One year we came just to learn that the Spamjam was over. Hormel stopped funding it.
I don't blame my family for their nostalgia. I wish Austin could be a real community instead of just a place people live. Today the town is decrepit, the houses falling apart. I can't blame my white family for their despair.
36
I really wish this excellent comment had more than 9 recommendations.
1
I grew up in Austin as well. I wasn't surprised last November when I saw that Mower County, MN went red for the first time since probably before FDR. I don't think Trump's appeal there is so much racism as opposition to immigration due to economic changes.
Go to any meatpacking town in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, or South Dakota and you'll see that the formerly high paying blue-collar meatpacking jobs went away because the companies busted the unions and replaced them with low-wage undocumented workers, who don't have the leverage to agitate for better wages and working conditions.
7
It's interesting to me that the union issue doesn't get addressed in all of the discussions surrounding last years election. Republicans have always been anti-union, Democrats pro union for the most part. Where jobs have gone missing, where wages have gone down, or benefits reduced, how much of that has been due to the war on unions? Has the plant moved to a right-to-work state? I'm not the hugest fan of unions. I thought that the UAW went a little overboard over the years. But unions are what got these people a good wage, a middle class wage. Overtime. Vacations. This description of the Hormel plant is a good example. Again, it seems to me these people who's towns are falling apart, who are losing their jobs and voting for people who want a "right to work" state are shooting themselves in the foot. The classic 'voting against your own interests'.
3
Ms. Clinton spoke vehemently against drilling for natural gas, a major industry in rural central Pennsylvania. She called a million ordinary PA citizens; hunters and target shooters, complicit in murder with her message that 'NRA members are the enemy and all evil.' Simply because they disagree with her about what, if any new gun laws might be effective. She advocated strongly for the appointment of an astoundingly anti second amendment supreme court candidate.
She never mentioned helping the huge percentage of poor rural people in her speeches. Her questionable ethics aside, why would people in rural central PA have vote for her?
10
I live nearby Dravosburg and frequently traveled to Elk County. I've found the citizens I've met to be pretty good people, but politically they are solid Trump. For example, I counted 1000 Trump signs to zero Hillary lawn and roadside signs during the last election in Elk. Crawford and Warren counties. Anyone who favored Hillary knew better than to publicly let it be known in these communities. The best way to put it perspective is what James Carville said years ago: "Politically, Pennsylvania is a T with Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and with Alabama in the middle". The Anti-Obama, Anti-Hillary, Anti-Obamacare anti-union sentiment is dominant. Many young men are influenced by Alex Jones, Fox, KDKA radio and local conservative talk shows and 3% anti-federalists. There are militias. Many gun stores in western PA still today tack up posters with the image of Hillary or Obama encouraging customers to strongly believe that they were/are going to take away their guns.(helps with sales) Make no mistake about the Pennsylvania "T" Demographic, it is white, pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-union, pro-coal and frankly "confederate". I do not expect this to change. It is what it is.
3
If you listen to people in these areas, they are screaming that economic decline is their reason for voting Trump, that they are not racist, and that Trump is the only one listening to them. The small increases in racial minority population are correlated to economic decline in an area. After reading this article, I get why they are so upset.
We should expect economic decline to precede lower income individuals (disproportionately minorities and immigrants) moving to an area because property values will have declined. If 200 white people move out and 15 minority individuals move in, I think it's pretty silly to assume that the town residents are more concerned about the 15 newcomers than the underlying reasons 200 people left. If a large number of pro-athletes and minority CEOs were moving into a region and the local population stayed in place, I hardly think you would hear the same feelings of anger even though we'd see the same changes in racial diversity. The point is, I don't think it's fair to attribute these regions' sentiments to the changes in racial makeup of their populations.
We also expect economic decline to change people's voting behavior. To say that the increase in racial minority populations caused the voting changes is a leap -an unjustified, biased, and obtuse one in my opinion.
8
The Democrats must maximize their volume to shout a platform not only to regain the White House, but to heal and nurture our wounded nation.
Insulting a large portion of the nation by calling them ignorant racists is not a recipe to "heal and nurture our wounded nation"!
4
It is interesting that you believe shouting will heal and nuture. Either your sense of humor is too deadpan for me to pick up, or you obviously do not appreciate irony.
1
Racial enmity is always about economics, particularly in its manipulation. I read in this paper a few months ago, possibly from Edsall, that the region interior to the east coast up through Ohio and Wisconsin is still mired in the worst of post-2009 economic conditions, with feeble growth, few prospects and skyrocketing diseases of despair -- substance abuse, suicide and casual pregnancy. So pour the gasoline of increased diversity, even if starting from a small base, upon the underlying, underperforming economy, and you get white nationalism. Some will be spinning in hatred indefinitely, but many will adjust and hope again. We should try to help them.
5
The Pennsylvania examples cited here had lost large fractions of their populations, creating empty houses and very cheap real estate. The vacant spaces can be converted to Section 8 housing, often filled by minorities who are down on their luck in big cities. The long-time white residents are aware of these people and can think of them as "takers." Resentment follows.
3
What about Vermont? Can't get much whiter than that - and T was soundly defeated there.
3
Don’t ignore the unpopularity of Hillary Clinton. Many “white people” had/have a visceral hatred of her. The fact that many of these areas you referenced voted for Barack Obama is telling. If the Democrats field even a halfway decent candidate Trump will be fired.
5
Mike, NYT doesn't get it, they assumed just like the DNC that it was Hillary's turn now.
'" Put another way, anger, fear and animosity toward immigrants and minorities was most politically potent in the communities most insulated from these supposed threats ". They just can't say it . The Media ( mostly White males ) will admit that women still face discrimination and increasingly will agree that homosexuals encounter harms ,but when it comes to racism they just can't say the word .
So , while the Media has promoted the lie that Trump ( I prefer calling him Hump ) won because all of a sudden the middle class was fed up with the status quo and rebelled it was obvious that his victory signaled that racism and the number of racists in our Country remains strong and numerous . This research was an exercise whose result was already known. White Americans are and have always been the reason the church , the neighborhood , the schoolhouse , workplace , and social club continue to be segregated and their willingness to ignore the opportunity to elect the first woman and elect someone so unfit as President ( the national disgrace ) proves racism remains just as popular as Apple Pie , but the Media is loath to say it .
1
I think one significant aspect overlooked in this analysis of 2016 is Hillary Clinton. She was a poor candidate and that is why she lost the primary to Barak Obama in2008. Because she is smart, knowledgeable, experienced and a woman (I am a woman) she was the nominee. For me wonderful ole Bernie was just too out there. But I could not whip up much enthusiasm for Hillary although I certainly voted for her and not the despicable Republican nominee D. Trump. Polifact rated her 19% false or mostly false statements while he came in over 70% false. But Hillary was thought the liar. She came with a lot of baggage that weighed her down and she just didn't have the soaring rhetoric to overcome it. Joe Biden's, had he been in a personal place that would have allowed him to run, smile, sincerity, obvious humanity would have carried him well past Trump even in places that were heavily white. He certainly would have carried PA, while Trump could not carry his home state of NY. New Yorkers no matter what their race knew him all too well to fall into his spider web.
1
Most people in Elk County may not be racist, but I suspect a lot of them are. In nearly seven decades of life, this white male has come to believe that maybe 20% of white Americans ( half or so of the Republican base) hate and fear black people ( and other minorities). Edsall’s data support this proposition. That’s the country we have, folks. We have much work to do.
1
There has alway been in the GOP a sympathetic ear for the message of Pat Buchanan.
1
Concord, NH is more than 85% white; because we are a refugee resettlement site, we are no longer closer to 99% white. Nonetheless, we voted overwhelmingly for Hilary (even if most of us supported Bernie in the primary). This is a predominately white city that rejects the politics of hatred.
3
To me the key demographic in 2016 was the black male vote. Although, Hillary won 94% of the black female vote, she only received 80% of the black male vote. This represents 100's of thousands of votes that were lost particularly in urban areas such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Miami-Dade County and Milwaukee. Why did she lose this vote, mainly poor execution on the part of the Clinton campaign.
2
You fear what you don't know (or experience).
Sadly, I guess that still holds true today.
I am a retired white guy. There are two things I would like to see before I go. One is for a human to land (and hopefully return) on Mars. The second is a white minority country.
1
who was Romney, anyway? a former business tycoonwho didn't even make things, and a former politician in a small state, he did gain some bigger notoriety managing the Olympics - but that was decades ago. a man of modest mein and not much of a public speaker, best suitd to after dinner comments at a swanky country club far from working class towns on the Monongahela.
I doubt he was very much on the radar screens of most voters like the Pennsylvanians described in the article.
whereas Donald Trump was a reality TV star and a brash, in yourface, publicity seeking New Yorker, blowing his own horn for all he was worth for 40 years or more, and plastering his name on giant buildings around the country (Vegas!) and around the world.
there really is no comparisio unless you're a political junkie.
starpower wins.
1
Something that hasn't been emphasized enough in the discussion of last week's Democratic victory in Virginia is the extent to which it was decided by the huge turnout of black voters. Among whites, even among white women, the Republicans decisively prevailed. The state is two-thirds white, so it's only because the non-white vote went 80% Democratic that Northam was able to win.
Yes, there are a lot of white liberals, but they're all too geographically concentrated to overcome the Electoral College. The future of the Democratic Party is dependent on people of color in red states showing up to the polls. The GOP knows this, which is why they're putting up all sorts of impediments to voting like voter ID laws and purges of registered voters. We may have to resurrect the movement from the early 60s of liberal white people going to southern states to help minorities register to vote, secure their legal rights, and monitor the elections. I realize that's already happening, but we may need to step it up, because you know the GOP will step it up too.
1
Shifts in demographics played a part in the 2016 election, including a rural and suburban population that is growing older, and more diverse.
However the main reason Trump won, was because he was running against Hillary Clinton.
Yes, Hillary Clinton was a woman hated by many. But there was more to it. She was also married to Bill Clinton and he had been president already. She had been First Lady.
To many voters, and apparently especially many white voters, the idea of bringing the Clintons back into the White House, would have been a bridge gone too far.
10
Andrew we were saying these same things from the beginning of the primaries but no one wanted to listen. Hillary was literally THRUST down our throats.
1
It would be very interesting to survey some of these communities that saw very small but statistically large increases in minority populations and ask people how much they believe the minority population has increased. My hypothesis is that the white residents would report perceived percentage increases far greater than what actually took place. My further hypothesis is that, among white Trump voters, one would find a perception of increased minority population even where the minority population has held steady or even declined. If only I had a couple of years and a million dollars of research money!
1
I'm not convinced that the only motive operating here for white neighborhoods was race. The voting may have surged to the far right, but this was our first legitimate race between a male candidate and a female candidate for president (setting aside the trailblazing done by previous female candidates). Trump's campaign platform was alarming, but many of the Trump supporters that I know were more galvanized by the fear of a woman in power than they were by fear of immigration and racial diversity. The most qualified candidate in history lost because she was a woman. That seems to suggest a preference for white male patriarchy, even among white women. Had Romney been running against a woman, we might have seen similar surges to the right--a last-gap effort among white males to retain their patriarchal grip and white women to remain complicit. Either way, patriarchy is as antiquated a philosophy as racial segregation, and is on its way out.
A good column, with important data. If Edsall complemented the statistics with sociology data it would be even better.
Sociology shows that even the most tolerant communities start to reconsider when cultural displacement reaches about 10%, and start shifting towards populism. This has happened across Europe and is now happening in the US, although the thresholds seem to be higher (15-20%). IN other words, there is no reason for teeth gnashing, what we are seeing in the cultural resistance of 'white' voters is an expected phenomenon.
Also, i discern here a whiff of hypocrisy - blacks overwhelmingly vote for black politicians and causes with no one batting an eyelash. Ditto for Latinos.
3
Whites and Blacks and Hispanics need to pull together to get better cheaper health insurance, more infrastructure, better schools, more job training, and a cleaner environment. Look to the Democrats rather than the GOP tax cutting for the rich scheme that gives the majority of the tax cut to corporations.
All Donald Trump did was scour loose the considerable, connected congealed hate and rancor from the inside of America's pot, the black crust hardened into an almost indistinguishable corrosive amalgam that he finally worked free.
His electoral triumph was liberating to the insular, nativist bloc, one that had long awaited a messiah that would free them from the chains of tolerance and acceptance that had, for centuries, burdened them with the irreconcilable: belief in a benevolent creator, all the while being slaves to their tribe.
Republicans especially (in fairness, Democrats were partnered for long years in the profitable race trade, especially in the North) were anxious to mine the rich electoral yield in these quaint towns and counties that promised relief from "the dreaded other." Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in particular, with their coded (Nixon) and uncoded (Reagan) racism, heralded the unique voting dynamic of racial polarization as a new politics in which the determining and primary element is fear. Rope them in, the party's intelligentsia promised, and the nasty train of suspicion, resentment, refusal and hate would follow.
Rush Limbaugh's Hate Radio, Fox "News" and assorted think tanks and policy shops burnished the old feelings into a new presentation of the same old. Trump is their apotheosis of the New Order, one that shows nosing of abating. The plutocrats have persuaded the proletariat to fight their battles for them.
And they're winning.
2
Or, since these areas voted for a black man, Obama, it could be the problem was Hillary Clinton.
The issue might be Clinton as a woman or Clinton as a damaged candidate. Either one works and I believe both are in play.
It was not so much Trumps message about race that won the area, it was Clinton's damaged candidacy that was the issue, with a little sex discrimination thrown in. The campaign also made major mistakes.
I think the election analysis spend too much time on angry, afraid white populations and not enough time evaluating how Clinton made sure Trump won.
3
I'm with Craig;
"Suggesting racial anger, which is always present, was the primary factor in propelling Trump is hard to reconcile with the fact that a lot of white people voted for Barack Obama but refused to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton."
4
An insightful analysis...It made me wonder: is some of the blind passion about the 2nd Amendment a disguised need to arm oneself against "the other" -- the immigrants, the threatening people of color, the invaders who are taking over the neighborhood?
I loved Obama. He represented civility, intellect, liberalism, and kindness. Trump blew the lid off all those traits -- exposing years of raw fear, hate, racism, and anxiety. Ideally, the next leader will represent a synthesis that moves us forward in healthy ways. But idealism is rarely our political go-to move anymore.
2
Was cutting seniors' SS benefits "kindness"?
So much for the idea of a "post racial society," which I've never believed, nor has the Republican Party, which plays to the obvious racism of most American whites with, among other things, massive voter suppression and its lies about voter fraud. One very easy solution would be simply to let everyone vote--but, unfortunately, our Supreme Court would certainly find a way to prevent such an awful thing.
1
Fantastic Op Ed, as usual. "Make America White Again" (MAWA) was the strategy that won the election. Three overlapping circles, (MAWA, Anti-globalist, and Republican establishment) can be used to see his strategy.
MAWA / Ethno-Nationalist: Support for white supremacist groups, extreme vetting of refugees, expand stop & frisk, affinity for Putin, Muslim ban.
Anti-Globalist: Modify NAFTA, Exit TPP, penalize companies for offshoring, tariffs, "Drain the Swamp" (term limits & campaign finance reform).
Republican establishment: Repeal & replace Obamacare, Cut Medicaid, Income & corporate tax cuts, deregulation, social conservatism (pro-gun, pro-life, conservative justices, conservative appointments to Cabinet).
The main laws he's pursued (unsuccessfully so far, thank goodness) are right from the Republican establishment playbook, the tax cuts for the rich and Obamacare repeal. The executive orders are the Ethno-Nationalist/MAWA and Anti-Globalist elements.
To understand how Trump became president one has to admit an incontrovertible truth: this country was founded by white men, of white men and for the benefit of white men. They fear losing their top dog status to those who are not white men. Our Great Leader played to their fears, offering to return the United States to the Eisenhower 50s when white men reigned supreme. It is way past time to put to rest the notion that the country was founded on the basis of liberty and justice for all. National myths do nothing to address the pressing problems currently afflicting the nation.
1
Rural people are more likely to be white. Rural people are more likely to vote Republican. Midwestern & Pennsylvania voters are more likely to favor protectionism due to heavy industries influences. They are also more likely to be white. Trump is protectionist and a republican. That is a much more likely explanation for these statistics. I think this article is where the real racism exists.
3
One has to wonder if our "progressives" like Edsall realize that there is a significant difference between legal and illegal immigrants? It appears they don't have the intellectual capacity to make the distinction.
2
While I applaud the important research done in this article, I am loathed to call this purely a racial issue. We can make a case that several racist groups are feeling extremely empowered by Trump's victory, but lets be careful to put the blame on middle and lower class people in the Rust-belt. This article is heavy with stats and numbers, but maintains the discourse that it was purely Trump's stance on immigration that won all of these people over. Maybe more research could prove this, but in this context I think that assumption is not quantifiable based on these stats.
Hilary did not run the right campaign to win those people over. I imagine if you live in an industrial town in rural PA, which lets be honest has always been a white enclave, you probably went to work in the steel mill listening to Bruce Springstein. If someone preaches a sort of economic nationalism that promises to bring industrial jobs back to your community (not debating the reality of this, just the campaign message), and someone else says they are more interested in investing in renewable energy, and their husband happened to be the champion of NAFTA (which hurt workers at home and abroad), my guess is you are not going to vote for her.
Blanketing everyone as racists will do us all a disservice and seed future divides that could become as toxic as this article paints the stats to be. As for those empowered racist groups of lesser principles, they will seek these voters out as political fodder.
2
Anyone old enough to remember the controversy over JFK's Catholicism being an issue when he ran for president and seeing the progress we have made up to and including the presidency of Barack knows that old WASP male dictum has been on the decline for decades. The few remaining hold outs are fighting hard but time marches on for all and their numbers are diminishing. The only hope they have is by keeping their families in ignorance in the ways of the world. Their world view will not last. I believe we are witnessing their death throes and I say Amen to that.
Thank you Thomas Edsall for another clear-eyed account of how we got into this huge hot mess.
I’m not sure this argument holds water. There were no people of color running in the presidential election. This was about misogyny more than racism.
2
It wasn't misogyny. It was HILLARY: MICHELLE would have DESTROYED The Donald.
Mitt Romney through Bain Capital represents corporate raiding union-busters. When you look at Mitt, you could see the newly hired boss -
an ambitious corporate consultant that looks to fire everyone. While not more wealthy than Trump - he is far more refined. When you go back and look at Sarah Palin's appeal - it's a female Trump who had governance experience. That she was the electric person Obama faced, I am sure encouraged the know-nothing Donald Trump.
This study reminds me to how 17th century scientists explained the existence of fire with „phlogiston“. May be the white voters just didn’t like Hillary and an out of touch gerontocratic Democratic Party which is clearly not connecting anymore with one of its core constituency groups and has no convincing answers for the burning issues of our times.
1
I think the problem with this article is that it sees from the data what it wants to see. It wants to see white resentment and racism, and the data presented seems to support that conclusion. QED.
And no effort is made to even imagine alternative narratives. But there is a much more palatable and sane narrative. 1. The anti-Hillary propaganda machine, which literally every day claims (still does) that she has committed countless crimes won. 2. The notion that Trump is a successful businessman won because these peoples primary source of exposure to trump were his tv shows. 3. Those 2 notions (and any others) are much more easily spread and ingrained w/in smaller and more homogeneous communities.
Look - there are white supremacists and racists out there and they did get emboldened by trump. But the vast majority of whites who voted for him are not that. And I cannot comprehend how average people on the left think it's ok for the elites among liberals to constantly insinuate that tens of millions of citizens in this country are either racists or idiots or a combination of the two.
2
Why should this surprise you? Hillary Clinton explicitly ran her campaign on capturing Obama's "ascendant coalition" of blacks, Hispanics, gays, etc. She thought that, as Mr. Edsall put it, her voters could be "politically mobilized around race, ethnicity, multiculturalism and immigration," as they were by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 .
Voters in predominantly white communities, like Dravosburg, were left behind economically and politically, and Hillary Clinton promised more. They were in her crosshairs, and they knew it.
Unlike Mitt Romney and John McCain before him, Donald Trump promised to stand up for forgotten voters, especially on NAFTA (which was tied to Hillary).
At the end of the Obama era, the Democrats made transgender bathrooms, gay marriage, fealty to Black Lives Matter and support for illegal immigration litmus tests. Is it any wonder that those left behind--who were being promised that they and their way of life were targeted for extinction, would cling to the only life raft available?
4
It might be interesting to compare this to Nielsen ratings for Fox News if something that granular exists.
Mr Trump was a None-of-The-Above/Protest Vote that, due to the 65% of primary voters who DIDN'T want him being thinned-out amongst too many others in the mix, bubbled-up to the top.
Though from an administrative perspective Ms Clinton is beyond qualified, many of the electorate considered her an ill-fit for the crown. Despite this, the DNC elected to jam her down our throats. Being a kingmaker qualifies one for the throne as much as being a world-class aircraft designer makes you a good pilot.
Bernie would likely have won. If Barack were permitted to run, HE would have won. Joe Biden would have slaughtered Mr Trump. I suspect that if the DNC drafted Michelle, we'd finally have our first woman president in-place.
For the record, I voted third-party in an attempt to deny either candidate 270 electoral votes, hoping to leave the House holding this ugly bag.
I'm not proud of being white, nor am I ashamed. The race-baiting is tiresome. If it's all you got, maybe it's quittin' time.
3
Thank you for analyzing some small segments of communities. I do not see anything wrong for whites voting for whites - a natural instinct. I will do similar voting if there is an Asian Indian in the ballot. the difference i would make is that it should not be just blind voting. You must exercise your civic sense on certain qualities of the candidate. As long as those qualities are not beyond norms it is ok. But in the case of Mr. Trump, he exceeds all norms on race, character, sex, business ethics, courtesy, lie, individual attack, attack on judicial system, personal bashing, etc. - basically not meeting the minimum standard of the presidency.
“Overt expressions of hostility” towards Democrats, "liberals", facts, science, compromise and minorities has been the norm for the Republican Party since the Gingrich "revolution" in the 90's. Trump hijacked the GOP base with bigger lies and more helpings of "overt" racism. He got help from the rating$ and horse race seeking, "both sides do it" beltway media, which preaches from the gospel of deflection and false equivalence.
1
Everyone wants everything to be about race or some other form of discrimination. I'm sure there is some of that but I still feel that 'it's the economy stupid' is they key to most people's voting habits.
As the story states, many of these areas voted for Obama so clearly they aren't old school racists. The fortunes of many in the blue collar middle class have been steadily declining and the Democrats proposed a candidate that showed with her actions and words that they weren't important to them.
If the Democrats want to break everything down by race as the overarching issue, they will likely lose again.
2
This article presents factual voting results but then leaps to unproven and biased theories to explain the rational behind the votes. I could spin the numbers a totally different way. How about this: voters from very white suburbs were willing to vote for a qualified black man for two consecutive elections but rejected a woman of their own race who they deemed to be untrustworthy.
3
According to the Census Bureau, whites account for 76.9 percent of the population, but they don’t vote as a racial bloc. Non-Hispanic whites voted 58% to 37% for Trump while white Hispanics voted 65% to 29% for Clinton. Blacks voted 88% to 8% for Clinton.
The Democrat Party made it clear to many Whites that the the Party of FDR was now the Party of minorities, whether it be Black, Hispanics, Muslim, LGBT, etc. Democrats spend a great amount of time telling whites what's wrong with them.
2
Some interesting statistics and observations. However, correlation does not prove causation. Glaringly absent in Edsall's discussion is the issue of gender. These traditional, rural communities likely voted as much against the idea of a woman president (and especially THIS woman), as they may have voted due to the white fear issues Edsall sites.
2
Sorry, should read "cites" not "sites."
hmmmm.. a very big conclusion based on activity is some communities. I am taken by the large number of nearly all while communities that lost Republican support in the 2016 election. That gives me hope. The majority of we Americans really are decent people.
2
I live in rural red state Appalachian Western Maryland, which consists of two counties, Allegany and Garrett, which fit the schema here, being 88.6 and 97.5 percent white. They have poverty rates of 20% and 13.6% according to the data base I used, from 2016.
During the Civil War, there was considerable support for the Confederacy, and slaves were used in the hotels along the old National Road, today's Route 40, and they were also used in mining, timbering and as "teamsters" in the wagon traffic along the route.
General Isaac Trimble was a local man who made money in railroads and lost a leg for the Confederacy during Pickett's charge in 1863 at Gettysburg. The Union would not exchange him because of his valuable knowledge of railroads.
A surgeon who served with General Jackson in the Valley Campaigns and was at Appomattox, Dr. Benj. M. Cromwell is prominently buried with a large ground plaque and Confederate flags in Frostburg Memorial Cemetery.
There are no comparable Union graves and there are no public monuments to either side in the Civil War, to my knowledge. It's buried history in one sense.
In the other: I have never seen a region so stripped and suppressed of alternative ideas about the political economy; it is globalization or "back to the land." No New Deal social democracy, even though the CCC and WPA did extensive work here in the 1930's. Public discussion of economics is actively suppressed.
4
Allow me to propose an alternative analysis:
The Democratic party abandoned the middle class and poor in its chase for money. The recession decimated the middle class and poor, they turned to Obama, who protected the big banks and did little, if anything, for those at the bottom. When the Democrats nominated Hillary, who had lots of baggage of her own, and then she promised 4 more years of the same 'protect the rich and give lip service to the poor' they looked outside the political system.
Trump came along and promised to smash the existing system that was keeping them down. Telling them 'Only I can drain the swamp.' Trump's candidacy was aided and abetted by the press who saw him as their paycheck to higher profits. It was only when it looked like he might win did the press turn on him, before that, they were his pimps.
To summarize, the Democrats and press in their contempt for the average voter, forgot about numbers and who is really the boss. It may take a great deal to rouse the electorate to concerted action, but when that happens there are enough of the to impose their will regardless of what the elites think.
Trump is in the process of handing the Democrats a gift. Will they remember the lessons of 2016 and propose a platform that benefits all, or will they continue to pander to the elites? Frankly, its looking like they may have to put their hand back into the fire before they learn. Oh well. . .carry on.
12
Yes. Hillary is hated on the right because of Fox propaganda, but she is hatred in the left because of the actual policies she and Bill enacted.
Deregulation of investment banks and derivatives (contributing to Bush's great recession), ending welfare as we know it, three strikes (leading to the incarceration of millions of non violent people mostly minorities), the telecommunications act of 1996 (which cleared the way for mass concentration of the media in the hands of six global conglomerates), support for the Iraq War, regime change in Libya, support for fracking and the export of fracked gas, opposition to breaking up the big banks, opposition to universal healthcare (Hillary told the Democratic debate audience it could "never, ever happen), opposition to a $15 minimum wage (but taking credit for it in NY), taking advice from Henry Kissinger, etc.
Most of these are more popular in the right than the left.
So if the right hates her and the left hates her, how was she supposed to win over Trump's electoral college advantage?
Republicans embrace their activists and won. Democrats reject their activists and lose.
Move left to win.
1
I moved to Los Angeles in 1990, but I was born and raised in Elk county, Pennsylvania. We are right to fear the dangerous and corrosive effects of demagoguery, but it's a mistake to conduct this election post mortem solely in terms of "narratives" and "attitudes." A few short weeks prior to the election, the body of a Guatemalan national and presumed drug courier was found along the roadside in my rural birthplace. Big cities might be inured to such events, but not Bennett's Valley, Pa. The simple fact of racial diversity is not the whole story. The area has been unnerved by an increase in crime and drug use that, when taken with the decades-long economic slide, proved to be a powerful motivator. When I was a child in the late '60s and 1970s, the county's largest town was home to several factories, some making parts for Detroit auto companies, and shift changes meant traffic gridlock every afternoon. During WW II these graphite and early transistor industries were so important that they were among Germany's potential bombing targets, and the county was also home to the first Benedictine convent in the U.S., founded in 1852. Then Americans started buying Japanese cars, graphite and transistors went away, and in 2014 the convent closed. They voted for Obama in 2008. They just ran out of hope.
39
Powerful words. And you're right to touch on drugs and the opioid epidemic. That has slammed small communities like these especially hard.
1
Transistors? During WWII?
I love data. I make a living out of selling my ability to turn data into action. But I caution my colleagues that sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. There's a lot of trees in this article. but the forest I see tells me that HRC won by 3M votes.
The problem is the electoral college, folks.
8
The electoral college is in the constitution and the small states week never let you get rid of it, so that is a useless argument.
The Democrats should know they need an extra four million votes to win.
The problem is, they keep trying to get Republicans to vote for them (though they never will), instead of trying to grow the base of workers who need help from the government.
Promise to pay for education, healthcare, and infrastructure, and workers will vote for you.
That is what Trump promised and he won.
Democratic Centrists are killing the party. Why vote for Republican lite? What is the point?
2
McGloin, you make a good point: Democrats need a 4 million vote margin to take the presidency. Pollsters must never again fail to take this into account when calculating odds of victory.
1
Hillary won with 3 million votes from illegal aliens in ONLY ONE STATE -- California, the sanctuary state which winks at illegal immigration -- indeed, encourages with by giving illegals things like college scholarships, driver's licensees, or the right to practice law!
Illegals voting illegally do not count.
If you wish to change the Electoral College....then go pass an Amendment. Good luck.
1
Fascinating analysis. This begs the question: can Trump use the same strategy for 2020? Put another way, assuming Trump uses the same tactics and rhetoric in 2020 (which is a pretty sure bet, given his track record in office) will there be enough voters in these overwhelmingly white communities (which are rapidly losing population) to again provide a path to victory? Time will tell.
1
Thank you, Mr. Edsall, for another intriguing and insightful column. I wish, though, that we would take a more careful look at the role misogyny also played in the 2016 election. I understand that many people dislike and even despise Hillary Clinton, but it seems to me that at its heart that dislike is rooted in misogyny and not in anything specific to Secretary Clinton herself.
I wonder what data we have or could find to address those issues.
5
That is a pathetic excuse. Hillary is not just some general "female." She is a specific person with am actual record. If people liked what she did, she would win.
Elizabeth Warren would have cleaned Trumps clock. But Hillary doesn't fought for the left, she hides in the center, refusing to take a stand in economic issues, which is where Democrats have the advantage.
She lost more votes to her supporters calling Bernie supporters (who are half women) misogynist, than she did to being a woman.
4
good for them - I hope they will the acceleration of their jobs going overseas.
1
Having lived in one of the places mentioned in the article, Elk county PA, I can see the appeal of Trump and race-baiting in the 2016 election.
It would be unfair to characterize the people who live in Elk county as openly racist. The overwhelming majority are nice and welcoming people. However, most of the economic base of that county is in heavy industry and manufacturing, two areas, which are forever listed on the 'endangered jobs' list, which leads to deep anxiety regarding the future even as far as a year in advance.
To his credit, Bannon successfully managed to conflate this economic narrative with a population one: your economic future might be changing soon, and so is your population. The two must be related, with an R^2 of 1.
So it's no surprise this is happening. To many people protecting their economic future, and keeping the overwhelmingly white demographic are one of the same. And with Trump showing clear favoritism to whites, why not vote for him?
The irony in all this is that the majority of the economic activity occurring in Elk county is dependent on the global economy, with many of their products being directly exported to China, out of all places.
37
Just because you are nice doesn't mean you are not racist. I would even argue that the most pernicious forms of racism thrive under the mantle of niceness. "Some of my best friends are ......" for instance. What the segregationists fail to understand is that diversity and opportunity are being universally dismantled in this country. It's not 'cos your white, it's because mechanization and machine replacement are changing all of our lives. It's the price we pay for cheap goods. A house painter in Europe commands what a lawyer does here: about 300/hr. We couldn't afford the abundance of choice we have at those rates. As the ultimate consumer society, we are being driven by buying and business choices now, not human value choices.
5
"Openly" is the key word. So, no crosses being burned in black family's yards. But, it's still latent racism, and not very latent, that leaves white voters susceptible to the zero-sum-game argument; that every job which goes to a person of color or an immigrant is a job taken away from a white American.
3
WHITEOUT --it's called a "Whiteout". In the North where blizzards are a residential hazard ropes are tied from one structure to another. So when a blizzard hits and residents are blinded by the snow and cant see a foot ahead they grasp the guide line and struggle blindly from one anchor point to the next, the only way to move about without becoming disoriented and perishing. It's a WHITEOUT only without snow.
2
This article fascinates me for a couple of reasons:
I grew up in rural PA, went to med school there. I have since moved away, but most of my family still lives there.
I was in the area recently visiting family, and I was also in the area just prior to Election Day 2016 for a high school reunion. I was struck then by the huge disparity in lawn signage (99-1 in favor of Trump) despite polls and media coverage at the time to the contrary.
I regularly am sent what I consider to be racially charged emails and FB posts from family members in the area. Although I usually push back against them, I recently had to take down my Facebook page due to threatening communication from family members ("Prepare to meet your maker").
I'm trained in the sciences so I'm well aware of the limitations of using anecdotal evidence (including my own), as well as the pitfalls of conflating statistical correlation with causation (as Mr. Edsall's article clearly does). Still, the numbers - and the stories - are hard to ignore.
Maybe Trump's 2016 electoral victory was a perfect storm of latent racism, sexism, and an opposing candidate with considerable negative baggage of her own. Maybe in retrospect we will come to view it as "the last gasp of white hegemony." MAYBE. But whatever the explanation for "What Happened," it seems to me undeniable, as the author says, that "previously forbidden 'overt expressions of racial hostility' have become acceptable," and "immense damage has been done."
6
I am not particularly surprised. Identity politics has been an increasingly defining feature of the democratic party. Whatever the particular validity of grievances of any one group that defines itself through identity, it is an exclusionary definition, or rather a narrowly drawn one. Class is exclusionary too, but much more widely drawn, and thus by extension more inclusive. Given a constant message of identity based grievances from the democratic party, it seemed only a matter of time until whites decided to use the same criterion to define themselves. In a ways you reap what you sow. I subscribe to the view that if the democratic party would have focused on common economic problems of the working and middle class it would not have created the separation between white voters and minority voters that we see now. Instead it would have tackled a problem common to both groups. Now there is much hand-wringing, but I do see it as an utterly self-inflicted problem and in my opinion the only way out for Democrats is focusing again on broad economic class and not identity based issues.
13
I agree. The Democrats started with identity politics in what was a cynical and opportunistic ploy by the HRC campaign. What we now see is the backlash by people who have felt helpless in the presence of overwhelming cultural stress.
5
This article states mostly what we already knew - Trump won because of the white vote. While it might had been more extreme during the last election, this "racial" trend has been occurring for a long time. When was the last time a democratic presidential candidate won the majority of the white vote? LBJ famously said when he signed the 1964 civil rights act, "I just signed away the South for a generation." Today the South is actually more "solid republican" than it was during the Jim Crow "solid south" democratic days.
In commenting this last year I’ve harped on the logic of narrative and on anchoring moral and political reasoning in our common humanity rather than PC and identity politics. Lately I’ve sung the praises of Joan Didion’s 1991 essay “Sentimental Journeys”: narrative paints in broad strokes and distorts and flattens character; narrative resolution is not a way to determine fact.
So simply explaining Mr. Edsall’s data in terms of my own narratives won’t do either. I don’t know how a crack team of interdisciplinary experts would sort through all this but I’m pretty sure it’s complicated.
Demographic changes occur alongside other factors like the contours of our political conversations, the way the tax code favors or disfavors exporting jobs, changes in technologies, and the extent to which business views employees as assets in which to invest or liabilities to be converted into increased short term management compensation and return to investors.
In multiethnic Houston during the late 50s and 60s just about everyone was infected with racism as a language virus, especially whites. Yet many if not most whites accepted the civil rights laws as a matter of moral principle. And racist talk didn’t correlate with racist behavior as much as you’d think. I took my cues from how my father interacted with black people, not how he sometimes talked. The difference still astounds.
This is complicated.
1
This may be a false correlation; this may be more of a result of the fact that a lot of these places are losing population; also notice how small they are in size. At least overall population change is worth examining
2
Fear and spite in decision-making do not produce good outcomes.
"how the last gasp of a small fraction of the electorate set the nation on such a dangerous and destructive course."
This analysis REALLY frustrates me. I can't believe there isn't a single reference to gender.
I think the much more plausible conclusion is this: in heavily white, non-urban towns and municipalities, voters will choose a white man over a white woman.
Also, people who feel things aren't as good as they used to be vote for change.
It isn't surprising the a lot of whites voted for Obama in 2008. Obama promised "hope and change" to people who felt and still feel they were getting the short end of the stick, and didn't want to vote for another establishment Republican (McCain). Ditto in 2012, when people were really suffering from the Great Recession. Is it hard to imagine that working people of any race wouldn't feel Romney--establishment, rich, "47%"--would have their backs.
People are (mostly justifiably) disgruntled because the middle class and middle jobs are eroding. They vote for change.
7
I️ live in those areas around Cleveland. Having lived all over the country I️ was amazed at the general populations relying on their friends/ church, etc for their opinions and not reading books, periodicals or switching up their news sources to form opinions of their own.
The demographics here are strongly West Virginians that moved north for industrial jobs in the 50’s 60’s 70’s. This area is far more south than north in the white population
2
D Porter: I also live just outside of Cleveland. I could count the number of people I've EVER met here whose ancestors came from West Virginia on the fingers of one hand.
If you WERE going to move up north from W. Va., your family more likely went to Cincinnati -- or all the way to PIttsbugh -- or Detroit. They large populations of Appalachian immigrants. Cleveland DOES NOT.
Also: if you family moved to Cleveland in the 50s -- good lord! that is over 60 years ago! that's 3-4 generations -- anyone living in Cleveland for 60 years has thoroughly assimilated to Northern values in that time.
1
Correlation does not equal causation. These voting patterns can be equally well – and, in my opinion, more plausibly – explained by the economic anxiety of towns and counties with shrinking populations and employers coupled with a terrible democratic candidate without any kind of resonant message for working people who actually treated many of these places like flyover country. Let’s not forget that in the primaries Senator Sanders won Michigan and many of us believe he would have beat Trump – witness the fact that today he remains the country’s most popular politician – if the DNC had not robbed him of the candidacy and robbed the country of a progressive president without a racist, anti-immigrant bone in his body.
45
He’s only popular with a certain age group. Those of us who actually pay taxes knew that the freebies he was handing out would never happen.
Your point about economics is well taken, but not all the conclusions you draw from it Bernie lost fair and square, and dutifully supported his opponent when he did, in contrast to some of his die-hard supporters unwilling to settle for half a loaf. Without superdelegates, the result would have been the same. Had Sanders been nominated, just imagine what the vast right wing media conspiracy would have done with the socialist label. Which reminds me, if you want to be treated nicely by a political party, you might just consider joining it.
1
John that is very presumptuous of you. No Bernie was popular across all age groups. I am Obama's age and I know of many grandparents who voted for Bernie.
1
All true. But it must be said that Clinton was the worst possible candidate to go up against Trump.
She's never been able to read the changes in the strength and direction of the country's socioeconomic winds. Her attempt as first lady at healthcare reform is a case in point. She didn't anticipate the vehement reaction. But it was her job to anticipate it.
Historically, Clinton matches up poorly against charismatic opponents. In '08, she didn't see the junior senator from Illinois and his new-age message coming up on the rail. She was late in realizing the groundswell of support for an aging Jewish socialist senator from Vermont by way of Brooklyn. She quite obviously misread Trump's visceral appeal to aggrieved whites.
All of the other major Dem candidate had a stronger populist message, and any one of them would have stolen enough of Trump's thunder to take the election.
11
Thank God Bolshevik Bernie didn't become president. We'd be on our way to being Venezuela.
This article is skipping over social class entirely. Include it and a different picture emerges.
The very rich places that are >85% white swung dramatically in the opposite direction, away from Trump and toward Clinton after having been staunchly Romney-supporting. The graph is correct that most >85% white places swung to Trump, but by drowning out the rich places, it doesn't tell the whole story.
Take the data points that are sitting at greater than 85% white and an R vote shift below -10 or even -5. You'll see that they're overwhelmingly very rich. It's just that middle-and-lower-income white places are more numerous. Flip to the points above +10, and they'll mostly turn out to be near the national median. There are far more near-median white areas than very white rich areas, so you do get a hockey stick if you throw them all together.
Back to suburban Pittsburgh: In Fox Chapel (pop 5368, 93.3% white, median year 2000 household income $154,722), the vote went from Romney by 59-41 to Clinton by 41-55, which would be -18 on the graph. Edgeworth (95.8% white, pop 1680, med 2000 income $155,170) went from Romney 59-40 to Clinton 43-53 (-16). Pine Township (97.2% white, pop 11497, med 2000 income $85,817) swung from Romney 70-29 to Trump 60-40, for -10.
Dravosburg's 2000 median household income was $30,461, Rep swing +12. This story repeats itself across the entire Rust Belt. Although race is huge, you can't understand Trump using just race. You have to use class, too.
6
it would be interesting to add nielsen tv data and google analytics to the study in attempt to gauge source from which, the sample obtains their information
With every passing day, I keep thinking it can't get worse. I can't be more depressed, more disappointed, more outraged.
And every day, I am.
4
I find it difficult to believe that you can attribute the change voting patterns of white communities solely to Trump's race baiting tactics, especially if the majority of the populations cited previously voted for a black candidate. The author seems to base his conclusions about motivations just on voting patterns, without delving more deeply into why people chose to vote how they did.
There are a couple of additional major differences between the candidates in the races cited by the author that could easily influence how people chose to vote:
1. Mitt Romney is Mormon - I would suggest that Romney's Mormon background was likely a significant factor in determining how conservative Christian voters viewed his candidacy.
2. Barack Obama was not Hillary Clinton - Face it, Clinton was not palatable to many in the white working class. She was viewed by many as an unlikable, corrupt, elitist snob who did not care for them or what is important to them. Trump's efforts to portray her that way may have had at least as much an effect on voting patterns as his white-people-first rhetoric.
Without any deeper analysis of motivations within the white communities described in the article, I am skeptical of the author's conclusion that the change in their voting patterns was simply the result of biases based on race, ethnicity, multiculturalism and immigration.
8
In 2012, I talked to many of my very conservative, NRA-member, GOP family members and was shocked to learn that they were NOT voting for Mitt Romney.
Their reasoning was "he is not a real Christian" and "he's a crazy religious nut" (though in fact, he is a very moderate Mormon in the conventional LDS Church).
I heard all kinds of silly allegations about "Mormons wear weird religious underwear!" -- but what it came down to was RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE.
And just as much came from the left wing. BOTH SIDES hated Romney, a moderate, for being a MORMON.
The left abhors anyone with any religion -- except Muslim -- and the right does not consider Mormonism to be real Christianity.
Especially Evangelicals just loathe and hate Mormons -- and Catholics are not far behind.
So though a nice guy, and a moderate -- a million times more polite and reasonable than Trump -- Romney was soundly rejected BECAUSE OF HIS RELIGION, and no other reason.
1
This article seems to be saying that whites who live in white-only or white-majority locations are racist.
But when the Democratic party targets "people of color", that does not get labeled racist.
And "Identity Politics", the flavor du jour of Democratic party philosophy, also is not labeled racist.
It would seem that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is right: the way to stop discriminating is to stop discriminating.
Why isn't the Democratic Party offering a race-neutral philosophy and outreach ?
11
The difference is in the targeting message.
"Why isn't the Democratic Party offering a race-neutral philosophy and outreach ?" The DNC and Hillary campaign hired highly paid consultants. They relied on fancy big data, they forgot to look on the ground. Fancy schmancy Analytics do not measure people's emotions.
1
''Four years later, the men and women of Dravosburg abandoned their Democratic loyalties and backed Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.'' No Mr.Edsall the Democratic party abandoned Dravosburg and the rest of rural and blue collar America in favor of full government mobilization towards identity politics,illegal immigrant amnesty,mainstreaming transgender individuals into the bathrooms,showers and lockers of our schools at every grade level.
The opioid epidemic,jobs moving overseas and wage suppression due to mass immigration could never be the reason rural and blue collar white former Obama voters went for Trump,it had to be that they turned into xenophobic racists in just four short years,or if you agree with some of the comments here they're just simply uneducated,no elitism here.I'm curious to read the column outlining how African Americans have benefited from their overwhelming support of the Dems over the last 50 years.
7
Mass immigration in a place that's 89% white?! The problem of these areas isn't immigrants moving in, it's whites moving away (for the same reason immigrants don't come in). I'm willing to be the lower the immigrant percentage in VA, the higher the GOP vote last week. But there is a disconnect in voting for the party of union busting and opposing an increase in minimum wage, and cultural anxiety, if not exactly race, may be involved.
@Phelan:
Obama and Clinton talked about, campaigned for, and fought for programs that would help places like Dravosburg. The did so all the time. Trump had no real ideas, plans, or intentions of solving any of Dravosburg's problems, and the voters knew this when they voted.
2
To finish what is being left unsaid - Donald Trump and his campaign tapped into the inability of the less educated White population to look beyond the paranoid rhetoric. Such tactics are employed by politicians elsewhere in the world all the time. In India, for example, the campaigning parties have long tended to tap into the paranoid fears of the vastly under educated and ignorant base in the Northern regions by using religion and nationalism as a panacea and cure all. In many parts of Western Europe, we are beginning to see the same being done to the detriment of their own societies.
Steve Bannon and his cohorts simply took the paranoid playbook from elsewhere in the world and delivered it to a performer who, whether you like it or not, was able to deliver the message of fear to the masses.
Media firms like Fox News and radio talk show hosts like Limbaugh, Jones etc do it all the time. Their base is drawn mostly from the under educated segment of the White population. And they laugh all the way to the bank.
Same with Trump. Nothing more, nothing less.
4
Most of the Trump voters voted for a character he played on television...a thoroughly scripted and utterly devised character of a great businessman only vaguely connected to the real person. Just as Reagan was able to dupe the populous by seeming to be the laconic, homespun host of "Death Valley Days" and empty suit hero of countless B-movies, Trump was sold to America as someone he never was and they fell for it. These same people in a health crisis would look for Robert Young (Marcus Welby, MD) or seek legal counsel from Raymond Burr (Perry Mason). Instead of draining the swamp, these voters are now in need of scuba gear but still see the savior in a "trumped up" fictional TV character.
3
This article leaves me confused. The voters support a black man, but then won’t support a white woman. The supposed cause of this is animus towards black people. Right.
How about this instead: Voters in small towns that have remained largely white have also retained their traditional patriarchal concepts of authority.
It’s a testable hypothesis that the authors chose not to test. To my mind, this brings the entire work into question.
5
It seems to me this article panders to the liberal elitist notion that working class whites are racist. Yet another reason to dismiss them, right?
It was the lack of attention to the working class, among many other things, that drove some voters to Trump.
Bringing them back to the Democrats is not going to happen by saying that the only reason people who voted for Obama and then Trump is racism. That doesn't even make sense.
If the Democrats want to appeal to the white working class again, they have to extend some effort to understand why they voted, and what their concerns are. This article does neither; rather, it offers a simplistic reason--with blame attached!--for why Trump is president.
13
@Talbot:
Both Obama and Clinton campaigned and fought extensively for programs that would help working class whites. Trump had no real ideas, intentions, or abilities to solve any white working class problems. These voters were willing to give up their health care and torpedo the whole country in order to satisfy white grievance.
1
That argument doesn’t hold water. The blue collar voters were tired of being ignored. Therefore they voted for a silver spoon millionaire with a documented record of stuffing workers and hiring foreigners to staff his properties??? That makes no sense.
2
So why don't you tell us why these people chose a vulgar crass con man that sought to gain political gain by citing racist, mysogonistic, xenophobic ideas? We truly would like to understand.
1
In the examples given each town's population has fallen since 2012 and 2008. That probably indicates declining economic prospects in the area. If we're trying to capture racial fears, as isolated from economic insecurity, the graph could be redone showing only those municipalities that didn't decline in population.
5
Call me a nerd, but in the first graph, are there really that many more blue dots (municipalities) above the line than below? The red line doesn't look like it really tracks the raw data to me.
3
When discussing this this with my parents a decade ago, I used to call this the coming “kicking and screaming moment”. That was way back when as I grappled with how my tiny generation would be interfacing with aging baby boomers in power transition. I knew it would be ugly, but I didn’t anticipate this particular shape of ugly in enclave cities. Your graphs illustrate its outlines quite clearly.
Any breakdown by age in those small communities? Are the young white people in isolated white zero-sum economy communities responding the same way as their elders? Looking for a ray of light here....
10
Excellent observation. Being someone who grew up in a similar community, I'm also curious about the age breakdown (and also dreading a discouraging answer).
1
Every election consists of arguments made by all candidates, campaigns run by all candidates, registration and get-out-the-vote drives by all candidates, and promises, gaffes, muck and everything else by all candidates.
This is one of the most lopsidedly focused studies I've ever seen, pretending that there was only one message, only one candidate, only one demographic category and only one cause for Trump winning the election. You'd hardly know that there were other candidates at all. No analysis of Hillary Clinton's message or where it may or may not have registered, her name is mentioned only in a small recitation of Dravosburg statistics.
Nobody has studied whether or not her lopsidedly non-white non-male messaging had any effect, it's just assumed that it was good and just and right. Nobody has offered any explanation for why white voters were supposedly so scared. Just more hammering away at the racist white people with their unreasoning fears.
Want to know what they're worried about? Go look up your own NYTimes article about the mayoral election in Atlanta, where it's just fine to put up signs demanding that the mayor be always black, and it's just fine to decide that white people shouldn't hold office in the town where they also live. Those scared white people are scared that when they are no longer the majority, the rules they've lived under as the majority won't be the rules for the majority anymore. And Atlanta seems to be saying those fears are justified.
19
And what, exactly, are those "rules" you're talking about that white people are afraid are going to change when they are no longer in the minority? Also wondering, based on your wording in the first sentence of the second paragraph referring to Clinton's "non-male" messaging, if you also think that there are different "rules" for men too, rules that will be tossed aside if non-white women take over the country, which appears to be your implication.
1
"When I look back at the 2016 election, what is really striking is ... — how the last gasp of a small fraction of the electorate set the nation on such a dangerous and destructive course."
Two comments:
First, in each of PA, MI and WI, the number of people who voted for third party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson each exceeded the margin by which Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the respective state. Given that a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote (see H. Ross Perot, who in 1992 got 19% of the popular vote and ZERO electoral votes), the election could possibly have changed if the people who threw away their votes had voted differently. Those who did not vote at all, and who definitely "threw away their vote", were more than enough tp change the outcome.
Second, the information presented in this article appears to show that the people who live in the communities described (predominantly white, declining in population, less prosperous) are very fearful people. They are scared. They vote their fears, not their hopes. What are they going to do when their political "messiah" turns out to have a forked tongue and feet of clay?
11
they are indeed fearful and perhaps one reason is these voters often have more past than future; their kids have either moved away ("abandoning" them) or succumbed to hoplessness and drugs. the recent past has gone from bad to worse, so there's no optimism left just the grim prospect of things continuing to get worse as they age and decline.
it's understandable. but the orange coiffed reality star is no more an answer than opioids. let's hope that as he and his henchpeople continue to fail them, small town rust belt voters will wake up and see they've been had, and vote the greedmongers out en mass.
1
Johnson's votes came mostly from Republicans who could not stomach Trump, not from people who would have preferred Clinton over Trump. In an election where there were only those two choices, Clinton would have been only about even money to take Minnesota, where there were far more Johnson and McMullen votes than Stein and fringe left-wing (Marijuana, Socialist Workers) votes. She would probably have lost New Hampshire, and would also have lost WI+MI+PA by wider margins rather <1%.
People who don't vote or who cast protest votes for third parties are expressing a political opinion too: they literally have no preference between the widely reviled current political establishment (Clinton) and a reality-TV demagogue who insults people on Twitter.
And some people are actually supporters of third parties and would rather stick with their candidate getting 1% of the vote than vote for either major party, regardless of whether they think one candidate is less diabolical than the other.
Also, of course, people who live in non-swing states and who have no consequential close elections down the ballot have no real impact anyway, and everyone knows it. If anything, the electoral college and gerrymandered House districts are corrosive to democracy more because they actually do make most votes not really count than because of their direct results.
Unless this is fixed, I'll keep having no regrets about often voting Green in Illinois. At least I vote.
I am very anti-Trump, and I love the NY Times. However...
Are we supposed to believe that 13 additional Hispanic residents sent a town into such a tizzy that they voted for Trump in order to keep the "others" out? Please.
The logic is that when white people voted for Obama in 2008 or 2012, it was because they were progressive and wanted change. When they voted for Trump it was because they are white.
Or is it more likely that Trump represented change this time, and Clinton was a more-of-the-same career politician? I'm not saying that I agree or that that's correct, but I think this article is another example of the Times not understanding what happened a year ago.
51
@Eric:
Except Trump represented "change" in the same way that a snarling, rabid raccoon represents "change". The only possible change was danger and destruction. Trump voters knew this, yet voted for it anyways.
1
Let us not forget the elephant in the room: Russian hacking the voter systems of at least 39 states, Russian ads against Clinton on Facebook and other social media; Russian ads smearing Clinton (which are still running) on the internet in general.
Did Trump actually pull off a skimpy Electoral College win because poor rural whites were angry?
Putin must be loving all of this hand-wringing and rear-view mirror analysis.
9
Uhg! Enough with all of our sanctimonious, progressive virtue signaling. As the article pointed out many times, many of these voters cast their ballots for Obama. So, casting them aside in the bin of "deplorables" is both nonsense and damaging to Democratic goals. Everyone, please, please read NYT's Frank Bruni's article entitled "Danica Roem Is Really, Really Boring" about the first openly transgender person to win office in a legislative body anywhere in the US -- in Virginia. She won NOT by focussing on her gender fluidity BUT by relentlessly focusing on issues voters care about such as traffic and specifically the "awful congestion on Route 28 in Fairfax County". If Democrats want to win in 2018 and beyond, talk about the "boring" as in traffic, jobs, healthcare, job training, Medicare, Social Security etc.
55
During her campaign, Hillary Clinton never said once that she would work to help poor whites. They were excluded. And yet she reached out to all groups other than white people to explain at length how her policies would benefit them. Maybe the white voting public was listening.
26
@Don L.:
Clearly you were not listening. She repeatedly talked about programs that would help all Americans, and had real economic policy ideas. Trump had no real ideas, no ability, and no intention to solve any of the problems of poor whites.
2
She said we should work to help all citizens.
1
I noticed this when I was lost in the country side. I never saw so many yard signs for a candidate ever. All for Trump. This was just before the election. It was then I thought all the polls about Michigan were off. These signs were in front of what I thought were very nice middle class homes. Lots of bumper stickers too. The fact that Hillary was a woman, establiment.
8
This analysis looks like a possible case of confirmation bias - cherry picking the stats to support a narrative that racists in the Rust Belt (who voted for Obama twice) propelled Trump to the White House.
So, before I'll buy the argument that a few dozen Black or Hispanic people moving to these small towns turned a bunch of Obama voters into racists, I need to see another variable introduced into the analysis, e.g. % change in manufacturing employment, wage rates, jobs, etc. If those numbers got better between 2008 and 2016, I'll buy Edsall's argument. If the economic indicators got worse during that time, however, perhaps something else is at play.
23
This analysis presumes either that the same people vote in every election.
The fact is, the overwhelming number of voters reliably vote and are tribal; they vote for the person with the right letter after their name, no matter what. Elections are won or lost by inspiring or discouraging non-voters to vote. Non-voting white supremacists were inspired to vote by Donald J. Trump. Non-voting progressives, youth, urban, people of color were discouraged to vote by the candidacy of Hillary Clinton (thanks mostly to scorched-earth defamation and Russia's propaganda campaign).
It means nothing to point to Dravosburg, PA's results without exploring whether their white progressives sat out the election and their white supremacists jumped into the election, OR the same voters showed up and switched tribes.
10
This racial inunendo fails to hold water. First, Hillary was also white. Second, the same area backed Obama (black) over Mitt (white) at the previous elections you mention. What have had Trump and Obama in common? It wasn't the race. It was the facts that: 1) they had charisma and 2) that they were each 'the new kid on the bloc' who promised the most shake-up of the status quo 3) and were perceived less corrupt by politics in general.
This article continues to strategy to demonize Trump voters and paint/slander them as racist for the crime of failing to vote the establishment candidate and the establishment orthodoxy on issues.
28
White on white is only part of the story. Another problem is "senior" communities where everyone thinks the same.
How can we have a well-rounded society when people group by age and/or race and feed each other's biases? We can't.
Inclusion at every level is the key to relative world peace. Very simple. I'm happy to live in a multi-culture city and have a family that spans the ages. It keeps me young and helps me understand how young people think now and it gives me a chance to educate them on our family roots and history.
6
This article is very unconvincing. People do not get upset when the number of minorities in their communities increases by a few percentage points, even if that represents a doubling or tripling of the number of minorities. White people used to seeing only white faces in the supermarket don't freak when they occasionally see a brown or black face. And if the minority family chooses to participate in programs such as Little League, they are always accepted, even if it takes a short while to get used to. We are far from the there-goes-the-neighborhood worry. People in these communities aren't racist as in the Jim Crow days. They feel under siege because they believe the country as a whole has turned its back on them, not because a black family has moved in down the block.
71
"White people used to seeing only white faces in the supermarket don't freak when they occasionally see a brown or black face. And if the minority family chooses to participate in programs such as Little League, they are always accepted..."
You and I clearly know different white people.
3
Sadly, I have to disagree. White panic is still a thing -- whether it is one black family on the block, or one recent immigrant taking a job at the factory.
4
Exactly LSR- They are responding to the rhetoric not the reality.
1
Cultural norms can be repaired and reinforced but the internet is forever.
Those who answered Donnie's dog whistles and came out of the woodwork to voice their racist or xenophobic views in a public forum won't be able to scrub those sentiments from public view once Trumpism fades into the dustbin of history.
5
"...what is really striking is how much influence.. was exercised by the relatively small numbers of voters in super-white municipalities and counties and by the politician who ignited them..." Every time Trump opens his gaping maw I assume, with every utterance, that this is the group to whom he bloviates. With the current calculus, this is the only group to which he HAS to pander.
2
Suggesting racial anger, which is always present, was the primary factor in propelling Trump is hard to reconcile with the fact that a lot of white people voted for Barack Obama but refused to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton. It may be because they hate Hillary Clinton and would go for anything and anyone instead. See the uptick in third-party protest votes. Racism wasn't strong enough to prevent Obama from winning twice. He won Iowa twice, Hillary lost it. People, including white people, liked Barack Obama more than Hillary Clinton, simple. Maybe that's why he beat her in 2008. Whether she deserves to be so hated aside, the fact is the Democrats nominated one of the most disliked people in American history and thought they could ram it through. That was arrogant and a major strategic miscalculation. Clinton hallmarks. Obama's biggest mistake may be giving Hillary the Secretary of State position to bridge her over. Obama should have wrested control of the DNC from the Clintons. Clearly he had the fundraising knack to replace them on that front. Instead he was, and still is, the lone 21st century Democrat with national clout and we are left with the same old relics.
94
Hillary got more votes. Hated by whom?
2
Probably would have been better to park Clinton in a nice juicy federal judgeship, Second Circuit or DC Circuit.
If Hillary was so hated, why did she win the popular election by 3 million votes? She actually soundly defeated Trump. In any other democracy on earth she would be president. And, a black family in "their" White House exacerbated the racism inherent in too many white Americans. But I still believe the reason for Hillary's defeat was the Comey Letter. She plunged in the polls after that letter came out, and it was too late to recover.
2
I agree with a lot of the commenters here who challenge the racism theme. It is really unfair to paint all Trump supporters as racist when so many of them once voted for Obama. It is also a dishonest assessment of something we really do want to understand better - what really happened? I think it's time to delve more deeply into the Hillary Clinton issue. Why do people find her so abhorrent and corrupt? How much of it is latent misogyny and how much of it is related to 20 years of relentless Clinton-bashing in the media? Our nation is on the verge of a huge reckoning, and this issue needs careful consideration free of gratuitous slurs against "the other".
17
I address Thomas Edsall here, knowing that he probably is not reading comments, but also knowing that he will understand my question. Why? I believe he is the only Times columnist who realizes that the American race categories are archaic or worse and perhaps should be done away with.
My question:
Thomas Edsall, suppose the USCB had ended its system of assigning people to colors ("races") and ethnicities. Is there a set of variables that could be used to characterize these "white" Americans and their color counterparts in towns and cities in Vermont that could be used to explain the difference between voting pattern in these towns and equally white towns in Vermont?
Comment writer Sammy VT reminded me of what I know very well, that Vermont as a state is still seen as being "white" yet gave strong support to Clinton. So whiteness as the explanatory variable is not entirely satisfactory.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Dual citizen US SE
5
If I may summarize your logic, Mr. Edsall, what you find is a spasm of self-protection.
The press, that non-whites have been getting for most of their existence, has created the impression that their presence in a community is by and of itself bad. So when an infinitesimally small number of non-whites suddenly increases exponentially it will be seen, though the absolute numbers are still quite small, as a harbinger of doom. The community then turns to anyone who proclaims that he (or she) will protect them and prevent the descent into chaos that is seen as inevitably linked to a growing proportion of non-whites. It is a very understandable reaction.
The problem is that so many politicians stand to gain by the continued existence of this falsehood. Indeed, the GOP gerrymanders away merrily to ensure that enclaves proliferate and their affiliated media outdo one another to further impress on the minds of really quite decent people that they stand to loose everything, unless they use the power they are given at the ballot box to stem the tide and avert the chaos.
If you limit political objectives to winning seats in assemblies, this is a brilliant tactic. If you look at it more broadly and accept that you will, having won, actually need to govern it is sheer madness. It is your, and the world's, misfortune that your assemblies are filled to overflowing with the sort of callous imbeciles who only look at election results...
3
The charts give me hope on integration and diversity, namely that these forces are winning, not losing, for the first time since Trump’s ‘victory.’ The more the racist undertones are brought into light in these last population fringes where experience with diversity on a day-to-day handshake level are small, the more these people, largely non-college educated, will realize the error of their ways. Or will not. But by not, their voices through voting become more repellent to the generations below this largely older population base ‘stuck in their ways’ and the more the rest of the surrounding population and younger generation will see these garrulously loud Fox voices that represent them as repugnant and antiquated. The minority of popular vote Trump got, 45.9 percent, can only shrink. At least that is the hope: not the loss of the GOP, but the reduction of inherent divisive racism that underlies their attitude, their unconscious voting pattern.
22
"When an area is more than 85 percent white, support for President Trump skyrockets--and that makes all the difference. What is really striking is how much influence over the course of events was exercised by the relatively small numbers of voters in super-white municipalities and counties and by the politician who ignited them--how the last gasp of a small fraction of the electorate set the nation on such a dangerous and destructive course."
Well, if it is true that we are witnessing the last gasp of a small fraction of the electorate, and this electorate set the nation on such a dangerous and destructive course, the practical solution would seem to be to make sure all places in the U.S., or perhaps only places relevant to voting, fall beneath 85% white makeup...have immigrants or diversity within the U.S. move to those places and bring them beneath 85% composition...
Or attract the people from those places to the city, or rather to places which are significantly below 85% white. Population redistribution. Or will this lead to Balkanization along new lines, will it lead to increased identity politics all around, everybody feeling persecuted for one reason or another? Can politics not only be dramatically altered but improved by throwing a variety of people together, increasing diversity, in a place, or will it lead to increased tension all around and social decline? Can we get some definite answers to this problem or must we just experiment and see the result?
3
A little social engineering here?
What if people don't want to move? Other people should be forced to move somewhere they don't want, just to further YOUR social agenda??
I hate to say it, Trump's race-baiting was at the same time a recognition that 61% of the US is white. We can (and should) debate at length over racial representation at various levels of public/private institutions, just as we should be (and are, at a painstaking rate) pushing for change so that non-whites are given equal opportunity in this country.
But the math is the math. 61% of Americans, just shy of 200M, are white. Whatever privilege the racial group may hold, whatever issues you personally have with them, within that group there is still a wide spectrum of socioeconomic levels, ideologies, and beliefs. They still have needs, as people and as families. They will still feel downtrodden to be ignored or to be the target of outrage against whites as a whole and--as the vast majority of humans would do--they would seek to alleviate this dismay and fulfill their needs through whatever political candidate they feel is best for them.
People will vote in their best self-interest, that's all there is to it.
Now, since I like to be solution-oriented, a few things to do:
* Continuing to address the manipulation of news on social and proliferation of fabricated stories.
* Shifting the meta level argument from "whites vs. nonwhites" to "wealthy vs. poor".
* Pushing for higher standards from our government and media to not give into a demagogue's abuse of spectacle to dominate news cycles.
* Revisiting the electoral college in light of skewing decisions towards a select few.
14
but people do not always vote in their best interest...famous examples are Kansas, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
1
Ugggh, another post-mortem on the 2016 election that is trying to understand the motivations of the Trump voter. I don't care anymore. They're 35% of the population, and were susceptible to manipulation by the Russians; far more of us voted in favor of sanity and progression than did not. Many of them aren't comfortable with the changing racial and ethnic fabric of the country. So what, not everyone is going to play nice in the sandbox. It's time for us to move forward. I'm tired of the media granting their grievances legitimacy and holding the country back. We need to hear ideas that speak across the spectrum to our greater good. Where are they?
21
Two messages of Trump resonated to large section of American citizen - anti Islam and anti Immigration. There is general anxiety amongst many Americans about immigration policy - high end jobs are taken by H1 visa and low end jobs are taken by illegal immigrants. Though H1 visas are less than few hundred thousands per year, perception is there are too many of them.Anti Islam message resonated also amongst non white citizens also. Democratic Party ignored this fear and never tried to address this fear. In future elections the situation will remain same unless Democratic Party addresses the fears.
9
I don't think it's as much a matter of race as unemployment. Many unskilled and unemployed whites voted for Trump believing he would get them back the jobs they lost to factories moving to lower-wage countries abroad, to automation and, more importantly, to skills demanded by a 21st Century economy. When the coal mines don't reopen, when the factories don't come back, when they lose their health care to pay for billionaire tax cuts their fury will know no bounds. But it will be too late.
14
It it not unemployment at all. The only things Trump has been trying to pass are his personal pet projects (undoing everything Obama did) and trying to force through Congress the things that his billionaire donors (including himself) want passed for their own interests; meanwhile, nothing is being done about jobs and his voters are still giving the two thumbs up with their MAGA hats on.
What this is all about is the ability to play the victim card along with being allowed to discriminate and say whatever they want about people who don't look like them, while the puppeteers at the top of the Republican party along with their donors, slap each other on the back for a job well done and shovel more fake talking points to their other puppets at Fox News.
1
@Christy:
If white rural voters really believed Trump would bring back the jobs, then those people are gullible small-town rubes, in full stereotype.
But I think they're smarter than that, and knew what they were really voting for.
1
People should not be ALLOWED to say what they want in private?? You want the speech police?
The less you know the more fearful you become or can be made to me. White populations introduced by daily exposure to the "others" lose that propensity to fear as they find people are people regardless of color or religion or origin. I also see this fear as being a doubtfulness on the part of scared underexposed people, that our culture is is not pervasive and so overwhelmingly dominant enough as to absorb these other people. After all they have come here, often hat-in-hand, from failed systems and areas of great cultural upheaval to create a stable life for themselves.
5
Let me get this straight. In 2012, Dravosburg went for President Obama 53% to 44%, and then went to Trump to the tune of 56% in 2016. And we are attributing this to an increase of literally 42 black and Hispanic citizens dating back to the 2000 census???? 42 people over the course of 17 years somehow led to an overwhelming Trump victory in a tiny suburb in Pennsylvania?
While I applaud the search for answers for the quagmire that we find ourselves in, I don’t think this is the missing link. I would argue instead that in 2012 and 2016, you had two candidates (Obama and Trump) who while diametrically opposed, were driven to victory primarily because of their strong personalities compared with the rather lack luster personalities of their opponents. In short, the Cult of Personality is a double edged sword.
18
Gerrymandering these communities has not helped or democracy.
3
The critical point is the ease with which Trump stoked fear of "others" in people who have no daily interaction with those "others." Previous research about this election made the same point with regard to immigrants. Communities with few to no immigrants are the most hostile towards them. Intriguing? Yes. Easy to solve? No!
4
I spent a number of years living in Central Pennsylvania and never saw anyone explain Pennsylvania better than James Carville who famously opined: "There is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and between them it's Alabama."
10
Aren’t these many of the same places where Bernie was more popular than Hillary and where Joe Biden would have been expected to do well? Sure, Trump appealed to many of their worst instincts, but that these people stayed away from Hillary in droves was no surprise. Many of these voters went for Obama because he was new and different and did not seemed owned by Wall Street, as Romney clearly was. Hillary was neither new, nor different, presented no excitement at all to voters, and was also clearly owned by Wall Street too, as evidenced by her money making speeches that were never disclosed. In retrospect, Obama violated the double-tap rule, keeping her political career on life support in his administration thus allowing Hillary to make another zombie like run for the White House, losing again for many of the same reasons that she lost to Obama in the primary years earlier.
14
I don't think their having voted for Obama in the past rules out any likelihood of racism. People are complicated. However, It is likely more than purely racism. I think it was fear of change and perceived outsiders invading. Also, there was no mention of economic status or educational level, other than support for unions. I'd bet that these communities have fewer than average college grads and felt some measure of economic apprehension or threat. Combine those with fear of outsiders and some underlying latent racist tendencies, and you have a powerful mix.
Sadly, Trump is going to hurt them economically, reduce opportunities for advanced education, and prove relatively powerless to reverse the sweeping demographic changes that are coming. Not to mention the damage and suffering everyone else faces under this administration.
4
The whole time I'm reading this I'm thinking of the 85% white suburbs in Nassau and Weschester Counties. These wealthy white suburban enclaves surely did not vote Trump.
The areas cited in this article were surely not wealthy and not well-educated. The suggestion here is that Trump's support depended mostly on race. Conventional wisdom is that race and economic standing and education were the collective key. I am skeptical that race, standing alone. was most decisive. Lots of whites voted Democrat. If they hadn't Trump would have won in a landslide.
12
Those suburban areas you cite are 'inner ring' suburbs, and actually were addressed in the essay, as the places where racial diversity began earlier and is farther along now, so for whatever reason whites there are less susceptible to racist messaging:
"Trump’s vote skyrocketed in very white suburbs. In the more racially diverse suburbs, particularly those that had been diverse for more than a decade, the white vote for Trump did not increase over Romney’s vote."
Great op-ed, which clearly demonstrates that white working class voters in 2008 voted for Obama with the belief that he would represent their position, that they would be included in his rainbow of hope and change. However, Obama let these hardworking men and women down for the sake of identity political goals. Up to Obama, the Democrat Party had been the party of the working class, but under him it became the party of identity politics which did not include the white working class. Donald Trump, man of significant wealth, spoke to their needs, and earned their vote. If the Democrats hope to ever earn their votes again, they will have to ditch identity politics and reachout to all Americans.
7
And what part of this article did you overlook when talking about "identity politics"?
How do you think Trump got the white vote?
Read it again.
4
@Southern Boy:
Trump has never "earned" a single thing in his life. Everything he has is acquired by inheritance, fraud, or outright criminality.
"Identity politics" depends on whose identities we're talking about. Trump campaigned on white identity politics, which was quite successful.
Bingo! Obama pushed TPP, expanded the H1B Visa program, extended the war in Afghanistan, expanded US military presence in Africa, cut SS benefits by doing away with the COLA, and arguably increased the opioid problem by requiring pain killers instead of surgery for seniors with chronic pain. And no one can figure out why a Dem lost in 2016???
i see that we're back to the "anger and fear" rationale for Hillary's loss. Obviously, these rural voters could not have voted for their perception of their best interests -- for example, that Hillary and the coastal/urban elites care not a whit for the rural folks (best illustrated by Hillary's failure to go to anywhere in Michigan except Detroit and to fail to go at all to Wisconsin). I also note with amusement that no similar analysis ("they're voting on racial grounds") was made by the author of the overwhelming Hillary voting in large cities, in which black and latin populations predominate.
13
Interesting findings. Racial prejudice is always part of our politics. What about gender prejudice? Not mentioned in this article, but certainly a major reason why Trump won the white vote, among both white men and women. If it had been Bill instead of Hillary, Trump would have been trounced. Who doubts it, other than Trumpians?
4
And who is he betraying with the one sided tax bill and narrow minded trade policies from the 1950s?
Just every American who does not work on Wall Street
6
Yes, it's the It’s usually the lesser educated whites, poorer and rural ,easily persuaded and feel threatened -- unable to compete with the newly more educated immigrants and others on 'an equal playing field". Now theyhave their "savior" Trump only to find the loss of their Medicaid and food stamps are in jeopardy. But it's okay to cut off the nose to save their face-- when all they have going for them are 'white privileges"...not earned, but given
3
If rural whites are poor, how can you still claim they are "privileged"? And SS benefits ARE earned, btw.
1
What happens if you factor in levels of education?
3
I lived the first 51 years of my life in Pittsburgh. My brother and sister still live there. Every week I ask them if those new steel mills have sprouted up along the Monongahela in places like, oh say, Dravosburg. Every week they tell me no. I will be watching how places like Dravosburg vote in 2020. Will they reward Trump for the bounty that has been pouring down upon them since he took office? Oh, yeah, there aren't many new mills sprouting up along the banks of the Allegheny either.
6
@Saummy makes a fascinating point: lily white, bright blue Vermont went for Clinton. Is it just a suburban phenomenon? Is it that Vermont's non-white population is not growing? What are the levers under the intriguing first cut at the data? More analysis needed.
7
What a fantastic, data-rich article. This should rubbish the common refrain: it is all about dog whistles to the "base," where the "base" is a stereotype of a backward, gun toting, bible thumping, uneducated yahoo living in a trailer, with a robe in the closet and a cross in the front yard.
This is how fringe brands mainstream. Country music went mainstream and gained market share, and jazz got pure and disappeared from most of America's consciousness. Country music: R; jazz: D. Tennis: D; NASCAR: R.
The segment that jumped over Romney and went with Trump likely had dormant feelings about powerlessness; the emotions burst out - prodded by Trump's crass but direct appeals. If the republican base was motivated by hatred, then this segment was converted despite their indifference. It is just a brilliant way of dragging out an emotional response from a disengaged population with manufactured statements suggesting "vote for me or your way of life is threatened."
This article should be taken by heart by every democrat party strategist and official. Fear is the key. It is not Trump that democrats should fear, but the imagined America that is about to turn hostile, mean, unjust, polluted, theocratic, and oligarchic that makes lives of our children nightmarish - that we should fear. Demonizing Trump strengthens him; the Apple ad featuring Miles Davis made Apple more famous; it did not sell one more Miles Davis album.
Thanks Mr. Edsall.
56
The Democratic Party has nothing to fear but fear itself.
1
Would you call Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Saint Louis, New Orleans kind, friendly, peaceful or safe??? Give me rural KS, NE, or NB any day.
1
@ Kalidan - K I think you are pushing your jazz arguments a bit too hard. Miles had no trouble selling records, he hardly needed Apple. You refer to an imagined America, but I need some help from you telling who they are doing the imagining.
Larry L.
Two things that this article doesn't touch on much are education and class. Most of the towns such as Dravosburg and places around Cleveland, and I am sure the same could be said for other metro areas, that switched to Trump the average voter is not just white but working class with less than a college education. At least based on the Cleveland area this seems to be more of the linchpin rather than whiteness per se. To me, to simply make it about race as this story does is wrongheaded and exacerbates the racial issues that seem to be at the forefront of public discussion. I know race makes headlines, but class, education, and religious beliefs seem to be the "real" story and less race.
8
It is even simpler. President Obama got elected on "hope" and "change." He then made it clear he wasn't about to help working class people by his indifference to labor issues and any number of others. Since appealing to what appeared to be a liberal Democrat (Mr. Obama was not that.) resulted in no improvement in our situation, people voted against the status quo. A vote for Mrs. Clinton was a vote for "more of the same" and Mr. Trump was the only alternative with any chance of winning.
the middle class has taken a beating from the wealthy in this country for 50 years. Enough is enough. Clearly Mr. Trump is not capable of effecting the changes needed, so expect support for an even bigger monkey wrench to be thrown into the gears of government is the politicians now available do not wake up to how desperate the majority of voters are.
15
So the president who tried to introduce either a salary floor or overtime for low salary managers, the president who bailed out the auto industry (which supports many factories in the county) is indifferent to labor issues? Give me a break. Steve, I grew up in Elk County. I was proud and surprised when it went for Obama in 2008. There are many wonderful people there and I don't want to paint all with the same brush but let's be realistic, many voted for Obama despite his identity. I go back there a few times a year...there's been a lot of talk about the new folks in town. NIMBY would certainly apply here.
1
More data showing that the explanation of Trump as being a reaction to economic dislocation is false. Trump simply doubled down on identity politics in a way that Romney never dared.
Americans did not want to believe that they and their countrymen would go all in on identity politics.
5
The usual excellent analysis by Mr. Edsall. But I wish he would explain exactly what all the circles on the graphs mean. Why are there many hundreds of circles on the graph of "Top 50 Metros," not just 50? Were all the surrounding suburbs and towns given their own circles? The take-away is still clear, but I remain curious why the data are presented the way they are. (A nerdy point, I admit.)
4
The bottom line is that we must rid the country of the Electoral College. The fact is that Trump won the Electoral College by under 80,000 votes in 3 States.
He actually lost the popular vote by about 3 MILLION votes.
This was the second time in 16 years that a Presidential candidate (Al Gore) won the popular vote and lost eh election.
We must all stand up and call for the elimination of the Electoral College.
25
Many of these areas switched from Obama to Trump. Certainly Trump's nationalistic and anti-immigrant platform resonated with some of these voters, perhaps many. But, how many voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary Clinton. We can't really understand Trump's victory without examining his opponent. Though anecdotal, many of my in-laws voted for Trump, but were very clear that they would have voted for anyone else except for Clinton. The democratic victories this past election support this to some extent.
Clinton lost the election. Trump did not win.
6
Mr. Edsall, you have been bringing us considerable depth of analysis of this kind for months--thanks! I'm from Pennsylvania, and have lived and worked in northwest PA, so I can vouch for some of the voting trends, and underlying fears/perceptions, that Mr. Edsall has presented. Both the four year/one cycle flip in Dravosburg, and the gaping percentage shift in Elk County in two cycles, could clearly be discerned by the lawn signs, or diner chat, or a scan of the opinion pages of any town or small city newspaper. What's NOT clear to me--and may be instructive with respect to Democratic party strategies in the future--is, first, what were some of the keystones (PA, the Keystone State) of the significant appeal of Barack Obama in 2008, in both places, and second, what specific perceived threats, what local and regional political currents, and which campaign dog whistles converged to accomplish such reversal. Another way to say this is: if the voting in these places couldn't have been described as white-on-white nine years ago, are there ways to recover, re-present, remodel any of the effective messages and connections that contributed to that success?
2
Unfortunately, this analysis is very reasonable. Fear motivates voters better than love, togetherness or happiness. However, voting for Trump may not reverse the trends. But Trump, Roy Moore and the GOP will try. They will cut immigration, toss out the illegals and try to get a majority of judges to agree with them. Whether this helps in the long run is not clear to me. November 2018 will tell us lots more.
2
It does appear that small towns, racially homogeneous, and in the process of changing more to the multi racial and multi cultural America that is our present and future, had such a dramatic impact on the election. Caution, one set of correlations isn't the same as causation.
There were also other factors at play. Sander's pushed the cause of identites as did Clinton. People are being pushed into declaring an identity... I cringe at the census and other forms which say, more or less, pick one and yet my geneological testing confirms many elements. And my family further confirms the mixtures of races and customs. So we are melding and changing while our politicians are hammering away at our differences and making race, immigration and cultural identity key factors in our polity.
We are in a bad place and we are all to blame. It doesn't matter who started this, we all need to find ways to end the over reliance on identity to divide and alienate us from one another. We can even shift some of the blame for this to Russia, no friend of the US, for taking advantage of an existing weakness in both major political parties.
We cannot allow this to continue and all who foster division need to be taken to task for it, not just one side or the other.
3
This report demonstrates just how deep the river of racial discrimination runs in the United States - and how likely an element of citizenry may very well control the future of the country. A change to the Constitution is needed, but there is little chance that will ever occur.
1
What change in the Constitution is needed?? No more pursuit of happiness? No more right to choose where you live??
Interesting, but I wonder if this analysis isn't awfully oversimplified. In both of the graphics, there are plenty of very white municipalities that voted more heavily for Clinton than they did for Obama. Did Prof. Orfield's team look to other factors besides race (e.g., education level, unemployment rate, income level) that might explain why some of these very white communities voted the way they did?
And, of course, the circumstances of the two elections were different. In 2012, President Obama had the advantage of incumbency, and apart from your view of his policies, is a pretty likable guy. In 2016, we had no incumbent and two candidates who, even if you like their politics, relatively few would describe as likable.
Fact. If a community in modern America is 98% white, it is the result of discrimination in employment, housing, opportunity, and the general culture there.
This is particularly true in suburbia, where the urban center they are "sub" to is undoubtedly a diverse population. Urban America, almost without exception, reflects America as a whole, attracting people of many races, as well as ethnicity, religions and cultures. The fact that a suburb could remain a bastion of whiteness is a testament to the concerted efforts of the residents to keep it that way.
In that circumstance, I would expect the voters to be Trump supporters.
5
Maybe some people just want to be able to sleep through the night without fear of home or apartment invasion?
Really interesting -- to see data describe what many have viscerally 'felt' for a while. I wonder whether the people in these very white enclaves have chosen those areas because of the lack of minorities, or whether their attitudes towards minorities has been affected and shaped by their lack of contact with them (at least as neighbors).
3
I think this is a misinterpretation of the data, at least in Michigan, which I presume is one of the four rust belt states that propelled Trump to victory. In Michigan Trump won by about 40000 votes. HRC carried Wayne County easily, but with 70,000 fewer votes than Obama had in 2012. Wayne County is mixed racially but is dominated by the City of Detroit with 700,000 of the million or so residents. Trump had about the same number of votes in Wayne County as Romney in 2012. So it wasn't Trump support that went up it was lack of turnout in Wayne County that caused HRC to lose Michigan. Turnout in Detroit, 85% black, was abysmal and that is what turned Michigan for Trump, not the tiny numbers of white voters outstate, who voted Republican, as they usually do in Presidential races.
10
Good comment. I live in Wayne County and agree. This whole subject highlights just how broken districting is: voting districts too small (too many Representatives in Congress) and very heavily gerrymandered.
1
Horace is exactly on point.
In the key states, urban minorities that aren't reliable voters (but are reliably Democrat when they do vote) were discouraged from voting.
They were discouraged by (in no particular order):
1) disenfranchisement efforts by state officials (voterID, registration purges, etc.).
2) rich old white lady candidate.
3) gerrymandering which made their down-ballots votes wasted.
4) Russian propaganda campaign.
1
The problem with this argument is that the data in the 1st graph appear to be wrong. Assuming that the area of the circles is proportional to population of the municipality, this says that the largest municipalities in America are approximately 30% white. But the 2010 census says that New York City, L.A. and Chicago are 44.6%, 49.8%, 45.0% white, respectively. And remove the spline curve from the plot and it will become apparent how weak the trend is here.
Don't trust lawyers to do analysis.
6
This relative growth of minority populations may be a small part of the reason why Trump won. But it doesn't remotely explain your second paragraph, i.e that the same people backed Obama over Romney four years ago.
American analysts should realize, once and for all, that it's about class, not race. It's about stalled mobility. It's about the (accurate) perception that the establishment of both parties has sold common people down the river by diverting ever more assets to the already super-rich. And it's about the Democratic establishment, in particular, failing to understand why an untested first-time Senator with a Muslim name beat their preferred 'extremely well qualified' candidate back in 2008.
6
Quoting Alan Berube, deputy director of the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, "....threatened not only by real forces of technological change and trade, but also by the specter of immigrants and other nonwhites making gains at their expense in America’s economy and society..."
Some real, some imagined. And this quote does not differentiate between the two. Immigrant gains come through hard work and sheer slog over many years. This quote does not do justice.
2
The examples given had significant population declines. That may be more causal for voters choosing Obama's hope message and, with it continuing, Trump's make America great again as seen from their local reality.
1
In the very white suburbs, there is no welcome mat for minorities or people who aren't white, which is why the president was able to exploit tribalism, populism and nationalism in these areas of the country. The president didn't need to have David Duke or Richard Spencer on the campaign trail with him because his message was clear enough. Stephen Bannon scoffed at identity politics as proof that the Democratic party was off message with mainstream Americans but many white municipalities and towns show that it's not a really party thing but a matter of white hegemony, and that what they voted for, not inclusion and diversity.
7
Maybe it's a matter of wanting to live in a safe neighborhood and to feel safe in one's own home?
1
To many if not most whites, ‘inclusion and diversity’ means staggering increases in violent crime, lower property values, destruction of schools, jobs and college admissions dolled out by quasi racist racial quotas rather than objective qualifications. If these are merely myths, prove it.
2
"...Elk’s population had fallen to 30,480, 97.5 percent of whom were white. 152 were black and 244 were Hispanic..."
In a town of over 30k, would anyone really notice an increase in minority population that still numbered less than 400? I get what Mr. Edsall is saying, but I think it's a toss-up whether or not the towns he used as examples voted for Trump entirely based on racist appeals. You'll note these towns also lost population, which suggests to me there was probably some economic distress in these areas.
Clinton got endorsements from most major unions, but I think she was hurt by past support for TPP; 6-figure fees from Wall Street firms for speeches for which she still hasn't released transcripts; her husband's administration presiding over the implementation of NAFTA; and the perception that she and the DNC connived to rig the primary to keep Sanders, who was campaigning on issues that would have addressed their economic concerns, from upsetting the corporate/big money donor apple cart.
Now why on earth they believed Trump would actually address their economic concerns, particularly with a GOP controlled Congress, is beyond my comprehension. I guess they were willing to roll the dice on blowing up the status quo, and hoping whatever replaced it would be better for them
7
Great article. Just the insight I was looking for...while devastating, its full of hope. Let's hope the nation can pull together to limit the policy damage from this last gasp and try to climb our way back to becoming civilized again.
2
I recently visited my in-laws, in a suburb of St. Louis. After 3 days, going out and about, dinning, shopping, etc, I noticed that I had seen only 3 people of color anywhere. Even the clerks in the convenience stores were white. I went on line, looked up the demographics for their county, 97% white according to the census. And yes, strongly county strongly went for Trump
They live about 30 miles from Ferguson, they might as well be on a different planet.
10
They probably want to be on another planet from Fergusen, because they want to feel safe in their own homes. So, you want to force other people put themselves and their families in danger to further YOUR agenda?
1
I'm ready to believe the thesis, but those two charts are awful. What do they show? What math produced those red lines? To me they seem to have no relation to those blue blobs.
If I were a peer reviewer I would insist not only that the graphs be made much clearer, but more importantly that the methodology for the red lines be described.
7
Like most people who aren't working-class white, living in decidedly segregated rural white communities who voted for Donald Trump, I watch the increasing division and stratification along purely racial lines, with a sense of dread and awe -- all the while wondering what's happened to this country and will we ever survive it?
With each passing day, and with each new appointment in an administration that doesn't reflect the social, political and ethnic diversity of this great nation, opting instead for an all-white version of it, I start to lose hope, as we start to turn upon ourselves in hateful rage.
If, as this article contends, the U.S. at its heart is white, and shifting sharply to the right while heeding the siren-call of the Donald Trumps and Steve Bannons of the world, what does that say for the future of this country?
And if where we live on the map is going to be employed to identify and penalize us for who we are, what does that say about what we are becoming?
It says a lot that Donald Trump, who hails from one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse cities on the planet, has built his presidency and platform around the bigotry and racism most commonly found in smaller more racially isolated white communities -- because it certainly wouldn't fly here.
But that's of little comfort when taking into consideration the trajectory of where he's leading this country.
And I fear not only for the fate of America, but for my own.
4
So state governments ignore the problems of small, rural communities where fear of change is much greater than the opportunity for change and growth. And what do the voters there do ? They succomb to the relentless onslaught of reactionary white supremecists who blame their problems not on their state government which turned its back on them, but on the only party even remotely trying to deal with their problems (access to health care, regulating predatory lending practices of financial institutions holding their mortgages, trying to keep the air and water cleaner by regulating polluters and investing in alternative energy sources that create manufacturing jobs)--the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party loses elections because they campaign to the establishment press, who they depend on to get the message out. Getting down and dirty on the campaign trail does not impugn the integrity of the programs you will promote once in office. No more hoity-toity generalizations from the top. Tell each community which roads need to be fixed; which water purifying plants need to be remodeled, and have each state's democrats campaign on authorizing funds for EACH local--not some big picture, but an accumulation of little pictures. And town to town, not simply talking on television or on line. If all politics is local, deal with it. NOW.
2
This is the thing that is so odd these days. The issues that resonate the most are the least significant. Worry about crime in low crime areas. Worry about estate tax by people who won't pay it. Worry about terrorism that will never touch them. Worry about minorities that aren't there. Worry about gun deaths that rarely happen. Worry about money that is spent on others, but which is actually spent on them. It just goes on and on, that all the fervor is for bogus issues.
But it works. It got the Republicans unopposed control of all levels of the entire country.
5
So people shouldn't worry about crime until someone actually shoots them dead in a car jacking?
The same thing happened in France with Marine La Pen and the National Front. Declining industrial areas and rural and small town places gave her their support. Major urban centers, where the population is diverse, voted for Macron or the post-communist guy.
4
If Dems want a different outcome next time, they better come up with a plan that addresses the truly legitimate economic fears that really underlie in the smaller city/suburb heartland places like this.
As others have pointed out, Obama-to-Trump voters aren't racist. But they may be willing to accept a hint of racism and sexism, if it offers an economic lifeline that feels more desperately needed. Trump at least talked about the underlying vulnerability, and many switch voters took a flier on him.
The one bit of good news for Dems...Trump and the Republicans are not delivering on this promise. The door will be open to change minds again. But they won't be changed by vote-shaming. They will be changed by a sensible answer to "what's in it for me" economically.
All the debate about the Electoral College vs. popular vote is noise. It's not changing. The thing the Electoral college does is force a smart political party to realize that small towns do require more attention - because changing the dynamics there has an outsize ability to decide who actually governs us.
Unfortunately, Dems aren't yet addressing this reality, one full year later. Sigh. If you want a different answer, ask a different question.
8
Absolutely frightening. The source of the fear in these super white communities is the isolation that they desire. Self segregating fosters fear of others. This study shows that these areas are all experiencing population declines. The young are leaving for the big cities. That tide will continue as the traditional jobs have disappeared. Ironically, it is an influx of immigrants that these communities need to reinvigorate them. The new people represent new demand and many will start their own businesses to satisfy it. Aging populations consume less. Add in declining populations and communities die off. Giving billionaires tax cuts will not put money into white small town America. Communities grow from the bottom up, not the top down.
It would be interesting to contrast these population groups with the gun issue. I would venture to guess that there has been a corresponding increase against gun control legislation in these places. The reason being that gun ownership is the only power they have. They have no money, no opportunity. But they have their guns. They can hold that rifle and say "I have power". No they don't. The billionaires have the power and the billionaires are who Trump is helping at their expense. They fell for it. Now we all must suffer.
147
Very, very well articulated. Excellent comment. Thank you.
2
They don't want"segregation," they want jobs. But ever since the economic shock of the energy crisis in 1973, Democrats have failed to deliver, and that fact is noted. Sneering about gun ownership in a rural area where people actually hunt for food (yes, it still happens) is a symptom of Democratic disconnect.
2
So you don't want rural whites to be able to protect themselves from criminals? Guns are protection, not economic "power". And if communities get rid of cops, as liberals want, guns are the only protection millions of people have.
1
We are told that the Democrats lost because of their focus on identity politics and lack of empathy for the working class. This article surmises that Trump won because of the identity politics of white people.
25
D's lost because no one, including many D's could relate to HRC. I'm trans, and I grew tired of her talking identity politics.
Here's a winning idea: talk money: it's the same color for everyone.
1
For full context - aside from Hillary's own catastrophic failure to campaign in the Rust Belt - rural America has been led by a carefully orchestrated right-wing, Republican Hillary Hatred Witch Trial.
For 25 years, Republican Propagandists have variously painted her as a murderer, pedophile, thief, witch, shrew and Public Enemy #1.
If you asked any of the 63 million deplorables who voted for America's consumer fraud artist Donald Trump whether they know that Hillary Clinton was the primary force behind the federal Children's Health Insurance Program that protects 9 million American children, you would get a blank 'Christian' stare and a doubling down on their personal conviction that Hillary Clinton closely resembles the anti-Christ.
Hillary had a 64% favorability rating in 2013 when she left as Secretary of State, and then Republican misogynists put some jet fuel in their Hillary Hatred campaign by equating Benghazi with the Holocaust...by equating emails with Benedict Arnold...by equating Hillary with Satan.
The 2016 election result was nothing more than yet another successful case of pouring Grand Old Poison into American brains and letting Republican toxins do their neurological damage.
So instead of a knowledgeable, experienced, diplomatic and smart female leader in a complicated world, America is stuck with an old, rusty, white Mad Man running the country into the misogynistic mud.
Pachyderm Spongiform Encephalopathy win in 2016.
Heckuva' job, Hillary Haters.
278
I always read your comments but in this one you outdid yourself. So well put.
2
Even as Socrates refers to “Hillary haters”, his comments drip with hatred – for Trump and for Republicans in general. Ironic, no? Of course, he (and Edsall) are right about one thing: the reason I voted for Trump had nothing to do with Hillary’s lack of charisma or accomplishment, or the Democrats’ open-armed embrace of illegal aliens. Rather, it was because I, being a white male, am genetically disposed to hate (and oppress) women, minorities, and homosexuals.
4
Thank you Socrates.
1
There are a number of studies that show at least a moderate, probably significant, link between diversity, empathy, and respect. Seems reasonable that harnessing fear, anger, and uncertainty and aiming it at anyone these places see as ‘Other’ would be a successful strategy.
Until we can better cultivate empathy in adults with VR and other methods, we would have to break through this wall of anger and fear before any rational discourse could take place. I’m not sure how to do this. Showing them contradictory facts merely strengthens their beliefs; they’ll typically listen to people they perceive as “on their side,” which means only conservative outlets would reach them; and many have already, in spite of all of what’s happened this year, doubled down on their support - they’ve escalated their commitment to Trumpism.
17
How about some empathy for people who just want to live in SAFE neighborhoods and to have jobs? Why do such people merit NO empathy at al from liberals?
1
This is why examination of how the Russians and Cambridge Analytics operate their cyber campaigns is so important. It would be interesting to see the Facebook feeds of such towns in 2016 and today. Seeing neighbors liking and sharing racist memes originated by troll farms in St. Petersburg & Moscow, blasted by servers in Balkan countries, promoted on InfoWars. The Kremlin & CA could easily send the racially inflammatory material to just enough small white towns to shift MI, WI, and PA to the Trump column. Residents of Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, or Detroit, let alone coastal cities like DC & Seattle would have no idea.
35
This is a pretty clear description of a problem. The larger problem is how can we as a people help - I mean that - those white enclaves whose white residents feel threatened? Some local people might want to talk about that, with each other rather than to the NYT. They might decide what kind of help they need and who to ask for it. I doubt if the federal government a presently run will have much to offer. Perhaps new organizations will spring up, but there are foundations and churches and such that might be interested. That Obama won not too long ago suggests that the fear is not so deep seated as to be hopeless.
34
Much has been written about the angry white vote. But less data has been amassed for the third party candidates, stein and Jonson.
There was only a difference if 77,000 votes to secure Trumps technical electoral win. How many of those 77,00 voted third party or worse, stayed home.
This was a weird election: the most unqualified among the candidates gets elected due to a political fluke—no popular vote, just 77,000 votes in 3 stated spelled the electoral edge.
This was no mandate. In future elections I believe anger will continue to determine the outcome. But next time, I believe it will be Democratic anger that carries the day in areas not subject to severe gerrymandering.
Whether that changes the outcome is anyone’s guess—depends on which side shows up to vote.
112
It's not clear why you believe that the Presidential election results were due to Gerrymandering. Gerrymandering affects congressional elections because congressional boundaries can be shifted, but it does not have any direct effect on the Presidential election, except in Maine and Nebraska. Most states are winner take all in the Presidential election, and state boundaries are not shifted due to Gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering has been with us for over 200 years, and its effects on Congressional elections are unfortunate, but we should not blame all results on Gerrymandering.
11
@Bruce: you make a good point, thanks. I forgot that in presidential elections the gerrymandering doesn't count. On the other hand, there are always Congressional seats up for grabs, and people tent not to split voting columns, so inertia in effect, seals the gerrymander effect for presidents too.
Right you are Christine. No mandate. The non-voters I believe were/are key. Trump only rcvd 27% from eligible voters, HRC rcvd 28%. Lot of citizens just didn't care. Hopefully that changes.
Every explanation for the Trump debacle sooner or later comes back to race. The whitest parts of the country, which voted overwhelmingly for Trump, have witnessed the largest percentage growth of minorities though the absolute numbers of minorities in those regions remain miniscule. As we all know, Trump pandered to this racial resentment. This is perhaps the only consistent theme of this administration.
127
Robert, the last time I checked Hillary was also white.
1
Yet in most of Edsall's examples, these places previously voted for Obama (he wasn't white!)
They are voting for "shake it up or burn it down" candidate over the "just another politician" candidates. And also against the side of immigration and globalization that goes against their local economies (cheap labor, perceived fed benefits imbalance, and outsourcing).
Race is secondary, yet the other-kind-of-racists in the media or commenting with their college degrees at their office jobs, insist on making it primary.
1
Agree, both were shake it up candidates. Yet the level of fervor as gauged by pro-Trump FB posts and yard signs was never such for Obama. Something came out of the woodwork.
White on white willful ignorance.
Like Trump's take on his Asia trip...
The federal government has legalized pot? How else could Trump say America is back? How could his supporters not see that he is dragging us down, down, down for generations to come.
33
Happy and relieved to say that here in lily white and bright blue Vermont Trump lost by about 2 to 1!
248
All that says is Vermont doesn't have enough electoral votes to get Russia and the Mercer family interested in making your worst neighbors angry about immigrants and Black people.
17
According to the article, this would be because Vermonters are not worried about the racial situation changing. So, while I would prefer, like you, to believe that Vermont is bright, we -- flatlanders and natives alike -- should remain aware, and self-aware.
3
I remember well, driving around Addison and Rutland Counties only seeing two Hillary - Kaine signs in yards. But lots of places with blue tarps over the roofs, vehicles on blocks, straw bales around the foundation, plastic on windows, abandoned appliances on porches etc with a Trump-Pence sign.
3
Hillary endlessly told Americans that what mattered was their race, skin color, and ancestry, not their citizenship or economic interests. No one should be surprised that many accepted her narrative and voted based on their race, skin color, and ancestry. You can't have hispanic or black identity politics without having white identity politics, too. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, too.
109
Matthew - that is an impression not truthful at all. Invite to listen to a handful of her speeches - or all of them to hear her actual message, not the Russian and alt rights slander and lies about it. She constantly talked about the middle class, minimum wage, health care, education; she had a wonderfully progressive platform tailed to the middle and working class. People just didn't hear - you included. How come?
13
@Matthew Hall:
Clinton said no such thing. She did talk extensively about citizenship and economic plans, and had real policy ideas. Trump offered nothing but empty words and contempt.
10
I hope you can refer to specific statements that she made and how frequently they were made, because I certainly remember things a lot differently than you describe. I do remember one candidate slandering people on the basis of their national origin and religion, but it wasn't Hillary.
7
Mr. Edsall, Don't you get it? White-shaming isn't working anymore. Maybe it holds sway among your liberal friends, but it has no political currency at present.
And besides, your claim (of race paranoia) does not hold water. Basically what happened in the last election is that white voters who previously supported a black man who had some integrity, declined to support the white lady who appeared utterly corrupt. How does that make these voters racist?
156
Simple. Both candidates in 2012 ran on issues. Trump chose the low road and it paid off in those places. I'm sure we disagree on what that says about them.
8
So you believed the Soviet advertising that Hillary was corrupt and Trump wasn't?
Hillary=no lawsuits or findings of corruption.
Trump= $25 million to settle fraud suit for Trump "University;" 4,000 lawsuits mostly for contractors not paid for their work and bankrupted; SIX BANKRUPTCIES for his casinos and other failed businesses; all American banks won't do business with him; only German bank to do business is in trouble for corruption, on and on.
5
...and, I suppose, supported instead a man of unimpeachable integrity?
2
Unlike places that are 85% black, that NEVER vote as a block based on their perceived racial interests....
83
Apologies. Please excuse black people for voting for the party that literally tore itself apart in the 1960s to pass long over-due civil rights legislation, and with the exception of Clinton's misguided policy that started us on the path to mass incarceration, has always placed racial equality and justice at the forefront of their platform and policies.
6
At least they understand that racism is the actual cause of their distress. Not so much with the race-baited whites Trump so successfully reeled in. They certainly have legitimate problems, but Trump offers nothing to actually improve their lot. Trump spent his career figuring out how to blame other people for his failures, and he passed that quality on to his base.
1
So, what's your point? Are you trying to say that a 12% minority of this country SHOULDN'T vote in their self interest and just ignore overwhelming evidence over decades that the party they don't vote for openly fears and hates them? LoL it the ridiculousness of your argument.
1
Truly, shocking.
The Trump voter was afraid of their black and brown neighbors moving right next door.
That’s what happens when racist dog whistles become blaring sirens of hatred and ‘white rage.’
47
Nope Tom Edsall gets it wrong. What he gets right is these people in Pa, Mi and Wi did not care one bit about Russians or Comey. These are the only battleground states that Hillary lost in the electoral college toss up. There is wisdom in the data, but Edsall draws the wrong conclusions.
1
They were afraid of black or brown neighbors -- but they voted for a black President TWICE?????
2
@Petey Tonei:
People in Pa, Wi, Mi, and other Trump voters were all quite susceptible to Russian propaganda.
It’s white, poor, and rural. Not just white.
74
It wasn't "poor." Trump's voters were relatively well off, with average annual incomes of $72,000. The average annual income of Clinton's voters was $61,000.
8
That's the narrative that the media has been trying to push, but in reality the income of the average trump voter is actually higher than the average income for white people as a whole.
7
While I applaud the important research done in this article, I am loathed to call this purely a racial issue. We can make a case that several racist groups are feeling extremely empowered by Trump's victory, but lets be careful to put the blame on middle and lower class people in the Rust-belt. This article is heavy with stats and numbers, but maintains the discourse that it was purely Trump's stance on immigration that won all of these people over. Maybe more research could prove this, but in this context I think that assumption is not quantifiable based on these stats.
Hilary did not run the right campaign to win those people over. I imagine if you live in an industrial town in rural PA, which lets be honest has always been a white enclave, you probably went to work in the steel mill listening to Bruce Springstein. If someone preaches a sort of economic nationalism that promises to bring industrial jobs back to your community (not debating the reality of this, just the campaign message), and someone else says they are more interested in investing in renewable energy, and their husband happened to be the champion of NAFTA (which hurt workers at home and abroad), my guess is you are not going to vote for her.
Blanketing everyone as racists will do us all a disservice and seed future divides that could become as toxic as this article paints the stats to be. As for those empowered racist groups of lesser principles, they will seek these voters out as political fodder.
1
It is impossible for me to look at a white municipality that went 54% for Barack Obama and 56% for Donald Trump and conclude that it was because of race-baiting.
Which individuals, vulnerable to race baiting, voted a black candidate into the White House and then 4 years later were moved by racist rhetoric? I find that to be faulty analysis. While there is no doubt that Trump plays to racism and that some percentage of voters were moved by this, no racist is voting for a black man. Absolutely not. However, there is one element that was completely left out of the equation in this article – Hillary Clinton, who, for whatever reason, was viewed very negatively by a large segment of the voting public – including people that voted twice for Barack Obama.
I would love to hear the article state which white, race-vulnerable voters voted twice for Barack Obama but then chose Trump over Clinton because of racial politics. That makes no sense at all.
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It makes sense if you add Trump's dog whistles into the calculus. That was largely absent in prior elections at the presidential level.
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I agree that this analysis is very weak. It is one of the most basic research mistakes -- seeing association as causality.
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I agree with your analysis. Just want to add that a two-time Obama voter could reasonably have rejected Clinton not because of racism but because of her open borders agenda and her relentless pandering to identity political groups. I don't consider that racist, and I know someone who did just that-- not naming names!
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Mr. Edsall wants to tell us all about why the people of Dravosburg vote the way they do, without telling us anything about the people of Dravosburg. Did he know that the town was named after a coal mine owner, and that coal mining was devastated under the Obama administration? Did he know that Dravosburg now has exactly 1/2 the population it had in 1960 due to loss of manufacturing jobs in the steel industry?
The stereotyping and conclusions found in this column show that the New York media still does not get that this past election was, for many voters, only about jobs and who cares about bringing them back to places like Dravosburg.
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Wake up, the belief that coal and steel jobs are coming back to these small towns is simply a desperate fantasy. Coal is dead because it's no longer an economically or environmentally sound energy source - it's been replaced by cheap, natural gas and renewable energy sources. American steel is dead because it couldn't compete in the global marketplace. This is how the world operates and it's not going to change despite what Trump promises.
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Yes, you are absolutely correct. And, astonishingly, the powers-that-be are STILL not listening, and the anger is not dissipating. Trump promised everything to these forgotten people and delivers nothing. After four years of Trump's destructive bait-and-switch con game, it will be interesting to see what happens.
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Coal mining was devastated by cheap natural gas and renewables getting cheaper. Why should the rest of us suffer the unhealthy effects of coal burning so Dravosburg have can coal mining jobs? Coal mining has been on a decline for decades. Ain’t coming back no matter who you vote for.
1
The politics of grievance are showing themselves here. We all know that our nation went through some hard times during the early 2000s, beginning with 9/11 and continuing through the financial meltdown. For those whose tendency is looking for simple answers to hard questions, Donald Trump's clarion call to circle the wagons and defend against the 'others' who were assailing 'our way of life' was irresistible. His particular, zero-sum, view of the way the world works says that anything that doesn't accrue to me somehow damages me, even though that is demonstrably untrue when a wider view is taken. He managed to convince millions of otherwise reasonable people that "their" way of life was somehow threatened if the rights of [women/immigrants/Muslims/LGBTQ were acknowledged and upheld, so this is where that leads.
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Do you know who Cesar Chavez was? Was he a racist? Did you know that he was against open borders? Have you ever heard of the law of supply and demand? have yo u ever considered that it might apply to a workforce, ie that the more available workers there are, the less workers will be paid? Think about it, please.
1
Having lived in both heavily-white areas, and now gladly in a highly diverse city, this article comes as little surprise. Sadly, what seems to animate the fears and hostilities of heavily-white communities is rarely based on empirical or experiential reality. Instead, it's based on exaggerated perception which is often fueled by extremist right-wing media.
Most people in these areas who scream about immigration probably don't know any immigrants. Most people who perpetuate racist falsehoods about people of color probably don't know many, if any, people of color. Frankly, they're living in a bubble. A bubble that is shrinking as our nation grows more populous and more diverse. Voting for Trump was less about genuine economic concern, and more of a lashing out against slipping white supremacy.
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Right. And Baltimore and Saint Louis are great places to live, correct? You want other people to put their own safety at extreme risk to further YOUR agenda.
All of these hateful, fearful people refuse to see what happens when populations delcine and foreigners aren't welcome. Look to other countries in the world with these problems, and you will see aging populations supported by a shrinking economic base. No growth, just years of stagnation and decline. Then young people flee looking for better opportunities, and more economic decline is all there is for those left behind.
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Japan and most of Western Europe have an aging population and a shrinking economic base, and they're considered to be the best countries in the world. It's kinda hard to sell diversity when the least diverse countries have the highest average IQs, the best healthcare, the highest life expectancy, and the lowest crime rates. You agree, right?
3
Nothing will destroy western social benefits programs faster than opening the borders and inviting the entire third world into the country to access these benefits, even though the newly arrived third world migrants never contributed ANYTHING towards the benefits. This is a recipe for bankruptcy, and most in the west realize this. And just branding them as racist won't change their minds.
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And Mr. Edsall, anyone who conflates legal immigrants with illegal is simply dishonest.
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Poor whites voting for Trump was caused by the same instinct that caused poor, non-slave owning whites to fight for the confederacy - when you are low on the status totem pole, but still above some groups, you will fight tooth and nail to keep those groups below you, rather than working together to all rise in society.
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The same poor white voted for Obama, twice. Did they go from being racists, to non-racists and then back to being racists?
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They went for Obama in 2012, yet we insist on calling all of them racists now. I think Trump was their Bernie. Bernie supporters (I was one) are disenfranchised liberals, sick of the influence of Wall St. and big money. I think the way to reach both Trump supporters and Bernie supporters is to offer a likeable candidate who focuses on job creation for middle and lower income voters. The focus should be on things that give people a chance to lift themselves. If we don't offer that, we lose again.
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I agree. The need for a likable candidate is paramount. S/he will have to get past the problem that a lot of Trump voters don't know any people of color and can therefore be misled by liars like him who imply that "others" cause all of our problems. Obama was an example of how getting to know people of color can make a difference. I am optimistic. Look at the phenomenon of how the acceptance of gays grew so exponentially as more of them came out and people realized that they actually knew gay people and found them to be good, hard-working, "normal" people. What can't be lost is the need to develop a program that addresses the actual causes of Trump voters' distress. Hillary might have addressed them in her position papers, but she was not successful in injecting them into the narrative leading up to the election. BTW, I'm not so sure Bernie had an actually realistic solution either. What is needed is a plan that addresses our needs without necessarily pandering to any single constituency.
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Tom J I hope you are not one of those Bernie supporters who voted for Jill Stein or did not vote for President. If you did not vote fir Hillary Clinton you are partly responsible for Trumps election. And I suppose you like Trump because he is so "likeable" .
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Tom J If you are one of the Bernie supporters that didn't vote for President or voted for Jill Stein, I hope you are happy with our "likeable" President Trump. Unfortunately you believed the Republican (Russian) propaganda about Hillary.
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