Trump Won Because College-Educated Americans Are Out of Touch
Author: Charles C. Camosy
Alaska Dispatch News
November 10 2016
As the reality of President-elect Donald Trump settled in very early Wednesday morning, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes summed up an explanation common to many on the left: The Republican nominee pulled ahead thanks to old-fashioned American racism.
But the attempt to make Trump’s victory about racism appears to be at odds with what actually happened on Election Day. Consider the following facts.
Twenty-nine percent of Latinos voted for Trump , per exit polls. Remarkably, despite the near-ubiquitous narrative that Trump would have deep problems with this demographic given his comments and position on immigration, this was a higher percentage of those who voted for GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012. Meanwhile, African Americans did not turn out to vote against Trump . In fact, Trump received a higher percentage of African American votes than Romney did.
And while many white voters deeply disliked Trump , they disliked Democrat Hillary Clinton even more. Of those who had negative feelings about both Trump and Clinton, Trump got their votes by a margin of 2 to 1 . Votes for Trump seemed to signal a rejection of the norms and values for which Clinton stood more than an outright embrace of Trump. He was viewed unfavorably, for instance, by 61 percent of Wisconsinites, but 1 in 5 in that group voted for him anyway