Great article:
Why Trump Won
The CEO of a large regional bank offers a better diagnosis than most political pros.
Highly educated, affluent liberals are still trying to come to grips with the results of the 2016 election.
Many pundits on the left believe that Donald Trump’s working class voters were the key. As William McGurn notes in his weekly column, at least a few Democrats have resolved to stop looking down on such voters. Meanwhile, two university professors argue in the Washington Post that most of Donald Trump’s voters actually weren’t members of the working class. And now along comes one of the best explanations for our current politics from, of all places, an annual report from a large regional bank.
Let’s start with the Washington Post piece by Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu. The authors aim to “bust the myth” of working-class Trump voters:
Among people who said they voted for Trump in the g eneral election, 35 percent had household incomes under $50,000 per year (the figure was also 35 percent among non-Hispanic whites), almost exactly the percentage in NBC’s March 2016 survey. Trump’s voters weren’t overwhelmingly poor. In the general election, like the primary, about two thirds of Trump supporters came from the better-off half of the economy.
But, again, what about education? Many analysts have argued that the partisan divide between more and less educated people is bigger than ever. During the general election, 69 percent of Trump voters in the election study didn’t have college degrees. Isn’t that evidence that the working class made up most of Trump’s base?
The truth is more complicated: many of the voters without college educations who supported Trump were relatively affluent.
This suggests that Mr. Trump did extremely well among voters who lack formal educational credentials but work hard enough to make incomes above the national median. This column will leave it to readers to decide how much myth-busting the authors have achieved with this insight. But for those liberals who are eager to continue looking down on Mr. Trump’s voters, this analysis would seem to be very helpful. The deplorables tend to have fewer academic credentials, so the deplorers can tell themselves that Trump voters lacked the intellectual tools to appreciate the superiority of Hillary Clinton over Mr. Trump.
But wait. A new Journal analysis of standardized test results finds that over the course of their college careers, many students are not markedly improving their ability to evaluate evidence and analyze information. “At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years,” reports the Journal. Given that more-educated voters broke for Mrs. Clinton, perhaps the lesson is that whether or not university professors can teach kids how to think, they have at least managed to teach them how to vote.
Regardless, one of the better analyses this column has seen of the economic struggles of Middle America showed up in a recent letter to shareholders from M&T Bank CEO Robert Wilmers. Mr. Wilmers doesn’t say anything about Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton but he does note how challenging recent years have been for the workers whose votes are now so coveted by both political parties:
The markets that M&T serves are, in the main, those of historically middle class communities with historically vibrant local economies, often manufacturing-based. Economic and survey data, as it pertains to them, are concerning. On so many measures of economic well-being and security, the so-called middle class has been losing ground for many years. Since 1973, total median household income from all sources, including wages, which comprise more than 80% of income for middle class families, has increased only 13%. In fact, earnings for the typical family actually peaked in 1999. Even as the overall economy, as measured by GDP growth, has approached recovery to a pre -recession level, the typical family has yet to make up the earnings lost in both the 2001 and 2008 recessions. It is no wonder that a declining share of households even consider themselves to be part of the middle class; 63% did so in 2001. By 2015, that number had fallen to just 51%.
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Why Trump Won
The CEO of a large regional bank offers a better diagnosis than most political pros.
Highly educated, affluent liberals are still trying to come to grips with the results of the 2016 election.
Many pundits on the left believe that Donald Trump’s working class voters were the key. As William McGurn notes in his weekly column, at least a few Democrats have resolved to stop looking down on such voters. Meanwhile, two university professors argue in the Washington Post that most of Donald Trump’s voters actually weren’t members of the working class. And now along comes one of the best explanations for our current politics from, of all places, an annual report from a large regional bank.
Let’s start with the Washington Post piece by Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu. The authors aim to “bust the myth” of working-class Trump voters:
Among people who said they voted for Trump in the g eneral election, 35 percent had household incomes under $50,000 per year (the figure was also 35 percent among non-Hispanic whites), almost exactly the percentage in NBC’s March 2016 survey. Trump’s voters weren’t overwhelmingly poor. In the general election, like the primary, about two thirds of Trump supporters came from the better-off half of the economy.
But, again, what about education? Many analysts have argued that the partisan divide between more and less educated people is bigger than ever. During the general election, 69 percent of Trump voters in the election study didn’t have college degrees. Isn’t that evidence that the working class made up most of Trump’s base?
The truth is more complicated: many of the voters without college educations who supported Trump were relatively affluent.
This suggests that Mr. Trump did extremely well among voters who lack formal educational credentials but work hard enough to make incomes above the national median. This column will leave it to readers to decide how much myth-busting the authors have achieved with this insight. But for those liberals who are eager to continue looking down on Mr. Trump’s voters, this analysis would seem to be very helpful. The deplorables tend to have fewer academic credentials, so the deplorers can tell themselves that Trump voters lacked the intellectual tools to appreciate the superiority of Hillary Clinton over Mr. Trump.
But wait. A new Journal analysis of standardized test results finds that over the course of their college careers, many students are not markedly improving their ability to evaluate evidence and analyze information. “At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years,” reports the Journal. Given that more-educated voters broke for Mrs. Clinton, perhaps the lesson is that whether or not university professors can teach kids how to think, they have at least managed to teach them how to vote.
Regardless, one of the better analyses this column has seen of the economic struggles of Middle America showed up in a recent letter to shareholders from M&T Bank CEO Robert Wilmers. Mr. Wilmers doesn’t say anything about Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton but he does note how challenging recent years have been for the workers whose votes are now so coveted by both political parties:
The markets that M&T serves are, in the main, those of historically middle class communities with historically vibrant local economies, often manufacturing-based. Economic and survey data, as it pertains to them, are concerning. On so many measures of economic well-being and security, the so-called middle class has been losing ground for many years. Since 1973, total median household income from all sources, including wages, which comprise more than 80% of income for middle class families, has increased only 13%. In fact, earnings for the typical family actually peaked in 1999. Even as the overall economy, as measured by GDP growth, has approached recovery to a pre -recession level, the typical family has yet to make up the earnings lost in both the 2001 and 2008 recessions. It is no wonder that a declining share of households even consider themselves to be part of the middle class; 63% did so in 2001. By 2015, that number had fallen to just 51%.
http://s.wsj.net/newsletter/logo-WSJ.png
