How modeling the electorate is critical to understanding the challenge we face
Just as the intelligence community may have missed the size, organization, and determination of Trump’s supporters to keep Donald Trump as president, the polls in 2016 and 2020 missed Trump’s ability to bring his base of white working class, evangelical, and rural voters into the electorate, to save white people from a changing America. Trump called Mexican immigrants “murders and rapists,” sent signals to the KKK, and instituted the Muslim ban. His political mission was defined by “good people on both sides,” closing the government to fund the border wall, and telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016 by winning over the Tea Party, evangelical, and pro-life blocs, each of them determined to save America from Barack Obama, the first Black president. His enflaming racial resentment gave Trump an unassailable base in his party. But what the general elections reveal is that 40 percent of all Americans is fully part of an anti-establishment, God-first, racially resentful, anti-democratic bloc, who live in a right-wing media cocoon and adore Donald Trump. This bloc of white rural, evangelical, and working-class male voters rushed to the polls in both 2016 and 2020. And critically, they are three of every five Republicans.
Chanting “Make America Great Again,” “U-S-A.! U-S-A!” and “Stop the Steal,” Trump’s violent vanguard assaulted the Capitol to stop the counting of Electoral College votes. Rampaging white mobs and paramilitary Proud Boys abolish any nuance, waving their Confederate, American, and Trump flags. They aren’t sure anybody but Donald Trump will be as uncompromising, racist, and anti-establishment as they desire. And they don’t think anyone else on their side can win.
The proportion of whites without a four-year college degree eligible to vote fell a point from 45 to 44 percent since 2016, and the proportion of voters older than millennials fell 8 points from 71 to 63 percent, according to post-election analysis by the Voter Participation Project and Center for Voter Information. Only Trump’s ferocious campaign, which raised white working-class turnout by 7 points, was able to neutralize the demographic trends, discredit the polls, and make the election much closer than anyone expected.
The full article can be read at The American Prospect.