Good read - Dangerous idiots: how the liberal media elite failed working-class Americans

[malaise]

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/13/liberal-media-bias-working-class-americans
<snip>
Not so poor: Trump voters are middle class

Hard numbers complicate, if not roundly dismiss, the oft-regurgitated theory that income or education levels predict Trump support, or that working-class whites support him disproportionately. Last month, results of 87,000 interviews conducted by Gallup showed that those who liked Trump were under no more economic distress or immigration-related anxiety than those who opposed him.

According to the study, his supporters didn’t have lower incomes or higher unemployment levels than other Americans. Income data misses a lot; those with healthy earnings might also have negative wealth or downward mobility. But respondents overall weren’t clinging to jobs perceived to be endangered. “Surprisingly”, a Gallup researcher wrote, “there appears to be no link whatsoever between exposure to trade competition and support for nationalist policies in America, as embodied by the Trump campaign.”

Earlier this year, primary exit polls revealed that Trump voters were, in fact, more affluent than most Americans, with a median household income of $72,000 – higher than that of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders supporters. Forty-four percent of them had college degrees, well above the national average of 33% among whites or 29% overall. In January, political scientist Matthew MacWilliams reported findings that a penchant for authoritarianism – not income, education, gender, age or race –predicted Trump support.

These facts haven’t stopped pundits and journalists from pushing story after story about the white working class’s giddy embrace of a bloviating demagogue.

But, for national media outlets comprised largely of middle- and upper-class liberals, that would mean looking their own class in the face.

[whatthehey]

1. Somebody's screwed up the numbers then

Because if we believe this, which is just the first of many polls a quick search found on the "education gap":

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-08-12/education-level-sharply-divides-clinton-trump-race

Then that cannot possibly match a 44% graduate rate among his supporters. Let's do the math.

Clinton leads Trump 59/34 among graduates. Let's scale those up to get rid of undecideds/3rd parties. We need to do this because Gallup isn't looking at levels of support but education level among the total group of Trump supporters. So we can imagine that, gun to head and presented with a binary choice, 36.6% of graduates would go Trump.

Nongraduates? Trump leads 52/42. Do the same scale up to total population and we get 55.3% of them.

Now we need to translate that into how many Trump supporters have degrees, rather than the other way round. Imagine, to make translation into percent easy, there are only 100 people. 29 of them have degrees, 71 don't. Trump gets 36.6% of the 29 and 55.3% of the 71. Or, rounded, 11 and 39. Of his total 50, only 22% then would have degrees.

It's not much better if we use the percentage of whites, almost all his support, who have degrees. Then he'd have 36.6% of 33 and 55.3% of 67 for 12 and 37 or 24.4% degreed.

It's easy to quibble that extrapolations may be a bit off because there really is no gun to head binary choice, or that racial and income data skew the calculations a bit, but think of the magnitude. We don't have to shift the numbers a bit, we have to pretty much double them to get Gallup's hypothetical degreed Trumpites. Every poll I've seen that covers education level shows the same graduate gap. There is simply no way to reconcile that aggregate look with a Trump support that is 44% graduate.

[malaise]

3. Excellent analysis

Thanks

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. She used the primary exit poll numbers, and Republicans with a degree vote a lot in those

She links to 538.com, but leaves out the bit pointing out other candidates had higher numbers:

Likewise, although about 44 percent of Trump supporters have college degrees, according to exit polls — lower than the 50 percent for Cruz supporters or 64 percent for Kasich supporters — that’s still higher than the 33 percent of non-Hispanic white adults, or the 29 percent of American adults overall, who have at least a bachelor’s degree.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/

The primary electorate are not representative of the general election.

[whatthehey]

5. Ah that explains it. Pretty irrelevant now then

The marginally attached aren't known for primary turnout. What's driving Trump support now sure as hell isn't 44% degreed with 71k median income..

[malaise]

7. Good point

Thanks

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. She's got it wrong about immigrants

She claims " those who liked Trump were under no more economic distress or immigration-related anxiety", but the paper says they are more anti-immigration, unsurprisingly:

In addition to broad ideological orientation, Republicans who favor Trump are also significantly more
likely than other Republicans to oppose trade and immigration. The Gallup Daily Tracker reserves some
space for topical questions asked for brief periods of time. In May 2016, one question asks whether or
not the respondent agrees or disagrees with the statement “End U.S. participation in free trade deals,
such as NAFTA” and another states “Reform immigration laws to provide automatic green cards for high
skilled workers” Among Republicans who favor Trump, 58 percent oppose trade deals and 57 percent
oppose reforming immigration. By contrast, among Republicans who do not support Trump, 42 percent
oppose trade deals and 28 percent oppose reforming immigration laws.

What the paper does show is that the more someone actually interacts with immigrants, the less likely they are to support Trump. Trump supporters do tend to have immigration-related anxiety, it's just baseless.

[GeorgeGist]

6. Trump supporters never lie?

[ProfessorGAC]

8. So Glad Muriel and Whatthehey Jumped In

I was about to do some digging after reading the OP because the conclusions were counterintuitive.

Those two saved me a lot of googling!