Alternet - It’s true that Trump voters are overwhelmingly white and tend to have less formal education than Democratic voters. But they aren't primarily “working class” if that’s defined by income. A senior economist with Gallup, Jonathan Rothwell, studied the data and found that, “if anything, more affluent Americans favor Trump, even among white non-Hispanics.” That analysis squares with median household income estimates of voters done by FiveThirtyEight, based on exit polling in the primary season. For Trump voters, it was $72,000. Among Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders voters, it was $61,000. The median household income for the states studied was $56,000.
The key to explaining support for Trump, Rothwell found, wasn’t income but anxiety. Trump supporters live in culturally and racially isolated areas and are afraid that they’ll soon live in a nation that’s no longer recognizable. “Support for Trump is highly elevated in areas with few college graduates,” Rothwell wrote, “far from the Mexican border, and in neighborhoods that stand out … for being white, segregated enclaves, with little exposure to blacks, Asians, and Hispanics.”
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