Trump voters (2015- ) are those who have voted for Donald Trump for US president – or say they will in opinion polls. Because they are mainly written about by White liberals, they have been stereotyped as White working-class men with high school educations who have been thrown out of work by US free trade policies. That is misleading.
Median household income: $72,000 according to exit polls during the state primaries. Compare that to $62,000 for Whites and $56,000 for Americans. Nor do they suffer from high unemployment, whether from free trade, immigration or other causes.
Education: 54% do not have a university degree, according to exit polls during the state primaries. But neither do most Americans (71%) or even most Whites (67%). If anything, Trump voters are on average more educated.
Race: 87% White, 5% Hispanic, 1% Black, like they come from some lily-White suburb. In fact, they do tend to live in the Whitest places within their commuting zone. Most live far from Mexico in places with few Hispanics.
Religion: Trump polls above 50% only among White Evangelical Protestants (63%). But even they are more against Hillary Clinton than they are for him.
Gender: 58% male. Trump polls at 30% among women – almost as bad as among Hispanics (26%).
Age: 63% are 50 or older. Trump polls under 30% among those under 50, who make up nearly half of all registered voters.
Party: 69% are Republicans.
Loyalty: 53% are not so much voting for Trump as against Hillary Clinton.
Opinions: What most Trump voters think:
- 87% There is a a big chance Clinton would make major mistakes that would hurt the country.
- 81% Compared with 50 years ago, life for people like me in America is worse.
- 79% Government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.
- 78% Clinton would continue Obama’s policies and that would be bad.
- 76% Government should not raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
- 72% Clinton would be a terrible president.
- 71% Government cannot afford to do much to help the needy.
- 68% Trump would be a good or great president.
- 68% Free trade agreements have been a bad thing for the US.
- 68% Free trade agreements have hurt my family financially.
- 68% The future of the next generation of Americans will be worse compared with life today.
- 66% Immigration is a very big problem.
- 65% Terrorism is a very big problem.
- 58% There is some chance Trump would make major mistakes that would hurt the country.
- 57% To fight terrorism, the government should subject Muslims to more scrutiny.
- 52% Crime is a very big problem.
- 51% Relations between racial and ethnic groups is a very big problem.
Xenophobia: Terrorism, immigration and free trade mainly seem to function as dog whistles for xenophobia. Most Trump voters do not live in places with high immigration, nor do they suffer from high unemployment. Places with the worst terrorist attacks by Muslims (New York, Virginia, California, Florida) are hardly hotbeds of Trumpism.
White mortality rates: There does seem to be some truth, though, to the bit about life getting worse: Trump voters tend to live in commuting zones where White people, particular the middle aged, are dying at high rates.
– Abagond, 2016.
Update (September 13th): Hillary Clinton on September 9th said,
“you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates says that, if anything, is too low:
“Much like Trump’s alleged opposition to the Iraq War, this not an impossible claim to investigate. We know, for instance, some nearly 60 percent of Trump’s supporters hold “unfavorable views” of Islam, and 76 percent support a ban on Muslims entering the United States. We know that some 40 percent of Trump’s supporters believe blacks are more violent, more criminal, lazier, and ruder than whites. Two-thirds of Trump’s supporters believe the first black president in this country’s history is not American. These claim are not ancillary to Donald Trump’s candidacy, they are a driving force behind it.”
Jamelle Bouie did a piece on the numbers for Slate and says Clinton was not far off.
Sources: mainly Pew Research (August 18th 2016), Vox (August 12th), FiveThirtyEight (May 3rd), Christianity Today (July 13th).
See also:
- 2016 election for US president
- Can Trump win?
- Republican
- Know-Nothing Party
- White Evangelical Protestants
541
Interesting post! So this is the “terrible Trump horde”? A bunch of over educated and fed USAers anxious about their diminishing status? Lol, if Trump returns ‘jobs’ to the USA, as he promises, it will be Uber-ized jobs predicated on casual labor soon to be eliminated by robots! (https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/18/ubers-first-self-driving-cars-will-start-picking-up-passengers-this-month/)
How about a post on the 20th anniversary (8/22/1996) of Clinton’s end of welfare as it was then known?
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Trump appeal to black voters “What have you got to lose ?”
Which is like someone punching you in the face five times then saying
“Hey let me punch you in the face. I mean. What does is matter whose punching you in face ?
You gonna get punched. Right ? You might as well let me do it. I may punch you harder. But shit – You’re face is all busted up anyway.
So what have you got to lose ?”
Don Black started Stormfront in 1995. That was long before Twitter, Facebook and even Google did not start till 1998.
So I think many white nationalists had a sense of the importance of social media because it’s very easy under-estimate the intelligence of Trump voters or white nationalists and social media has spread their message worldwide. So now you have relatively intelligent people spouting white national stuff
And what will happen if Trump loses ? And if they lose (And that’s FAR from a sure thing) what are they gonna do ? Some of them are not the kinda people who’ll say “Oh. Darn it. We lost. No problem. We’ll try again next time and tweak our message. Congrats to the winner”
I think they’ll look at their wall and say “Well, fuck it,. we have guns”
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Thanks for providing proof that the main reason for people supporting Trump is a sick combination of racism and sexism. I hope he loses so bad he goes into hiding from embarrassment.
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“I think they’ll look at their wall and say “Well, fuck it,. we have guns””
Really? Where were they during the eight years of Obama? How did the showdown at Malheur wildlife refuge end for those who came to such rash decision?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/03/oregon-militia-threatens-showdown-with-us-agents-at-wildlife-refuge
“The standoff initially attracted the members of various regional militia groups and the number of militants continued to grow until on January 17, approximately 40 militants were reported to have been engaged in the standoff.[30] Soon after the leadership of the standoff was apprehended by the Oregon State Police (OSP) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on January 26,[31] the majority of the occupying militants began to withdraw themselves from the standoff, peacefully returning to their homes.[32] During the January 26 apprehension operation, one member of the leadership, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum was fatally shot as he refused to comply with police orders, but instead appeared to be reaching for his handgun.[31]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_National_Wildlife_Refuge
So. let’s review, one out of forty or 2.5% decided to go out in a blaze of gunfire glory, the rest decided to go home,enjoy their 4x4s and their retirement accounts or a stint in jail for being naughty. Not terribly heroic, hardly Hitler’s Brownshirts or Mussolini’s Blackshirts who terrorized the Left.
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Trump voters tend to live in commuting zones where White people, particular the middle aged, are dying at high rates.
Heroin does that to you. There is a heroin epidemic purportedly among the white middle to upper-class.
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Call me a conspiracy theorist but i actually think Trump is a pun in a ploy to get Hilary to win the presidency.
I mean it makes sense that Trump is so outlandish and in your face. Lots of whites,black, Latinos, Asian will vote for Hilary, simply because they don’t want Trump as president.
I can’t understand why people can’t see that Trump is purposely sabotaging his run for president, so Hilary can win.
White supremacy isn’t above this tactic……
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So breaking news – white liberal media in addition to being the product of generations of racism and therefore a racism monopoly also – distorts ,omits and is otherwise bais in its reporting – in other words they lie.
@sondis and all
1.I am stuck on the she is going to be the first female president us history (and right after the first black american president in us history,cool:-)
2.I think we over estimate the importance of the presidency in general as well as our individual votes mattering – someone explain to me how my or your one vote out of tens to hunderds of millions really matters.
3.trump is so outlandish he actually validates john Stewart s prediction before he left the daily show – he would be a comedian’s goldmine.
So I actually find him quite humorous at times.
4.the whole trump would be the worst thing in the world if elected hype is in my opioion a desprate attempt by the media estabishment to make the precidency appear way more important than it is.
5.I love the crooked untrustworthy Hilary clinton meme – cause Nixon,Reagan,bush,obama etc have never nor would they ever lie to the american people about anything – yeah righttt.
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Their are 300,000,000 million privately held guns in the U.S. I’m surprised that gun violence isn’t greater then it is.
The Trump supporters I have met here in California are a diverse crowd. A Black M.D. who works for Planned Parenthood who thinks Republicans will cut her corperate taxes. Syrian Americans who like Trump because he reminds them of Assad and they like authortarian leaders. Some American immigrants whose culture back ground would never allow a women to be in charge. Some upper class and working class whites.
The majority of conversations I have revolve around how dissatisfied they are with both canidates. Some of these will be voting third party.
I have met some hard core Hillary supporters.
Older people seem to want to go with whoever is at the top of the ticket. Younger ones are the skeptics.
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To Hernieth point.
A lot of these white males who are on heroin started out on Oxy’s and pain pills and later moved on too heroin. Prescription deaths are hi as well as suicide by gun. Men like to shoot themselves in the head. Women tend to shoot themselves in the heart.
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“I can’t understand why people can’t see that Trump is purposely sabotaging his run for president, so Hilary can win.”
@ Sondis
People see what they want to see, or what they’re permitted to see.
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“Their are 300,000,000 million privately held guns in the U.S. I’m surprised that gun violence isn’t greater then it is. ”
@michaeljonbarker
Wait! It ain’t over yet. The Fat Lady hasn’t even warmed up her vocals.
Man’s ratchet best (or worst behavior) is on the way.
Let some sort of *shortage* happen and watch how fast those guns come out of the closet.
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@Sondis: It’s “pawn”. From the game of chess, where a pawn is considered a low-value piece than can be sacrificed without much cost to set up a play by or for a higher value piece such as a knight or a queen.
@Agabond: The Trump phenomenon arises from a confluence of the drift of a couple of socio-political continents. One of them — the one that is most visible in the media — is the agglomeration of racists and war hawks that was created via the Nixon/Goldwater southern strategy. That political group has gradually become louder and more cohesive over the decades. In part this has been driven by the loss of blue collar jobs and the concomitant decline of labor unions. Labor unions were traditionally strongly aligned with the Democratic party, but their rank & file were often hardcore xenophobes. Without the structure of the unions, their individual voices are coming out. In other words, it’s not the loss of jobs that drives this, it’s more about the decline of the unions. Under Obama, however, that group has really coalesced. They hate Obama because he is black and in office, plain and simple, and this has been a catalyst for these voices to come together in a shrill, white-hot passionate orgy of hate. These people love the idea of kicking somebody’s ass, and if it’s a black or brown or female ass it’s even better. Trump injects plenty of tough, ass-kicking talk into his rhetoric to keep them inflamed.
However, the other, which has a certain legitimacy and resonates with a lot of educated, open-eyed people, is that at the federal level our political machinery has become utterly corrupt and has long since ceased to represent the citizens. This is without dispute true, and in this election cycle, Hillary represents the ultimate cadre insider (Jeb Bush would be her Repub doppleganger). Put aside whether you believe the lunatic conspiracy theory details people say about her — she killed Vince Foster, she sold the Sect’y of State influence to Clinton Foundation contributors — and look rather at the political machine that she represents. It would be very easy to support a thesis that the Beltway — both Republicans and Democrats — has become a place of career parasites who pay lip service to proxy or decoy issues that make headlines while in the back rooms they continue to rape and pillage.
Trump voters, the educated ones who should know better, are simply fed up. At the end of their rope. Choose your metaphor. Though I do believe, with sagging shoulders and a sigh of resignation, that the appropriate choice this election is to hold one’s nose and vote for Hillary, that choice is not an easy one nor is it compelling. The one thing we know about Trump is that he is not a beltway insider, he is not beholden to any party cadre (indeed, the Republican cadre did everything they could to destroy him, and are still doing so), and he will not continue business as usual.
@Mbeti: You got it 100% right with respect to the MSM. They do not get it, at all. But that should come as no surprise. Keep in mind that the business of media is not to promulgate news. The “business” of any industry is the thing that generates its revenue. In the case of media, this is the sale of advertising. That is their business. The content of media is almost totally irrelevant other than for its value to draw eyes, which in turn sells advertising. Thus: “If it bleeds, it leads.” One tried-and-true media trope is the hero/victim story line. This explains why talentless but photogenic young people get thrown up the pop charts. This is why Kim Kardashian becomes and remains famous. Or OJ. Or Ryan Lochte. American attention spans are short and fickle. They tend to be drawn either to a hero or a scandal//villain. Somebody more nuanced, like Claressa Shields, or Ashton Eaton, that takes more than 10 seconds to understand, this does not draw American eyes nor sell advertising. Short attention spans. Ask any American who won the men’s 100 meter dash in the Olympics. Ask them who won the men’s marathon.
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@Blanc2
“They hate Obama because he is black and in office, plain and simple, and this has been a catalyst for these voices to come together in a shrill, white-hot passionate orgy of hate.”
Another term for it is “Obama Derangement Syndrome”.
Obama the symbol scares them because he signals the end of an era in White Supremacist ideology and existence. When all you have is Whiteness, every advance by Black people (no matter how symbolic or minor) is seen as an existential threat.
What a sad way to live.
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@Herneith
“Heroin does that to you. There is a heroin epidemic purportedly among the white middle to upper-class.”
But don’t you forget that it’s “coming from over the border”.
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This is a great potential business venture! Once he builds the wall along Mexico(the Mexicans can pay for the wall with their drug proceeds), we here in Canada can start selling heroin to the Americans. After all, marijuana is being decriminalized soon! We would have to do it quick before they build another wall around Canada though.
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Is Trump as bad as MSM portrays him?
(https://youtu.be/SkqbuFedmzA)
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Whether you agree or not the blatant censorship is a red flag. There is a certain picture that the MSM is painting, and what doesn’t fit the narrative must be censored.
Tamron Hall talks to the wrong kind of Trump supporter. “We have chosen to cut” because it doesn’t fit the social manipulation narrative we are using to install Clinton..
(https://youtu.be/8NVVwZVd6ZM)
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Donald Trump was right.. You are poor and Clinton is has done a lot of harm. To black people.
(https://youtu.be/6PqpqPLQbvY)
Yvette didn’t mention Gaddafi who was on the verge of uplifting the entire African economy. Before Obama/Hillary had him assassinated.
(https://youtu.be/92oV4Xxic7w)
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White people have a good 60-100 years left. They’re on their way out of here.
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https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-SMH3fTA2qew/V7ktJ-_hslI/AAAAAAAAHN0/pK4xvD3GPwM-j4SzHpuoXtIwAWgv2HbxQCJoC/s426/16%2B-%2B1
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I see an ebtrepreneurial opportunity……
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At Satan:
Since the business opportunities are getting better, I think I’ss move down there and sell heroin, fenatyl(sic), oxycontin, all the popular drugs among whites! They are always accusing us of lacking work ethics so I’ll prove them wrong after making my first million. I’ll have to elude capture first!
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@Hernieth
I’m thinking it will be Canada building that wall to slow the wave of people fleeing from the U.S.
True story… I was recently fishing from shore and gazing across the river at Canada (approx. 600m) and thinking, “people that bought waterfront houses here are gonna be pissed when their view gets walled off”. Then I thought, “probably as pissed as I’ll be when federalized police go searching door-to-door for undocumented immigrants (and whatever else they find along the way).”
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I want to look into precursors mainly. Ephedrine for method and whatnot. Also want to look at methadone. I have your e-mail Herneith, so we’ll talk.
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Methadone would be good. The doctors can prescribe it so we could sell it legally!
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We can sell to the Trump voters!
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Isn’t there already a considerable amount of marijuana being brought into the U.S. over the Canadian border?
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Probably.
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Update (September 13th): Hillary Clinton on September 9th said,
Ta-Nehisi Coates says that, if anything, is too low:
He backs up those numbers with links.
More:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/basket-of-deplorables/499493/
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Jamelle Bouie did a piece on the numbers for Slate and says Clinton was not far off:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/09/trump_s_basket_of_deplorables_hillary_clinton_was_right.html
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Just read an article that describes the Republican strategy for holding on to their congressional seats in 2018: run against the corporate media.
According to the McClatchy D.C. article,
Conveniently left out of this narrative is the fact that the Right Wing in this country has a very robust media network of their own. It is so well funded and influential that they have been able to drag the corporate media far to the right of the majority of Americans. Yet, that is not enough.
Apparently without a major Democratic Bogeywoman (like HRClinton or E. Warrens) to run against, the Repubs are planning to do what they do best; stoke murderous fear and loathing to win elections. The article continues:
”
Of course, that strategy works best with the simple-minded bigots who voted for Trump:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article154106459.html
I wonder if they will also take responsibility for inciting violence against the media when print and television journalists, radio show hosts, podcasters and bloggers critical of Trump and his ilk are physically attacked or worse?
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