August 5, 2016

Even the White Working Class Is Abandoning Trump

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Ed Kilgore points out that in the latest polls, Trump is not just behind, he’s even losing ground with his most fervent supporters, the white working class:

He’s still leading in this demographic, to be sure. But every recent Republican has won it, by ever-increasing margins. Mitt Romney won non-college-educated white voters by an estimated 62-36 in 2012….That could be changing. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal survey showed his lead among non-college-educated white voters drooping to 49-36. Similarly, McClatchy/Marist pegs it at 46-31. These are not world-beating numbers. And you have to wonder: If Trump is losing his special appeal to the voting category that has long been his campaign’s signature “base,” where is he supposed to make that up?

In short, Romney won the WWC by 26 points. Trump is winning it by only about 15 points. This is devastating if it keeps up. Trump doesn’t just need to match Romney’s numbers, he needs to beat them. If he can’t stay even with 2012 at a minimum, he’s got no chance to win.

I would be very interested to see these numbers broken down by region. Unfortunately, this produces very small subgroups, which makes it hard to draw any firm statistical conclusions. Nonetheless, there’s not much question that there are two fundamentally different varieties of the white working class: the Southern WWC and all the rest of them. If Trump is losing even the Southern WWC, he’s doomed.

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