The Mythology Of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support

[ConservativeDemocrat]

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

It’s been extremely common for news accounts to portray Donald Trump’s candidacy as a “working-class” rebellion against Republican elites. There are elements of truth in this perspective: Republican voters, especially Trump supporters, are unhappy about the direction of the economy. Trump voters have lower incomes than supporters of John Kasich or Marco Rubio. And things have gone so badly for the Republican “establishment” that the party may be facing an existential crisis.

But the definition of “working class” and similar terms is fuzzy, and narratives like these risk obscuring an important and perhaps counterintuitive fact about Trump’s voters: As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.

This whole Democrats represent the "elite rich" and Republicans represent the "working poor" crap has to stop.

It's not true.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[Person 2713]

1. The trump signs I see are while driving in well to do suburbs SW of Chicago. Poorer areas I wouldn't

expect to see any but this is probably due to other demographics unique to the area .
Republicans around here in general, are usually clustered in some certain suburbs
Trump got many votes in the area and going to guess plenty were in the traditional upper middle class republican areas that were already in existence

[DemocraticWing]

2. This is a good article and I agree that it's incorrect that poor people vote Republican.

All polling I've seen shows Democrats winning working people by large numbers. Even when you just look at the white working class vote, Republicans don't do well with white voters who make under $40,000/year. The big secret is that middle class white people are the Republicans base and always have been, and it's those guys (they're usually men to be honest) that represent the poor-hating, racist, sexist, homophobic warmongering that Republicans have pandered to for 40 years. They are comfortable enough to want to look down on the ones below them, even if they have more in common with those people than the Donald Trumps of the world.

Democrats used to speak to poor people and represent their interests rhetorically, but that has declined some in recent years. Voter turnout rates have fallen among poor people in the past few decades and it's mirrored the shift of the Democratic Party towards the center. I suspect those trends are related.