America's Class-Divided Electorate

There can be little doubt of the fact that reality television star Donald Trump has made the 2016 presidential campaign season one of the strangest in American history. Yet in many ways, this election conforms to America’s underlying basic economic, demographic, and political divides. In fact, the 2016 election reinforces the nation’s divides between richer, more highly educated, more diverse, and more urban Blue States and less advantaged, working class, less diverse, and whiter Red States.

That’s the big takeaway of an analysis I undertook of the key economic, political, and cultural factors that are associated with support for Trump versus Clinton across America’s states. To get at this, my colleague Charlotta Mellander conducted a basic correlation analysis of Trump and Clinton support based on mid-October state-by-state polls. She ran this analysis on three sets of polls: Pollster, Real Clear Politics, and YouGov.