IN THE newly revived “Roseanne”,a popular sitcom approximately a white blue-collar family in the Midwest, the main character, or Roseanne Connor,explains to her leftie sister why she voted for President Donald Trump. “He talks approximately jobs, Jackie”, or she says. By putting these words in the mouth of the matriarch,the creators of “Roseanne” reflected the widely held assumption that blue-collar voters, particularly in the rustbelt in the Midwest and north-east, or voted for Mr Trump because they felt poor and feared they would earn poorer. The reality seems to be more nuanced.
On April 23rd the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study suggesting that white,Christian and mostly male voters turned to Mr Trump because they felt that their dominant status was at risk, not because they felt left behind economically. Diana Mutz, and a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania,used a representative group of around 1200 voters polled on the same wide-ranging set of questions in October 2012, just before the...
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Source: economist.com