“We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term,” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham warned his Republicans colleagues four years ago, but his warning clearly was not heeded. With Donald Trump as their candidate, the GOP has committed to giving the playbook one more good old non-college try in 2016.
And in some ways, it’s paying off. Take a look at data from the most recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, which the Post broke down by gender, education and race. It offers a stunning depiction of the lines that divide us, and how deep and unbridgeable they have become.
Most of those lines are familiar. Democrats historically do well among minority voters, and that’s still the case in this cycle. We know that Republicans do better among white voters, particularly white men, while Democrats do better among women. All that remains the case.
But in the race between Hillary Clinton and Trump, the scale of that gender gap has become astonishing. In addition, education levels now take on an importance never seen before in polling data going back to 1984.
Overall, the Washington Post/ABC poll shows a tight race between Clinton and Trump. But that changes dramatically when you look at it by demographics. Four years ago, Mitt Romney enjoyed a 25-point advantage among white voters without a college education. Trump has blown that margin out to a 40-point lead.
However, among white voters with a college degree, Trump’s lead is just one point. The 14-point margin that Romney enjoyed among that group four years ago has disappeared, creating a significant gap between the voting preference of college-educated white voters and those without a college diploma.
When you turn to gender, the divides grow deeper still.
In exit polling four years ago, Romney enjoyed a large, 27-point margin among white men. Under Trump, the advantage has skyrocketed to 47 percentage points. Among white men without a college degree, Trump leads Clinton by 76 percent to 14 percent, a 62-point margin that pretty much taps out that demographic as a source of growth for Trump.
These are the people who respond at the gut level to Trump’s promise to “make America great again,” because it’s a phrase that they naturally apply to their own personal situations. I can sympathize with their sentiment, but if you listen to him Trump is selling them the same kind of dream that he sold to his Trump University customers. “You don’t sell products, benefits or solutions — you sell feelings,” the Trump marketing playbook instructed its high-pressure sales team, and his campaign does the same thing.
In fact, I look at numbers like these and it really drives home how little any of this has to do with policy, issues or governance. To the degree that any of that matters, it’s at the margins. Instead, we’re using politics as an imperfect stage on which to fight through far deeper issues that have little to do with government, such as identity, social standing, isolation and empowerment. It also helps to explain why communication across those chasms has become so painfully difficult. These are existential disputes that can’t easily be resolved through compromise
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