Clinton won as many votes as Obama in 2012 just not in the states where she needed them most

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Clinton won as many votes as Obama in 2012 — just not in the states where she needed them most
David Lauter
LA Times

Aides to Trump say he won because voters in blue-collar communities favored his economic message. Particularly in the Midwest, he scored with his promise to bring jobs back to a region that has suffered from stagnant incomes and declining economic mobility for decades, they say.

Some Democratic analysts agree, at least in part. Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg said Friday that a postelection poll conducted by his firm showed that Democrats and independents who had voted for Trump held many doubts and anxieties about the his character. Nonetheless, they “held their noses and voted” for him “because he offered a different economic vision,” Greenberg wrote in analyzing the poll’s findings.

Michael Tesler, a political scientist at UC Irvine, has spent the year studying the role of race in the campaign. In a series of articles, he has described survey data that show a strong link between measures of racial resentment and support for Trump among white voters.

The Clinton campaign’s internal data indicate that the drop-off among voters younger than 30 was a key problem. Those voters mostly did not side with Trump — he remains unpopular with younger Americans — but enough either stayed home or voted for third-party candidates to make the difference in the closest states.

Familiar pattern emerging here. Trump brought out the racists, Clinton lost ground with those in economic pain, and the younger generation ran the other way.