OK, so here is some of the key exit polling data from Michigan, overlayed with actual vote counts and the difference from obama/romney totals in 2012 calculated all dropped into simple graphs.
Michigan seems to have lost ground for Democrats both with $50,000 and less voters & $100,000 + voters. So far, in the states reviewed so far, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
When I embarked on this exercise I was trying to test the prevailing theory that racial dynamics drove the defeat of Clinton. There is some evidence of that happening in Ohio, some in Pennsylvania and not in Wisconsin however. The one area that has been consistent across all states is the decline of support from voters making less than $50,000. Here is the decline and net difference for Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan:
Change in Votes from 2012 to 2016 for voters making less than $50,000/year
|
Location
|
Democrat
|
Republican
|
Net Difference
|
Ohio
|
-356,564
|
213,202
|
-569,766
|
Pennsylvania
|
-234,801
|
289,970
|
-524,771
|
Wisconsin
|
-209,687
|
57,768
|
-267,455
|
Michigan
|
-84,635
|
193,933
|
-278,567
|
Total Change
|
-885,687
|
754,873
|
-1,640,559
|
A net difference between republican gain with this cohort compared to democratic losses of 1.6 million votes is a staggering reality to contemplate. Interestingly, we lost significantly less voters in that lower income cohort than from 2012, it looks like some of those lost by Obama from 2008 to 2012 got back involved and went for Trump this time.
The male vote has also declined significantly across all states, just not at as large a scale as we see with the income data. This data point definitely played a huge role in Michigan. The most interesting data here is that Clinton lost ground with women while Trump gained ground. Did not expect to see that. It has shown up elsewhere as well.
A lot of white folks left Clinton, but they went third party in Michigan, not to Trump. It really seems that people, one side or the other, just could not support their parties candidate, so went third party. In the case of Michigan, it seems pretty likely that happened to Clinton much more than Trump.
CONCLUSIONS
It is becoming pretty obvious that we need to work on winning back some of those making less than $50,000 to regain a foothold in this region of the country. The blue firewall collapsed not because people rallied around Trump so much as fleeing us. That is completely on us.
What do we need to do to address this issue? This is not just happening in the presidential races either, but midterms and down ballot, within states as well. We are seeing this problem. I will post tomorrow about Florida and Iowa together to wrap the review of states that flipped. If I have the time I will work on the change in income data for all states where there is exit polling data available.