I hear that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats lost the November election because they abandoned their constituents who are struggling economically and need help.
The vote totals say that it’s not a true statement.
The scatterplot chart above illustrates non-correlation between poverty rates and Clinton’s vote totals. At the county-level, the size of her margin didn’t depend on the number of people below the poverty line. However, the vote for Trump was limited in counties if more than 23.5% of the population was below the poverty line. The election results are exactly the opposite of what they’d be if Trump voters were looking for better economic conditions, above all else.
In the counties where more than 25 percent of the population is below the poverty line, Clinton prevailed over Trump, 57% to 39%.
One in every ten people below the poverty line can be found in the counties with poverty rates over 25 percent. They're represented by the 10 dots farthest right in the chart above and all of them are blue. If people in poverty saw something in Donald Trump, you’d see some red dots in the lower-right portion of the chart, but there are none.
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According to the Census Bureau’s 2015 estimate, the total US population below the poverty line is 50,000,000 with 5 million in the 130 counties with the highest poverty rates, including:
- Fresno, California
- Merced, California
- Alachua, Florida (Gainesville)
- Richmond, Georgia (Augusta)
- Orleans, Louisiana
- St Louis, Missouri
- Bronx, New York
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Hidalgo, Texas (McAllen)
- Cameron, Texas (Brownsville)
- Webb, Texas (Laredo)
- Richmond, Virginia
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The red dots are clustered in the lower-left, instead, since Trump prevailed mostly where the poverty rate is below the US median. Clinton also did well in counties with less poverty. The 10 dots farthest left in the chart are equally split between red and blue. The actual vote totals show a slight lead for Clinton in the corresponding counties, 47.2% to 46.9%.
Voters across the spectrum responded to Clinton which is usually the case for a winning candidate. Support for Trump didn’t extend as broadly and that’s what makes his win improbable and unlikely.
To make Trump’s questionable victory seem legitimate and to give it immunity against the doubtful, the white working class was used as a protective shield.
It’s a cynical strategy to neutralize Democrats who failed to see through it. Those who refused to accept Trump would automatically be branded as an enemy of the white working class.
If there was a shift in voting patterns brought by the white working class, it could be confirmed by statistical analysis of the election results now that the data is available. It would be a cinch to validate a story that was told with such certainty the morning after the election, if it were true.
