All credit here to Pew Research Center on its assessment of 16 interesting trends in 2016. Here’s three that seemed particularly worth mulling, but there’s more where this came from.
1. The middle class is shrinking in nearly all U.S. metropolitan areas—with a greater share of Americans being pulled into upper-income tiers
Here's a finding that calls into question whether having more people pulled into an upper-income class than those falling into a lower-income class is a good thing when it means that the middle class is plummeting overall (i.e. the country is becoming increasingly more polarized). It’s worth noting in the chart below that many of the places where the middle class decreased most were on the coasts (in the Northeast and California, in particular).
From 2000 to 2014, the share of adults living in middle-income households fell in 203 of the 229 U.S. metropolitan areas examined in a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. The decrease in the middle-class share was often substantial, measuring 6 percentage points or more in 53 metropolitan areas, compared with a 4-point drop nationally. However, the share of adults in the upper-income tier increased more than the share of adults in the lower-income tier in 119 of the 229 areas examined.
2. Democrats and Republicans are become becoming polar opposite parties in terms of demographics, religion, and income
The Democratic Party is becoming less white, less religious and better-educated at a faster rate than the country as a whole, while aging somewhat more slowly. Republican voters are becoming more diverse, better-educated and less religious at a slower rate than the country generally.
3. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans are skeptical of free trade
Talk about a number that shows how out of step the GOP establishment was with its base. Part of this is clearly due to the Trump effect—notably in the chart below, GOP voters’ negative perceptions spiked rapidly from the high 30s to the high 60s starting around mid-2015, when Trump started trashing free trade. But part of this also suggests that many Republican voters weren't actually convinced that free trade was working to their advantage even as the GOP establishment assured them for decades that it was. Meanwhile, Democrats’ views of free trade steadily trended more positive from 2009 to 2016, rising from 48 percent to 56 percent saying it’s a “good thing.”
Republicans and Republican-leaning registered voters (68%) say free trade has been a bad thing for the U.S., while only 24% say it has been good for the country. These views, which have shifted starkly since May 2015, when 51% of Republican voters said free trade was a good thing for the U.S. and 39% said it was bad, came as President-elect Trump criticized free trade throughout the 2016 election cycle. Democrats, on the other hand, remain largely positive about free trade.