kalm wrote:JohnStOnge wrote:I mean about the Trump win not being an "It's the economy stupid" thing:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ty/525771/
Of course, as you know, to me the exit polling results made it immediately obvious that it wasn't the economy because, consistent with the statement above about financially troubled voters being more likely to vote for Clinton, the exit polls showed that people who considered the economy the most important issue voted for Clinton by a solid margin.
Sounds extremely inconclusive. This paragraph doesn't exactly jive with your narrative...
Finally, 54 percent of white working-class Americans said investing in college education is a risky gamble, including 61 percent of white working-class men. White working-class voters who held this belief were almost twice as likely as their peers to support Trump. “The enduring narrative of the American dream is that if you study and get a college education and work hard, you can get ahead,” said Robert P. Jones, the CEO of PRRI. “The survey shows that many white working-class Americans, especially men, no longer see that path available to them. … It is this sense of economic fatalism, more than just economic hardship, that was the decisive factor in support for Trump among white working-class voters.”
So it wasn't the economy, stupid, but it was economic fatalism?

Kalm, we disagree a lot but I think you are intellectually honest. And in that regard I think you need to look at the over arching theme of the article. And I think that theme is pretty much summarized by this statement from it:
Polling is a notoriously clumsy instrument for understanding people’s lives, and provides only a sketch of who they are. But it’s useful for debunking myths and narratives—particularly the ubiquitous idea that economic anxiety drove white working-class voters to support Trump
You can also click on the link to the study report itself and see this statement:
Overall, the model demonstrates that besides partisanship, fears about immigrants and cultural displacement were more powerful factors than economic concerns in predicting support for Trump among white working-class voters. Moreover, the effects of economic concerns were complex—with economic fatalism predicting support for Trump, but economic hardship predicting support for Clinton.
Whether you choose to agree with the conclusions of the study or not, they are clearly at odds with the "it was the economy stupid" paradigm.
BTW never considered the cultural displacement thing before I saw the report because that's not in exit polls. But exit polling results are CERTAINLY consistent with the statement about immigrants. Exit polling showed that was CLEARLY a motivating factor that strongly favored Trump.