President Trump’s election upended the conventional view of U.S. class politics. Republicans have long been considered the party of the affluent and upwardly mobile, while Democrats have appealed to the economically disadvantaged. But many observers have suggested that Trump “tapped into the anger of a declining middle class” rooted in decades of income stagnation and growing social distress.
Even those who acknowledged the fact that Trump voters “had, on average, higher incomes” than Hillary Clinton voters argued that “the trajectory of their communities felt far worse.” The evidence for this interpretation consists mostly of county-level correlations between economic and social characteristics and voting behavior.
We looked at the political impact of long-term shifts in economic fortunes more directly, using a unique panel study tracking the same people over more than three decades, from 1965 through 1997. CONT.
Larry M. Bartels & Katherine J. Cramer, Monkey Cage