… Mr. Trump’s rise to the presidency prompted widespread efforts to understand the motivations of the white working-class voters who propelled him into the White House. It fueled scorching debates over the role that racism played in the presidential election.
Economists proposed that workers in distress because of trade and technological shocks would embrace more nativist politicians. In one study, David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with several other researchers, concluded that counties whose workers were more exposed to Chinese imports have shifted notably toward the right in presidential and congressional elections since the turn of the century.
And yet some political scientists do not entirely buy the arguments. Diana C. Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania rejects the “economic hardship” idea to explain the 2016 election, proposing instead something called “status shock.” White voters fell for Mr. Trump, she argued, because they felt threatened by increasing numbers of minorities and the sense that the United States was losing its global dominance.
Whether Mr. Trump’s proposed barriers against imports and immigrants found support because of a sense of racial threat or out of distress over the loss of manufacturing jobs to China and other countries, ethnic unease is clearly shaping American politics and policy. CONT.
Eduardo Porter, New York Times