One clear lesson from the elections of 2016 and 2018 is that President Trump and his fellow Republican candidates win where white voters are losing ground.
Take a look at the 2018 congressional results in the upper Midwest and Pennsylvania, states that provided the Electorate College votes crucial to Trump’s capture of the White House.
John C. Austin, the director of the Michigan Economic Center and a senior fellow at Brookings, analyzed economic trends in 15 congressional districts that changed hands last year — 12 from Republican to Democrat, three from Democrat to Republican — in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa. Austin found a striking pattern. In the majority of districts that went from Republican to Democrat:
Residents had incomes higher than statewide medians, as well as higher educational attainment — in most places by considerable margins. Conversely, in the three districts that moved from blue to red, incomes and educational attainment lagged statewide figures. CONT.
Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times