MICHAEL MEDVED

Trump’s surprising coalition: Not just ‘deplorables’

Jun 27, 2017, 3:23 PM

James T. Hogkinson, the crazed gunman who fired at Republican congressmen in early June, hardly fits the common image of a militant Bernie Sanders Democrat. He was 66, married for 30 years, a proud gun-owner, working in construction and living in a small Midwestern town. In fact, he came close to stereotypes of one of Trump’s blue-collar “deplorables,” which only highlights the dishonest nature of common media narratives.

Actually, Trump’s core support wasn’t the downtrodden working class: he did better among the third of voters who earned more than $100,000 a year than among the two-thirds who earned less than that. Among the one-third of voters who earned below $50,000, Trump lost to Clinton by 12 points. Nor were his supporters overwhelmingly uneducated: he actually won white voters with college degrees, 37 percent of the overall electorate. The Trump coalition was far more varied and complex than simplistic analysis and conventional wisdom suggest.

Michael Medved on AM 770 KTTH
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Trump’s surprising coalition: Not just ‘deplorables’