Who Voted for Trump?
There's a quote widely attributed to New Yorker magazine film critic Pauline Kael after the 1972 presidential election, "How could Richard Nixon could have won? I don't know anybody who voted for him."
This quote happens to be inaccurate. Kael did remark on Nixon's victory and the fact that virtually nobody she knew had voted for him, but she indicated awareness that her circle of friends did not represent the entire electorate. (See her actual quote on her Wikipedia page, for example.) Still, while it's a misquote, it has persisted precisely because it offers a powerful insight. A lot of people really lose sight of the fact that what they hear from their neighbors and even moreso their friends is not necessarily what the balance of the country is thinking.
I've thought about that notorious misquote a number of times over the past several months of this campaign. The pitfall of assuming everyone is like one's own social circle is very real to me because my social circle has been virtually unanimous in its support of Hillary Clinton (post-nomination) and its repudiation of both Donald Trump and his style of campaign. Quite a number of my friends have fallen into the trap of saying, basically, "I don't see how any non-delusional, not-evil person could vote for Trump."
Last week I cautioned one friend who was fretting about this very thing, "Even if Hillary wins it by a few percentage points [as the polls at the time indicated] there will still be 45% of the country who agreed with Trump."
As it turns out, even more than that voted for Trump. He's won the majority of votes in the Electoral College and is right around a 50-50 split with Clinton in the popular vote. The Electoral College determines the winner, of course, so unless something truly historic happens in the next few weeks Trump will be our 45th president.
This quote happens to be inaccurate. Kael did remark on Nixon's victory and the fact that virtually nobody she knew had voted for him, but she indicated awareness that her circle of friends did not represent the entire electorate. (See her actual quote on her Wikipedia page, for example.) Still, while it's a misquote, it has persisted precisely because it offers a powerful insight. A lot of people really lose sight of the fact that what they hear from their neighbors and even moreso their friends is not necessarily what the balance of the country is thinking.
I've thought about that notorious misquote a number of times over the past several months of this campaign. The pitfall of assuming everyone is like one's own social circle is very real to me because my social circle has been virtually unanimous in its support of Hillary Clinton (post-nomination) and its repudiation of both Donald Trump and his style of campaign. Quite a number of my friends have fallen into the trap of saying, basically, "I don't see how any non-delusional, not-evil person could vote for Trump."
Last week I cautioned one friend who was fretting about this very thing, "Even if Hillary wins it by a few percentage points [as the polls at the time indicated] there will still be 45% of the country who agreed with Trump."
As it turns out, even more than that voted for Trump. He's won the majority of votes in the Electoral College and is right around a 50-50 split with Clinton in the popular vote. The Electoral College determines the winner, of course, so unless something truly historic happens in the next few weeks Trump will be our 45th president.