Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Donald Trump Did Better With Minorities than Mitt Romney

This year's election result has shocked a lot of people. Donald Trump was supposed to have no chance. My friends on the left were predicting a Hillary Clinton 20 point win. Even my friends on the right were saying Clinton would win by double digits. Hillary Clinton wondered why she wasn't ahead by 50 points.

And yet Donald Trump won the electoral college and came pretty close in the national popular vote. One of the things that was supposed to sink Trump was that since he was prejudiced against Blacks, Muslims, and Hispanics not only would he get few of their votes but they'd turn out heavily. While Trump had an appeal to white working class voters, he was supposed to crater with white suburban college graduates too.

Yet he didn't. Trump did a bit better than Mitt Romney among Blacks and Hispanics and actually doubled Romney's vote percentage with Muslims.

Wait. What?

How did this happen?

There were a few reasons. First, there was Hillary Clinton. She wasn't the nation's first Black President and that chipped away just a little at her Black support. She just didn't generate the excitement Barack Obama did and her character issues likely weighed her down across the board.

Then there was Trump. Democrats had painted Republicans as hating Blacks, Muslims, and Hispanics in the past. Everyone who wasn't going to vote Trump because he allegedly hated these groups were already firmly in the Democratic camp. On the other hand, there were minorities voting Obama who didn't base their vote on their belief that Republicans hate them. If they didn't vote for Obama because Mitt Romney hated them, they weren't going to vote for Hillary Clinton solely because Trump hated them. Many of them were blue collar. Trump had a message that spoke to blue collar America. Many people thought this message was reserved for blue collar whites, but it certainly resonated with other groups. Getting 13% of Muslims isn't a good performance, but it shows that 5% of Muslims might actually think that limiting Muslim refugees into the U.S. is a good idea. That's not far-fetched.

And all Trump needed to do to win was a little better with minorities than Romney.

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