Voter Trends in 2016: A Final Examination

The following article by Rob Griffin, Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin was posted on the Center for American Progress website November 1, 2017:

This report contains a correction. 

Introduction and summary

Credit:  Nicki Kohl/Telegraph Herald via AP

The unprecedented and largely unanticipated election of Republican candidate Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016 set off intense debates about how his victory was achieved and which factors mattered most in determining the outcome. Although Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won a plurality of the national popular vote—48.2 percent—with a nearly 3-million vote margin, Donald Trump carried 30 states and won the Electoral College vote by a 304-to-227 margin.1

What happened to produce these results?

In the immediate aftermath of the election, and over the ensuing months, electoral analysts have tried to assess two main components of how the 2016 election unfolded: the breakdown of the vote itself and the motivations for these vote choices.
Continue reading “Voter Trends in 2016: A Final Examination”