That’s a much bigger tilt toward white-collar whites than exit polls have recorded for any previous Democrat. As I wrote in May, no Democratic presidential candidate in the history of modern polling dating back to 1952 has ever carried most college-educated whites. From 1952 to 1980, every Democratic nominee, in fact, ran better among whites without a degree than whites holding one. In 1984, Mondale ran slightly better with college-educated than non-college-educated whites and then Dukakis and Bill Clinton drew almost exactly the same support among both groups in the next three elections.

Starting in 2000, each Democratic nominee has performed better with college- educated than non-college-educated whites; the largest gap was recorded in 2008, when the exit polls showed Obama running seven points better among white-collar than among blue-collar white voters. With Trump dominating among non-college-educated whites, and lagging among those with degrees, the class inversion could widen even more this year.

At an Atlantic forum Monday morning, Joel Benenson, Clinton’s chief strategist, said this pattern draws on both economic and cultural anxieties.

Among those without degrees, he said, “Their economic struggles may be exacerbated by what is a new and changing economy in ways that they are not yet hearing the full discussion in this campaign about who will really help people who feel in many ways left behind…I think Bill Clinton did a very good job of addressing those voters in the 90s. Hillary Clinton did when they were in Arkansas. They will speak to these voters as we go forward. Hillary Clinton certainly will. We want to get those voters, we believe we can.”

But, Benenson added, “we also believe ... when we look at the totality of where we are, you emphasize what's the issue with non-college, but you're also not talking about the fact that the college voters on the flipside right now we're going better than any Democrat has ever done ... So, is there something else driving it? I think there is possibly, that maybe those folks are a little more afraid and little more anxious, and there's something that Trump is saying that's appealing to that, that is playing on that."

Indeed, as the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent pointed out Monday, the CNN/ORC poll found a huge gap in the reaction to Trump’s sharp-edged convention message between non-college-educated whites on the one hand, and college-educated whites and minorities on the other.

By a margin of 60 percent to 34 percent, whites without a degree said Trump’s ominous acceptance speech “reflected the way you, personally, feel about things in the United States today.” But a narrow majority of college-educated whites said it did not. Even more emphatically, two-thirds of voters of color said the speech did not reflect their assessment of America today. And while 56 percent of non-college-educated whites said the speech made them more likely to vote for Trump, a plurality of college-educated whites (48 percent) and a significant majority of minorities (60 percent) said it made them less likely to support him.