Cohn argued that the exit polls overestimated “Trump’s support among well-educated white voters” and that

there is no question that the exit polls underestimate the number of white working-class voters, especially older ones, by a considerable amount.

Cohn observed that errors result from “an odd methodological quirk in exit polling” that “winds up biasing the rest of the survey because the exit polls are weighted to match the actual result of a far less educated country.” The net effect:

The exit poll overestimates Republican support among most demographic groups, including well-educated white voters, and it overestimates the number of voters from Democratic-leaning voting blocs, like young, nonwhite and well-educated voters.

Assuming this critique of the exit polls is correct, what are the implications for Democrats and Republicans?

For Democrats, the Pew and CAP calculations suggest that because the noncollege white vote remains highly significant, the party and its candidates need to prevent any further erosion in this constituency that went so strongly for Trump.

The corollary for Republicans is that the party, already behind in the popular vote, cannot afford to suffer continued losses among college-educated white voters, especially college-educated women. Pew found by 2017, a year into the Trump presidency:

Voters who have completed college make up a third of all registered voters. And a majority — 58 percent — of all voters with at least a four-year college degree now identifies as Democrats or leans Democratic, the highest share dating back to 1992. Just 36 percent affiliate with the Republican Party or lean toward the G.O.P.

This danger has become more acute, according to the Pew study:

The share of women identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic is up 4 percentage points since 2015 and is at one of its highest points since 1992.

At the same time, though, Trump appears to be strengthening Republican support among noncollege whites:

Voters with no college experience have been moving toward the GOP: 47 percent identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up from 42 percent in 2014.

The Pew and CAP studies received relatively little publicity compared to the massive coverage of the exit polls, raising the question of how much the political community will adjust to the conflicting data.

Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida who studies the intricacies of polling, is not optimistic:

In real time on election night, the exit polls set a narrative, and for a long time there is no other data that changes that narrative, and that narrative solidifies into place and it’s really hard to get past it.

Polling that provides an inaccurate picture of the electorate does more than undermine partisan strategy and media analysis. Trevor Tompson, vice president of NORC (formerly the National Opinion Research Center) at the University of Chicago, emailed me:

The overrepresentation of college-educated voters, and especially those with postgraduate degrees, has long been a known issue with the in-person exit poll.

He then added:

The bottom line is we need to have much better data for the health of our democracy.

For Democrats, these questions are a matter of competitive survival.

Teixeira of the Center for American Politics and William Galston of The Brookings Institution, two longtime Democratic strategists, suggest different but complementary directions in which to take the Democratic Party going forward.

Galston, writing in the March 16 Wall Street Journal, argues that Democrats need to moderate their stand on immigration in order to win over white noncollege voters.

“No issue has done more than immigration to feed populism, and finding a sustainable compromise would drain much of the bile from today’s politics,” Galston writes. He continues:

Defenders of liberal democracy should acknowledge that controlling borders is a legitimate exercise of sovereignty, and that the appropriate number and type of immigrants is a legitimate subject for debate. Denouncing citizens concerned about immigration as bigots ameliorates neither the substance nor the politics of the problem. There’s nothing illiberal about the view that too many immigrants stress a country’s capacity to absorb them, so that a reduction or even a pause may be in order.

Teixeira points out that if Clinton had done as well with white working-class voters as Obama

she would have carried, with robust margins, the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Iowa, as well as Florida and Ohio. In fact, if Clinton could simply have reduced the shift toward Donald Trump among these voters by one-quarter, she would have won.

In Alabama’s special Senate election, Doug Jones, the winning Democrat, would have lost if he had not made substantial inroads with the white working class, Teixeira argued:

Without the hefty swing among the white non-college population, particularly women, there is no way Jones would have won the state, or even come close.

Teixeira concluded:

There is no way around it — if Democrats hope to be competitive in Ohio and similar states in 2020, they must do the hard thing: find a way to reach hearts and minds among white non-college voters.

Let’s go back to Galston, writing on the Brookings website, presciently, in June 2016. I will quote him at some length, because in my opinion no one captures the situation better than he does:

Most working-class whites have incomes below $50,000; most whites with BAs or more have incomes above $50,000. Most working-class whites rate their financial circumstances as only fair or poor; most college educated whites rate their financial circumstances as good or excellent. Fifty-four percent of working-class whites think of themselves as working class or lower class, compared to only 18 percent of better-educated whites ….



In many respects, these two groups of white voters see the world very differently. For example, 54 percent of college-educated whites think that America’s culture and way of life have improved since the 1950s; 62 percent of white working-class Americans think that it has changed for the worse. Sixty-eight percent of working-class whites, but only 47 percent of college-educated whites, believe that the American way of life needs to be protected against foreign influences. Sixty-six percent of working-class whites, but only 43 percent of college-educated whites, say that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities. In a similar vein, 62 percent of working-class whites believe that discrimination against Christians has become as big a problem as discrimination against other groups, a proposition only 38 percent of college educated whites endorse.

This brings us to the issue of immigration. By a margin of 52 to 35 percent, college-educated whites affirm that today’s immigrants strengthen our country through their talent and hard work. Conversely, 61 percent of white working-class voters say that immigrants weaken us by taking jobs, housing, and health care. Seventy-one percent of working-class whites think that immigrants mostly hurt the economy by driving down wages, a belief endorsed by only 44 percent of college-educated whites. Fifty-nine percent of working-class whites believe that we should make a serious effort to deport all illegal immigrants back to their home countries; only 33 percent of college-educated whites agree. Fifty-five percent of working-class whites think we should build a wall along our border with Mexico, while 61 percent of whites with BAs or more think we should not. Majorities of working-class whites believe that we should make the entry of Syrian refugees into the United States illegal and temporarily ban the entrance of non-American Muslims into our country; about two-thirds of college-educated whites oppose each of these proposals.

Opinions on trade follow a similar pattern. By a narrow margin of 48 to 46 percent, college-educated whites endorse the view that trade agreements are mostly helpful to the United States because they open up overseas markets while 62 percent of working-class whites believe that they are harmful because they send jobs overseas and drive down wages.

It is understandable that working-class whites are more worried that they or their families will become victims of violent crime than are whites with more education. After all, they are more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher levels of social disorder and criminal behavior. It is harder to explain why they are also much more likely to believe that their families will fall victim to terrorism. To be sure, homegrown terrorist massacres of recent years have driven home the message that it can happen to anyone, anywhere. We still need to explain why working-class whites have interpreted this message in more personal terms.

The most plausible interpretation is that working-class whites are experiencing a pervasive sense of vulnerability. On every front — economic, cultural, personal security — they feel threatened and beleaguered. They seek protection against all the forces they perceive as hostile to their cherished way of life — foreign people, foreign goods, foreign ideas, aided and abetted by a government they no longer believe cares about them. Perhaps this is why fully 60 percent of them are willing to endorse a proposition that in previous periods would be viewed as extreme: the country has gotten so far off track that we need a leader who is prepared to break some rules if that is what it takes to set things right.

The bottom line, as the 2016 election amply demonstrated, is that if the Democratic Party does not take the bull by the horns, someone else will.