I’ve been playing around with a lot of county level election data recently as part of a larger project. But while I was doing this I came across a particularly good illustration of what happened, or rather didn’t happen, in the 2016 election. Namely, the failure of the idea that a cultural aversion to Trump’s politics and personal style would, in and of itself, be enough to swing the election.

So, to quickly recap the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign bet on this notion pretty hard. Trump’s inflammatory and regressive rhetoric put him at odds with the emerging cosmopolitan/socially liberal attitudes of our increasingly diverse country. Moreover, Trump’s uncouth behavior and lack of respect for our political norms was itself a unique threat to our institutions. Surely, people would be inclined to vote for Clinton, an experienced technocrat, over that.

Of course, Democrats did make some notably appealing policies (Clinton’s defenders never get tired of pointing out what a progressive package the Democratic platform was), but the focus was always squarely on what an obviously detestable loudmouth Trump is. They even went so far as running an ad about what a bad role model Trump was for children and dedicating a substantial chunk of the Democratic Convention to slam him over saying some racist things about a military veteran.

It was expected that, as Trump’s base was off in the hinterlands of darkest middle America, the cultural backlash against him would therefore be most intense in diverse, cosmopolitan urban centers. More crucially, it was expected that this would also be very strong in metropolitan suburbs, perhaps even stronger than in urban areas, where it was presumed people had a certain respect for institutions and political norms. This would be enough to break their typically Republican voters.

So obviously things didn’t go as planned. But where exactly did things go wrong? Well, here are the results:

Looking at the we can pick out a number of the failings of Clinton’s strategy. First, of course, was the fact that Clinton lost more votes (and to a smaller extent Trump gained more votes) across the board than they were expecting.

Second, suburban voters weren’t nearly as turned off by Trump as the thinking would have suggested. In fact, Trump’s politics was almost as effective bringing out well to do suburban voters as it was bringing out rural ones. Nor was there that much negative mobilization for Clinton. At best, it looks like Clinton may have lost fewer high income suburban voters than she otherwise would have, but clearly not enough.

Finally, lower income cities were apparently less turned off by Trump’s antics, and less convinced to vote for Clinton to stop him, than high income voters. In places this gap was quite pronounced. Clinton lost voters at a rate 8% greater in lower income suburbs. There was more than a 13% gap between low and high income large cities in voting for Trump.

The takeaways from this seem straightforward enough. For one thing, counting on country club Republicans living in redlined suburbs to be turned off by Trump’s crass racism and disregard for political norms was a really stupid bet to make.

Arguably, the whole underlying presumption that middle class people have some sort of innate love for civil liberties and institutions, which tends to have a lot of currency in modern political thinking, was always a bit questionable. It makes sense in theory, and there are a good number of people who fit the image, but there are enough counterexamples ranging from Thailand to Egypt that suggest middle class people are often quite willing to smash institutions and tolerate all manner of repression and chicanery as long as they’re the ones who are going to benefit from it. But I digress.

On the other hand, it seems poorer voters don’t seem particularly keen on rallying to defend political and institutional status quo that are failing them (surprise surprise). This isn’t to say they have some sort of nihilistic impulse to let everything burn to the ground. It can’t be stressed enough that however much Trump promised to shake things up low income voters generally weren’t won over by Trump’s obviously regressive style. But if the choice was between more of the same and “bad, but maybe in an abstract distant way that’s not really going to effect me”, they’re just not going to choose either.

Had these low income voters in urban areas and metro suburbs been convinced to vote for Clinton/not vote for Trump at the same rate as high income voters, like with a substantial economic program or at least some convincing argument that Trump was going to cut the poor off at the knees, then the Democrats would have handily carried Michigan and Wisconsin and would have been able to win either Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida, securing a win.

But Clinton didn’t do that, presumably because her strategists were worried it would turn off the affluent suburban Republicans they were banking on.

It should have been obvious that cultural aversion to Trump alone wasn’t going to be enough to win the election. But a lot of cosmopolitan social liberals convinced themselves it was because, after all, it was so self-evident to them. Of course other suburbanites would see what an obvious joke Trump was. Of course poor vulnerable minority voters would see what a unique threat Trump was to their personal well being. The man can barely speak in coherent sentences. His family surname used to be Drumf*! Surely this is obvious to everyone, right?

And so it seemed until it wasn’t.

All this is still relevant in 2018. Trump’s regressive policies have teeth now, but a large part of anti-Trump politics still boils down to “look at Trump’s stupid tweet”. That or an excessive focus on possible manipulation by the Russians to the exclusion of everything else. We can’t let that be the beginning and end of it.

*What exactly was the logic behind the Drumpf thing again? For the life of me, I can’t even remember…