he lost the popular vote, and only won it within income brackets above $60k+.
He won because everyone voted along party lines + similar turnout to 2000 (Dem marginally above Rep turnout). All other narratives do not match the actual results.
Put more simply: Trump didn't convert Democrat "white working class" voters in PA, so much as they abstained from the election altogether. The middle class didn't vote Trump in; they sat the whole thing out.
Trump got way more votes than Romney did, nearly as many as Obama 2012, despite considerably more third party votes. Overall turnout was higher than 2012 too.
So theory is Trump mobilized a ton of voters who sat out in 2012?
> the middle class didn't vote Trump, they sat the whole thing out.
Wrong. Trump won the election in a landslide of the electoral college and likely a majority of the popular vote if you audit the southwestern states you abhor to filter out "undocumented people" who voted. That is also not taking into account that Trump primarily campaigned in a small handful of states due to the nature of our electoral system and likely would have won larger in a system without the electoral college. He won the rust belt states which voted Obama into office for 8 years. Attempting to strip his victory from him by making empty statements about the white working class does little to advance any sort of counter-argument to his policies or achievements.
He won because everyone voted along party lines + similar turnout to 2000 (Dem marginally above Rep turnout). All other narratives do not match the actual results.