Perhaps due to overconfidence (to the point of arrogance) that they'd win, as with Brexit, some on the 'losing side' have to tell themselves, or anyone that will listen, that people who voted differently did so because they're stupid, misled or otherwise didn't know what they were doing.
People who voted Trump and people who voted Brexit knew exactly what they were doing and had their own real and personal reasons for doing so.
The truth is that most of these jobs aren't coming back. Trump told them what they want to hear, namely that he will fight to bring back the jobs. Clinton told them what they had to hear, namely that many of these jobs aren't coming back and we need to figure out where the displaced workers fit in the working society. Needless to say, voters preferred Trump's messaging.
Reading coverage of the 1984 election is eerily similar with the whole "I don't know anyone who voted for Reagan!" line.
If someone doesn't know a single person who voted for a candidate who received over 59M votes, I'd suggest the speaker has a problem.
Did people who feel left out give Trump his margin? I think they probably did. Are they his only supporters? Hell no.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...
First, it's based on the same older self-reported exit polling that led 538 to completely mispredict the election, so you should immediately be skeptical of the data.
Second, it only takes into account self-reported current income blocks, not change in income over the last decade or so, which is what many Trump voters are angry about. For example, making $70k today might seem ok if you look at the table and see median state income is only $65k, but that means nothing to someone who made $90k in 2007 and has never been able to get income back to that level.
Third, it also ignores future predictions based on current state of affairs for voters. It's not very comforting if you make higher than the median income in your area, but your job is on the chopping block. Trump picked up far more non-college educated voters, for whom future job prospects look worse and worse every year, even if they have gainful employment today.
[1] http://www.bls.gov/nls/ [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/us-factory-workers-used-to-li...
Exit polls show that Trump made massive gains in the under 30k and the 30-49k brackets, compared to the previous election.
Higher than 50k income brackets leaned more towards clinton than in the previous election.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/el...
This is the old American middle class that did well without a degree usually employed in manufacturing and who usually reliably voted democrat.
Overlay this map:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/elections/h...
With maps like this one:
It's why he won. There's no way Pennsylvania (first time since 1988) and the Rust Belt go to him otherwise.
Let me expand on that a little bit. My point isn't to mock you or cast aspersions or whatever, it is to make it clear that there were those of us that saw things differently 3 days ago. I'm not despondent, I'm going to try to wait and see what happens with an open mind. But my expectation is very much that people who voted Trump in to 'drain the swamp' or such are not going to get what they are expecting. We are going to see a combination of Trump serving Trump and the establishment engulfing him.
On the face of it you clearly can't describe the reason all Trump voters voted Trump so simply.
I'd like to propose a rule on HN, Don't make claims about issues like this without a serious factual basis. We have more than enough speculation already; more is just spam.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where...
Really? The entire election can be boiled down to a single, concrete, easily understood reason? There's no diversity of thought at all? How remarkable.
Right, the people chanting "fuck Islam" and "Sieg heil" [0] at Trump rallies surely cast their votes out of economic desperation.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004533191/unf...
It was not out of economic desperation.
Data point of one.