Why Trump Won

Since the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump for President in July, I have been trying to understand why he became the nominee, and ultimately the President-elect. Although many others voted for Trump too, his victory clearly required and received heavy support from previously solid Democrats, who formed an important part of a group I am calling his core voters. The conventional view is that these core supporters are disgruntled white men (and their wives) who lost high wage jobs to imports and technology in recent decades, and fear immigrants, people of different color or religion, and cultural change.

In reading such books as Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, Drew Westen’s The Political Brain, JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, Jessamin Birdsall’s White Evangelicals for Trump, and Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in their own Land, I have tried to understand more about these voters and why they supported a man like Trump.

First, and unlike the conventional view, it seems to me that racism, sexism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia were not primarily responsible for the core voters’ support of Trump. Their support stems primarily from other concerns, and such labels often served to harden their position by making many Trump voters feel wrongly accused and misunderstood.

 Nor were Trump’s core supporters motivated only by economics. Core supporters have undeniably suffered economically during recent decades. But they seem at least as aroused by social and cultural concerns as by economic ones. For instance, some of the largest and most direct beneficiaries of Obama policies, previously strongly Democratic, nevertheless favored Trump, including Elkhart, Indiana, a city Obama showcased and repeatedly visited, and the States that his auto bailout most directly benefited: Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana
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A more plausible reason for Trump’s core supporters is the world of information and analysis in which many of them live. As Hochschild notes, often their sole sources of news and thought about public affairs are Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his clones, and the large network of alt-right internet publicists like Breitbart. These media masters have gained huge followings with a continuous focus on what Jonathan Haidt identifies as core conservative values: instincts like pride, loyalty, tradition, authority, sanctity, fear of change, and what psychologists call stranger anxiety—fearing and blaming outsiders—all while outrageously—and entertainingly—slandering anyone who think otherwise.

Against this background, Trump’s cultural attunement to the Fox/Limbaugh world-view and his flamboyant presentation proved virtually irresistible. Even his wayward personal conduct bespoke not so much disqualification for office as authenticity. Trump presented himself as genuine, not politically correct; bold, not cautious and submissive; strong, not weak; smart and cunning, not a sucker; and one who could cut through complexity, not struggle with it. In other words, he presented himself as strongly aligned with important conservative values.

And in Hillary Clinton, he faced an opponent who in certain ways appeared to be his opposite. She constantly tripped over her own errors; presented herself as artificial and pc, not genuine; cautious, tricky, and greedy, not bold, cunning and successful; as much a victim as a victor; and immersed in complexity, not a conqueror of it.

Another crucial element in Trump’s success was an attitude toward truth that sharply differs from that of the “elites” he so vilified. We all think of truth as a claim that we strongly believe to represent reality. But Trump, his supporters, and his opponents all differ over what reasons can lead to such strong belief. Mr. Trump seems to have no particular belief in his claims, strong or otherwise; they are simply promotional instruments. His core supporters, on the other hand, do believe in truth. But for them, only some personal connection to the claim justifies belief: direct sensory experience, religion, or trust in the person making the claim. Trump and the Fox/Limbaugh/Breitbart media masters have gained that trust by assiduously attuning themselves to the feelings of this constiuency. Secular authorities have mostly not, so their claims get disregarded or taken merely as indicating their prejudices. As for opponents of Trump, they largely distrust the claims of his media world, and try to decide truth for themselves.

Consequently, to Mr. Trump it is not the truth that matters, but a claim’s usefulness to his purpose. As Trump himself put it in his book The Art of the Deal, his approach is to “play to peoples’ fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

Trump’s core supporters, who rely on personal relationship to establish truthfulness, seem to believe that they themselves neither can nor should evaluate claims outside their personal experience. Consequently, they make little effort to do so and depend entirely on those they trust.

Opponents of Mr. Trump also use personal relationships to evaluate claims if possible. But they feel it proper, possible, and necessary—their duty as citizens of a free democracy—to determine the truth of claims for themselves, even those outside their personal experience. To do so they use their education, their experience of the world, and what they consider reliable written sources to decide what to believe.

In other words, my conclusion is that the self-abnegation of Trump’s supporters, and their reliance on personal trust, have been key reasons for Trump’s victory. The media masters they trust have catered brilliantly to their instincts and prejudices, earning their emotional buy-in. They have also isolated their listeners by arousing a mistrust of the federal government, the mainstream press, other established institutions, and a long list of outsiders. Rendered dependent on the Fox/Limaugh/Breitbart media for most of their information, core Trump supporters could be led to swallow a long list of falsehoods and mis-analyses, and they voted accordingly.