His sweep of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island on Tuesday included wins in some of the richest and best-educated counties in the country – like Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Newport County, Rhode Island – and added to victories in his more traditional strongholds of white working-class neighborhoods.
Exit polls from Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maryland showed Trump winning about half of Republican voters with college degrees, and over half of Republican voters making more than $100,000 a year.
“On its face, it is hard to believe he’d be improving with a demographic group that has been so averse to his style, his denigrating language,” said Randall Miller, a professor of American politics at Saint Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania.
“But I think people may have gotten used to Trump, he’s not as outrageous as he used to be,” he said, adding that familiarity with the businessman’s brand in the Northeast may also have helped him.
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