In 2012, Romney won whites by 20 points. Trump’s only leading by 14, as noted above — thanks to Clinton doing 2 points better now than President Obama did, according to exit polls, and Trump doing 4 points worse than Romney. Part of that is white men being much less supportive of Trump than Romney, with Clinton doing 8 points better than Obama and Trump 8 points worse than the last Republican nominee. White men are a key reason that Republicans always win the white vote. White women have voted for the Democrat twice since 1972, both times for Bill Clinton. (Well, 1992 was a tie, but you get the point.) White men have always backed the Republican.
The critical shift there is among whites with college degrees. This is a group that has also voted Republican in every election since Dwight Eisenhower was reelected. But thanks to a 28-point swing with that group (including Trump doing 15 points worse than Romney), Clinton is poised to be the first Democrat to win college-educated whites in a long time.
The margins among black and Hispanic voters are more subtle. Hispanics are 9 points more likely to prefer the Democrat now than they did four years ago, according to that NBC-Journal poll, but that’s more a function of Trump doing much worse than Clinton doing better. (A lot of Hispanics aren’t committed to either candidate.) Black voters are heavily supportive of Clinton, which isn’t a shock.
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