Surprise, Surprise: Trump Supporters More Affluent Than Clinton's

Apparently it's not the economy, stupid.

And we thought economic distress and jobs were the problem. So what is it then?

Taking a closer look at just who supports Donald Trump, Vox found that his supporters aren't dispossessed in the way most of us thought:

The press has gotten extremely comfortable with describing a Trump electorate that simply doesn’t exist. Cottle describes his supporters as “white voters living on the edges of the economy.” This is, in nearly every particular, wrong.

There is absolutely no evidence that Trump’s supporters, either in the primary or the general election, are disproportionately poor or working class. Exit polling from the primaries found that Trump voters made about as much as Ted Cruz voters, and significantly more than supporters of either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. Trump voters, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver found, had a median household income of $72,000, a fair bit higher than the $62,000 median household income for non-Hispanic whites in America.

A major study from Gallup's Jonathan Rothwell confirmed this. Trump support was correlated with higher, not lower, income, both among the population as a whole and among white people. Trump supporters were less likely to be unemployed or to have dropped out of the labor force. Areas with more manufacturing, or higher exposure to imports from China, were less likely to think favorably of Trump.

The article goes on to point out that low-income white workers have generally supported Democratic candidates in the past. We should watch out what memes we fall for. Trump supporters obviously have different, non-economic agendas driving them.

What might they be? Race? Gender? Xenophobia? Nativism? Cultural issues in general? Maybe.

Stay classy, Trumpsters.