Donald Trump believes that he is appealing to working class voters, but his appeal to them is more along the lines of a populist movement. He is pitching them against the establishment (the rich, educated people) using a divide and conquer strategy he is using to make them feel important like he is the only one fighting for them. He uses the rhetorical strategy of basing his campaign on fear trying to convince the working class that our current economy has no room for them and that this is heavily due to the fact that diversity, immigration, and globalization are the cause for it all. Although his words may have been appealing and holding weight with some voters, for many of the working class this tactic has not been working.
White Working Class in the Rust Belt
The primaries held in Mid-western states, Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan, all of which are very important swing states show that Donald Trump is not doing very well in that region as far as holding onto the working class vote. “A 2016 race between Clinton and Trump could devolve principally into a pitched battle for the Rust Belt,” the Washington Post’s Dan Balz predicted in March. According to the chart, Trump’s support only constitutes 26- 30 % of working class voters in these three Rust Belt States and this demonstrates that Trump’s candidacy could also be considered the Democrats’ first major opportunity to gain more support among the white working class voters.
This ultimately leaves most of the working class without a political home or an ideal front-runner, and offers Democrats a very rare opportunity to retrieve the support of these voters. While many working class voters are still holding on tight to the belief that Trump can bring ease to the anxieties within the middle-class, his rhetoric of fear and use of a divide and conquer strategy has regressed by the day.
Graph: http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/_memos/tds_SM_Levison_Trump_not_winning_vf.pdf
I think this posted demonstrated a very insightful perspective by focusing solely on the Rust Belt. I would be very interested to see a similar chart for different regions of the country. I think it’s particularly interesting because I think of the Rust Belt as having a very white demographic so it surprises me Trump isn’t doing better there.