That’s Median boss. The “midpoint in a frequency distribution”. Its a much better metric for this sort of thing than Mean (mathematical average). Because one astronomically wealthy or poor person can’t skew the numbers in the same way. They’re still just part of the “richer than, or poorer than this number” assessment. Lots of very wealthy or very poor people can move the number. But that’s exactly the thing you’re trying to figure out, so you want that to happen.
Trump’s primary supporters. His base. Those who support him specifically. And not the GOP, or conservative supreme court picks, or just dislike Hillary. Have a median income higher than the general population, and even more so higher than Hillary supporters. Even if you limit the data set to whites. What that means is the total set of Trump’s data sits generally speaking higher than the the other sets. Or the bulk of Trump’s set sits higher than the bulk of the other sets. There are more people making more money among Trump supporters than the general population or Hillary supporters.
Thus the majority of Trump’s support can’t be coming from the poorest working class whites. Particularly when in actually polling data, and demographics from the primary votes, which ever angle you look at (income level, exposure to immigration pressure, unemployment level, regions effected by globalization, factory shut downs etc). At least a slight majority of those types are often going for Democrats or Hillary.
Now that’s not entirely the whole story. That element has in a lot of ways traditionally been a part of the DNC base. Particularly Union workers. But DNC support from those same quarters is lower this year than its ever been before. And DNC support from college age whites (traditionally a GOP demo) is rising. The shift in college educated whites, especially women, is clearly down to Trump. But poor and working class whites have been shifting GOP for a while. So I don’t know that we can attribute that to Trump.
Either way the more you poke his demographics with a stick. The clearer it is that even where these people do truly support Trump. And not just back him for other reasons. They don’t make up the bulk of his supporters. Or the driving force. If the median income of Trumps supporters in the $70,000 range. The midpoint of his distribution. The point at which half make less, and half make more. And the poverty line for family’s is in the $20,000-$30,000 range. Then the vast bulk of his supporters sit well above the poverty line. And the US total median income is ~50,000. The majority of Trump’s supporters also sit above that. Apparently the Median household income for non-Hispanic whites sat around $62k . So most of Trumps supporters are also doing better than most whites.
That’s exactly the opposite skew in median you’d expect if his base support was driven disproportionately by whites who were struggling economically.
So lets be clear. Except in the case of his 0% polling with Blacks. When ever we say x demographic supports a politician, what we really mean is that most. A statistically measurable majority support that politician. Trump, and the GOP more generally, do garner some support from the rust belt, struggling white demo. Depending on how you attempt to measure and track that support, and which state you look at or whether you look at it nationally. They sometimes even get more support than Hillary and the DNC from these people. But most of Trumps support isn’t coming from there. And critically the people who follow him specifically, who put him in the position he’s in. The critical back stop below which he can’t fall. Don’t appear to be mostly drawn from that group.
