Why trump won the election: Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote

So the election of 2016 really was about "power." Just plain old, naked tribal power.  Not ideas or policy or morals, but power. Diana Mutz has researched the topic. She found that by eliminating (controlling for) each of the possible explainations only "status threat" remained.  The original Diana Mutz study is here. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She compared voter data collected in 2012 to voter data in 2016. The data is called Panel data since it is collected for the same samples over time.  She looked at voters perceptions of two key issues: Trade and Immigration.

The best summary article is her interview on the show:  On The Media.

It is part of a larger program called Dog Whistle - The Trump voter re-explained.

Charles Blow also did a great job covering the issue in detail in the opinion section of the NYT.

The Washington Post actually had the story first.

41% of White millennial's voted for Trump

WAPO on racial resentment

Summary

The election of Donald Trump was based on racial resentment of White voters who fear the success of non-whites will limit their own prospects in the future. 

"The America they knew is no longer available to them.  The rise of a non-White America has created anxiety and threats.  Men feel discriminated against. Threats from China and Mexico have reduced the US superpower status.  America will not be the same for their children." 

Ms. Mutz, in her interview, discusses the classic threat response: When we feel threaten we get defensive and seek to assert social dominance. 

Trump was able to tap into this on several key issues: On trade, Trump positioned himself much closer to the average american, then the "elites." He attacked China on trade and Mexico on immigration as proxies for loss of status.

Before this round of research, the media narrative described Trumps victory as about individual economic issues not race. The "left behind" theory.

The study refutes that belief for this election. The vote was about the dominate social groups: Whites, Men, Christians losing their position. 

One interesting note is that: "People vote on how their collective group is doing much more than individual pocket book issues. The groups in the survey had high employment rates and had generally done well since the recession. The  average person views the economy as a local issue that they do not connect to the larger political policies.

She also found that education had little effect on voting patterns.