The middle might be shrinking, but it usually trumps the splinters

A numbers problem: graffitied Marine Le Pen poster at a polling station in Paris’s 5th arrondissement as voting took place in the second round of the presidential election. Lorie Shaull/Flickr Which Americans voted for Donald Trump in November’s presidential election? Who comprised that fabled tribe, the sixty-three million “Trump supporters”? Income-wise, according to the New York Times exit poll, they skewed upwards. Hillary Clinton easily won the lowest-income voters (below US$50,000) and Trump took the highest ones. White university graduates also voted for Trump over Clinton. Hang on, can that be right? Aren’t Trump supporters supposed to be white members of the working class with low levels of wealth and education, fed up with elites and political correctness? Wasn’t the result a revolt of the people left behind by globalisation? That much-favoured characterisation only applies to a small portion of people who delivered the White House to the Republican candidate. The bulk of his support simply came from Republican voters. According to the same exit poll, 90 per cent of voting Republicans chose Trump and 89 per cent of Democrats went for Clinton. Trump became president because he was the Republican candidate for president.