By Paul A. Sracic,
In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president without winning a majority of the popular vote. How did this happen? The U.S., like many countries, has an indirect system for selecting its leader. Based on the popular vote in each state, 538 electors are selected, and they cast their vote for president in December. Based on past history, it is fairly easy to predict which party's electors will win in most of the states. These predictable states, however, do not give enough electoral votes to either candidate to determine who will win the overall election, since a majority of the total number of electoral votes cast is necessary for victory.
Most of the unpredictable states are located in the upper Midwest portion of the United States. This area of the country is also known as the "Rust Belt" because it was once the center of U.S. manufacturing and, as manufacturing has declined in the United States, the rusty remains of the abandoned factories are all that is left. In 2016, Trump won the electoral votes of almost all of these states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. If Trump wins all or most of these states in 2020, he will also certainly be re-elected.
Between 40 and 50 percent of all voters in the four rust-belt states that Trump captured in 2016 are the white voters lacking a college degree that we commonly refer to as white, working-class voters. In each of the states mentioned, these voters supported Trump over Hillary Clinton by more than a 20-point margin.
Why were these voters so supportive of a billionaire real estate developer from New York? Because he promised to get rid of or renegotiate what he called "unfair trade deals." Democratic candidates had already been teaching this lesson to working-class voters for years, telling them that unfair trade deals had created the rust belt by making it easy for U.S. companies to move their manufacturing facilities to other countries. Trump stole the Democrats' message, while convincing voters that, because he was a businessman and not a politician, he could actually negotiate better deals.
Did Trump keep his promise to these voters? Most working-class voters who I talk with insist that the answer is yes. Barack Obama had promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement when he ran for president in 2008, yet eight years later, NAFTA remained in place. President Trump did renegotiate NAFTA, replacing it with the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement.
Although former Obama administration officials insist that, through the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, they too had changed the terms of NAFTA, TPP represented a lowering of trade barriers, while white working-class voters were seeking protection, particularly from China. Arguments that the TPP was designed to exclude were not accepted, and Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the TPP again looked like a trade promise that was kept.
Although white working-class voters suspect that many countries get the better of the U.S. when it comes to trade, it is China that draws most of their attention. Trump's trade war with China is exactly what these voters were hoping for when they elected Trump. Economists who point out that tariffs are actually a domestic tax and that the trade war is hurting the U.S. economy miss the point: White working-class voters believe that the United States has been in a trade war for over 40 years. The only difference under Trump is that now the United States is fighting back.
This means that Trump's advantage among working-class voters will likely remain and might even grow. Does this mean that Trump will be re-elected? Trump's currently weak poll numbers are likely caused by his failure to maintain adequate support among non-working-class voters.
In the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, there was some evidence that the Republican Party was losing support among wealthier, more educated voters. These voters had historically supported the Republican Party, based on the party's low tax and deregulation positions. Trump's aggressive political style and willingness to ignore traditional political norms is particularly offensive to college educated white women, whose support for Biden, according to polls, is now equal, in terms of percentages, to the support that working-class voters give to Trump.
Another issue is COVID-19. More than 200,000 Americans have died from COVID since March. The disease is most dangerous for older people, and they may be turning against Trump for mishandling the virus. This may even harm him among white working-class voters in the rust belt states, since many of these voters are also over 65 years of age.
Although Biden is leading in most polls of the rust belt states, his lead is within the margin of error for the polls and we know that the polls underestimated Trump's support in 2016. Right now, it looks like a very close race.
(Paul Albert Sracic is a professor and chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Youngstown State University in Ohio, United States. He holds a doctorate in political science from Rutgers University. He has been a Fulbright lecturer at Waseda University, Sophia University and the University of Tokyo.)
