2 weeks Ago
Donald Trump defied the polls and pundits and received both a majority of the popular vote and of the electoral college. His margin of 3.4 percentage points (thus far) was well beyond anything that anyone projected and it is the first time a Republican candidate for president received a majority of popular votes since 2004.
It is probably safe to say that even his own pollsters did not see this tornado coming, otherwise the president-elect's team would not have issued statements earlier in the day attacking voting irregularities and election tampering. Certainly not if you are expecting to win. Published polls and the television network-sponsored exit polls both revealed some new truths that help explain what really happened and must be studied by winners and losers, academics and both political strategists and junkies.
For starters, Trump has built on his coalition of angry and disaffected voters. The Maga movement ("Make America great again") was once the exclusive club of angry white voters, conservatives who wanted to win, people filled with status anxiety – the fear of losing their middle-class status – and folks deeply concerned about the loss of traditional values like hard work, the nuclear family, frequent church attendance, marriage of only men and women, and heterosexuality. They also feared that the day had arrived when America lost its standing in the world.
To be sure, the doors to this movement were not-so-subtly opened to white nationalists and supremacists. Their standard bearer was seen only as an..
. Guardian staff reporter.
