Hillary Clinton lost the Midwest election. Donald Trump won the 50 electoral votes in the Midwest that went to Barack Obama in 2012—in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio—plus 20 more in Pennsylvania, where two-thirds of voters outside of metropolitan Philadelphia are Midwesterners in culture and concerns. Trump could have lost Florida and still won.
In the popular vote, Clinton approached Obama’s 2012 performance in the South and the not-yet-fully-counted West, and her 4 percent drop in the Northeast did not cost her any electoral votes. But in the Midwest and Pennsylvania, the Democrats’ share of the presidential vote fell from 54 percent in 2008 and 51 percent in 2012 to 45 percent in 2016.
Those declines occurred mostly outside the huge cities of the Midwest, although black turnout fell notably in Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee. College towns saw their typical lopsided majorities—68 percent to 26 percent in the Madison, Wisconsin, metro area, for example.
And in the Midwestern states — counties outside metropolitan areas with more than a million people — the shift away from Clinton resembled the shift by white Southerners away from the Democrats in previous decades.
Iowa, the largest state without a metropolitan area of more than 1 million people, was typical: 54 percent Democratic in 2008, 52 percent in 2012, and 41 percent in 2016. Similar declines occurred in Wisconsin outside Milwaukee and Madison (from 54 percent to 50 percent to 41 percent), Michigan outside Detroit and Grand Rapids (from 55 percent to 52 percent to 41 percent), Ohio outside Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati (from 48 percent to 47 percent to 35 percent), and Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (from 48 percent to 44 percent to 36 percent).
Similar out-of-state declines weren’t enough to propel Minnesota past Trump, and were swamped in Illinois by the Chicago metropolitan area. But they were enough to swing the Midwest’s electoral votes from 80-38 Democrats in 2012 to 88-30 Republicans this year.
These out-of-state areas aren’t growing demographically, but they aren’t petite either. They cast 100 percent of the vote in Iowa, 61 percent in Wisconsin, 47 percent in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and 44 percent in Ohio.
What caused Clinton to be abandoned in areas that Democrats could previously reach?
Outside the state, the Midwest is full of whites without college degrees—62 percent in Iowa, for example. Nationally, that demographic has gone from a 25 percent advantage for Mitt Romney in 2012 to a 39 percent advantage for Trump this year. In the Midwest, the shift has been even more pronounced.
Such voters were left out by the ponderous economic growth of the Obama era, and many feel their jobs have been lost to trade deals, and their wages have been squeezed by low-skilled immigrants in other parts of the country. Trump has emphasized these issues, and previous Republicans have not. This is part of it.
Then there’s the condescension of Clinton and her campaign, which is headquartered in trendy Brooklyn, N.Y. “Religious beliefs,” Clinton said in 2015, “have to be changed.” She told a Manhattan audience that half of Trump’s supporters were “unredeemable” — “deplorable,” characterized by “hidden racism.”
People from out of state who voted for Obama — or whose neighbors or friends at church did — probably weren’t interested in such statements. Decent people don’t like being called racists and told their religion needs to be changed (by the government?).
Clinton’s campaign strategy to win over people outside of Brooklyn and Manhattan was to fly West Wing actors to Ohio and have a concert with Beyonce and Lady Gaga in Philadelphia. That’s enough!
Another factor that worked against Clinton in the Midwestern states was honesty.
People in the Midwest value honesty. They respond to public officials who break the law, flout regulations, repeatedly lie and try to cover it up, like Clinton did with her secret email servers.
In the 1970s, the Midwest, far from the state, had broken against the Republicans over Watergate. Democratic victories in two special elections for the House of Representatives in Michigan in 1974 signaled voter dissatisfaction with Richard Nixon, and Democrats swept the fall elections.
Dozens of Democratic politicians launched long, successful careers out of state during the Watergate era.
Liberal pundits Jonathan Alter and EJ Dionne have called Clinton’s email lawbreaking and lies non-scandals. They may not have been scandals in Chicago and Massachusetts, where they grew up, but they were in the distant Midwest.
Clues to Clinton’s general election weakness came in the Democratic primaries, when she lost in Wisconsin and Michigan and narrowly tied in Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Perhaps the voters in those states were not voting for Bernie Sanders’ socialism, but against Clinton’s “damn emails.”
Clinton’s team now claims it was defeated by the intervention of FBI Director James Comey. But Comey would not have been heard if Clinton had not broken the law. He is a loser in an out-of-state Midwest vote — and a loser in an American election.
