Trump's coalition is rooted in anxiety
Trump got his political start in the "birther" movement
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5998813/YouGov%20Birther%202-2-01.png)
Donald Trump's rise in the Republican party was precipitated by his embrace of the conspiracy theory that President Obama wasn't actually born in the US — something that a large share of Republicans still believe years after Obama released his original birth certificate and mocked Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.
In the campaign, Trump has turned similar attacks on rival Ted Cruz, arguing that his birth in Canada makes him ineligible to be president.
Image credit: YouGov
Blue-collar, less-educated Republicans are most likely to support Trump
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5988625/MCI_160103_v16r1_Demographics_2016-02-02%20(1).png)
The more educated Republicans are, the less likely they are to vote for Donald Trump. That's in line with the coalition Trump appeals to: white, blue-collar voters who are working class and middle class. In Iowa, Trump bested Cruz among voters with less than a high school education.
That matches up closely with a group that the Pew Research Center, in its most recent political typology, called "steadfast conservatives." These people typically have a high school education or less. They're much more likely than others to say that the US has done enough to achieve racial equality, and that immigrants are a burden on the country.
Image credit: Morning Consult
Trump's supporters feel threatened by immigration
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5988517/CVqIxaAU4AAMFmS.jpg)
The people who are most concerned about immigration are the ones to whom Trump holds most appeal.
You can see this split in attitudes about policy: A Pew Research Center survey in October 2015 found, "Among GOP voters who say they would be more likely to support a candidate who wants to deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, 34 percent support Trump; among those who would be less likely to vote for such a candidate, Trump draws just 13 percent."
But on immigration, attitudes about policy are often buttressed by attitudes about culture. And Trump voters are simply a lot more likely than other Republicans to, say, be bothered when they're around people who don't speak English.
Image credit: Public Religion Research Institute
Trump is playing identity politics with white people
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6010061/trump_white_people_discrimination.0.jpg)
Since the birth of the "Southern strategy" — appealing to racist white voters in the South to defect from the Democratic Party — the Republican Party has appealed much more to white voters than to nonwhite voters. But at least in recent years, that strategy hasn't relied on outright appeals to white racial identity so much as a policy platform that privileges their concerns.
Trump's supporters are making this subtext into text. Trump is practicing white identity politics — and his supporters are more likely than other candidates' to think that discrimination against white people is a major problem in American society.
Trump supporters don't care about experience
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5988577/Screen%20Shot%202016-02-01%20at%206.48.27%20PM.png)
Republican primaries usually go to the "next in line" — the candidate who came in second the last time around and has, by definition, quite a lot of political experience. This held true with John McCain (second in 2000, nominated in 2008) and Mitt Romney (second in 2008, nominated in 2012).
This year, Trump is booming despite no experience in politics whatsoever. And he's leading Republican voters who think experience is less important than they previously thought. Before Trump entered the race, Republicans weighed "experience and a proven record" as more important than "new ideas and a different approach." Now those numbers have flipped.
Image credit: Pew Research Center
Trump feeds on racial anxiety, but he didn't create it
Republicans have become much more anti-immigration since 2010
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5988519/6-3-2015-3-55-09-PM.png)
Trump's campaign has been about reclaiming America for Americans, away from other people. When he launched his campaign, the "other people" were Latino (and particularly Mexican) immigrants — rapists, murderers, and other bad people who were being deliberately sent by the Mexican government to undermine America.
To many Americans, this was unforgivably offensive rhetoric. But it resonated with the large number of Americans who worry that immigration poses a threat to American values. Believing that immigrants strengthen the US is the majority opinion, and it's grown more popular among Democrats and independents over the last decade.
But it's grown less popular among Republicans — and Republican support for immigrant strength fell 15 percent between 2014 and 2015. When Donald Trump got into the race, the Republican Party was the party of concern that immigrants make America weaker.
Image credit: Pew Research Center
Before Trump, Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot struck a similar tone
The spectacle of Donald Trump, mogul and reality television star, running for the presidency feels unprecedented in American presidential politics. But the electorate Trump is appealing to, and the way he's doing it, is nothing new. In 1992, populist Pat Buchanan challenged George H.W. Bush for the presidency. Buchanan, unlike Trump, focused his criticism on social issues, such as abortion and LGBTQ rights, alongside similar rhetoric on trade and immigration.
Both men ran on a brash, straight-talking persona. Both performed particularly well among Northeastern Republicans and men.
Buchanan ran again in 1996 with even more success. "All the peasants are coming with pitchforks," he said of his campaign — a line that might describe Trump supporters as well.
Trump threw out the playbook for a presidential campaign
Trump's support is broad — but will it last?
Trump supporters are all over the country
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6011107/Screen_Shot_2016-02-08_at_3.37.29_PM.0.png)
Trump's support is also geographically diverse. But he's particularly strong in Appalachia, Pennsylvania, and parts of the South, and weaker in the Midwest. This suggests that Trump's Iowa loss isn't particularly surprising — Iowa isn't Trump territory.
The New York Times, using a different analysis, found that Trump's support tends to correlate with the regions where people are most likely to search for racially charged terms, and where white voters are abandoning the Democratic Party.
Polls actually understate how much support Trump has
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5988757/Screen%20Shot%202016-02-01%20at%208.27.48%20PM.png)
A CNN/ORC poll from January found that 41 percent of Republicans support Donald Trump. That sounds like a high share of support, until you realize that even more Republicans think he'd be the best at handling top national concerns.
The poll found 60 percent of Republicans thought Trump would do the best job on the economy. Fifty-five percent thought he'd be the best to handle illegal immigration. When an earlier poll asked about ISIS (the January poll didn't), 47 percent said Trump would be best at that, too. And 63 percent thought he had the best chance of winning the general election.
This means Trump's support isn't mysteriously high — as Ezra Klein wrote in December, it's mysteriously low. There are people out there who think Trump would be the best person to handle important issues, or that he's the GOP's best hope to win the nomination, yet still aren't willing to vote for him.
Trump lost among voters who made up their minds at the last minute
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6010095/rubio_late_deciders.0.png)
Much was made before the Iowa caucuses of Trump supporters' certainty that he was their guy: 70 percent said they'd made up their minds. But Trump didn't succeed in winning over those who changed their minds at the last minute. The voters who made up their mind a month to a week before the caucuses chose Cruz. Those who made up their mind later, in the final days, picked Rubio.
Maybe Trump has gotten better at closing the deal: He's now learned the importance of a ground game to get voters to the polls. And maybe Rubio's disastrous debate performance will hurt him in New Hampshire. But the trend in Iowa in the days before the vote was against Trump.
Trump skeptics say he has a ceiling of support. But the ceiling is going up.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6010159/trump_has_no_ceiling.0.jpg)
A popular argument by the New York Times's Ross Douthat, among others, is that Trump's support has a "ceiling." The people who want to vote for him really love him, but there are many other Republicans who never would. If Trump has a ceiling, though, the ceiling is going up. Before he declared his candidacy in 2015, the majority of Republican voters said they'd never support him. Now a majority say they could.