Michael Tesler, associate professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine [writes]: Trump clearly did not create these patterns. But he effectively exploited them. His explicit appeals to racial resentment and white identity should have made it even clearer where the two parties stood on racial issues. That partisan clarity over race seems to have accelerated the Obama-era trend of diminished Democratic support from racially resentful whites.

For the full story, please visit https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/21/how-racially-resentful-working-class-whites-fled-the-democratic-party-before-donald-trump/.