Five Decisive States: Examining How and Why Donald Trump Won the 2016 Election

ABSTRACT

The election of Donald Trump to the U.S. Presidency in 2016 is attributable to voting shifts in a small number of states between the 2008 and 2012 elections and the 2016 election. There were six states that voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections and then for Donald Trump in 2016. In one state, Florida, voting shifts among the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections were small. However, in the other five states, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, the voting shift was large, and it is the shifts in these states that largely account for Trump’s Electoral College win. This article documents concentration of voting shifts in these and nearby states. These states share certain characteristics in common, including specialization in manufacturing, slow population growth, a common pattern with regards to Hispanic population change, and higher-than-average percentages of non-college-educated whites. In all of these states, disproportionate numbers of people voted twice for Obama and then for Trump. These voters, though a small percentage of the total electorate even in these states, were key to the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. This article examines how the aforementioned characteristics of these states contributed to the decisive shift by these voters and led to Trump’s decisive victories in these five states.

KEYWORDS:

• Political sociology
• population
• sociology of immigration

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Alexander Smith for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article, and to Michael Lacy and Chris Maloney for assistance when problems occurred with the automated paper submission system.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John E. Farley

John E. Farley is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He is a past president of the Midwest Sociological Society and is the co-author (with Michael J. Flota) of Sociology, - 7^th edition (Routledge, 2018) and the author of Majority-Minority Relations, 6^th edition (Prentice Hall, 2010).