With Trump racking up five more wins tonight, he told supporters and media tonight this was a “diverse victory.” He was referring to the variety of primary states that supported him tonight. However, when it comes to the more common uses of the term diversity — race, religion, class, and national origin — ideological divides between those groups are deepening. Americans in regions where employment has been disrupted by globalization are disproportionately likely to be Trump supporters. An academic study called “Importing Political Polarization?” looked at the impact of China trade on the electorate, and found a specific racial correlation as well. As an article on the findings in The New York Times put it, “While whites hit hard by trade tend to move right, nonwhite voters move left, eroding support for moderates in both parties.”
The 2016 American electorate is the most racially diverse ever, and it may also be the most ideologically divided. Two-thirds of Republican voters support Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States. As we noted earlier on the liveblog, new voter registrations among Latino Americans in California have doubled, probably in response to Trump’s persistent calls for a border wall and his statement that Mexicans are rapists.
Some people have argued that we have two Americas — sometimes meaning rich and poor, others black and white. But perhaps we have a politically fractured America, where questions of identity and self-interest will bring voters into conflict with each other’s goals and ideals throughout the campaign season and beyond.
