Who Were the “Shy Trump Voters”?

The biggest surprise for the mainstream media and the conventional pollsters was that there were a significant number of “shy Trump voters.” Who were these voters? One segment was non-white voters, especially Hispanics but also blacks. Trump received the largest GOP share of the non-white vote in 60 years. Liberals are spinning furiously to explain this away. More on this later on.

The other group of shy Trump voters appear to have been . . . suburban college educated women—the group the mainstream media claimed Trump had permanently alienated. Exit polls from both Public Opinion Strategies and the Edison Poll finds that Trump got half or more of this group. This shift helps explain why Republicans outperformed especially in House races. Even the GOP did not pick up on this.

The National Journal‘s Josh Kraushaar has a long Twitter thread about this surprise, and also discusses the issue in an article, “Why Pollsters Missed the Election Result So Badly.” Excerpt:

The House results give credence to an alternative view, outlined in a compelling article by political science professor Eric Kaufmann, arguing that “political correctness has left a cadre of white college graduates unwilling to reveal their voting intentions.” In the piece, he offers evidence that there is a shy Trump vote coming not from white working-class MAGA supporters but rather from affluent Republican-leaning voters in the suburbs afraid to share their views on politics and hot-button cultural issues in public.

“Political correctness refers to the policing of speech so that it conforms to cultural taboos, especially the ones concerning race, gender and sexuality. Those who wield taboos gain rhetorical power, encouraging them to stretch the meaning of concepts such as racism to encompass non-racist actions such as voting for Donald Trump,” Kaufmann writes.

Beyond this, Kraushaar cites additional polling data showing that a lot of these swingy suburban women voters don’t like riots, and don’t like political correctness. “Democrats who choose to ignore these uncomfortable political realities will do so at their own political peril.” Nah: I’m sure liberals will keep firing dissident liberals like pollster David Shor who tried to warn Democrats about the perils of progressivism.

Chaser: Some excerpt from the exit polls interviews:

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