Henry Olsen writes for The Atlantic:
Donald Trump’s persistent lead in the GOP presidential-preference polls has been a great source of confusion for the chattering classes. But Trump is actually just the latest manifestation of a more global trend: Data suggests the appeal of anti-immigrant policies to working-class voters is much deeper than most American elites want to believe. And because Trump draws the bulk of his support from less-educated, working- and middle-class voters, he may be positioned to do even better still—for now. Polling data from Europe shows that parties with similar voter profiles to Trump’s consistently do better in both online polls and at the ballot box than in live-interview polling. And currently Trump is far ahead online.
Why does this happen? It starts with working-class voters across developed countries being under severe economic pressure because of competition with foreigners at home (immigration) and abroad (EU/trade). They respond to people and parties who tell them this state of affairs isn’t inevitable, and they are often impervious to cries of racism. Their lives are just plain harder than they used to be and working-class voters don’t see elites doing much—or wanting to do much—to make them better. Donald Trump is simply the American version of Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, and many other European leaders of working-class, anti-immigrant parties who profit from stoking the flames of resentment because there is so much kindling available to light.
So what explains the chasm between these particular candidates’ online versus live polling data? It turns out that a nontrivial share of these same working-class, anti-immigrant voters won’t tell a live person who they support but will share their true feelings when their support is secret—like on Election Day. This is no surprise: Support for immigration and globalization are perhaps the only political sentiments that unite elites from both business and the academy, from right and left. Openly supporting an anti-immigration candidate can risk social opprobrium, ridicule, or worse. In other words, for every group of vocal Trump supporters, there are probably a lot more who just don’t advertise it.
