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There is a persistent trope in mainstream media analysis of Donald Trump supporters that distorts reality, legitimises the illegitimate Trump and hides the hateful core of the MAGA movement.
By carefully tiptoeing past the MAGA racist and sexist core, such coverage is inherently racist and sexist because it implies that White, male voters matter, and non-White, female voters do not.
This trope was established in 2016 in response to Trump’s narrow election victory and has been used ever since. It proposes that Trump voters are working-class people, usually without college degrees, usually men, who support Trump because he recognises that they’ve been left behind by globalisation and therefore he is their champion.
An example of this trope is this recent analysis of Trump’s Republican Convention speech by the ABC’s Leigh Sales. Sales says Trump’s messages of “us” versus “them” land well with his base because:
For many Americans, life in the past couple of decades has become harder. Politicians fudged the costs of free trade when they argued it would be universally beneficial. Many jobs and industries disappeared. Inflation means that groceries, petrol and other staples cost more than ever. Credit card defaults and bankruptcies are rising. Interest rates are comparatively high and it’s harder to sell property and secure loans. Deaths of despair (suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction) have grown.
The implication in this myth is that Trump voters are suffering from a changing economy and related social and economic ills, and therefore are justified, indeed rational, in supporting Trump. The secondary inference is that Democrats have failed to serve these people’s interests so deserve to lose this important, powerful voting bloc’s support.
What this story ignores is that it is not all working-class people who support Trump — it is White working-class people, particularly White men. This reality is born out in the latest Times/Siena Poll from 8 October. This poll finds 49% likely to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and 46% for Trump. Breaking this down to racial and gender differences, 52% of White people plan to vote for Trump and 63% of non-White people for Harris. There is similarly a divide in gender with 56% of women likely to vote for Harris and 52% of men supporting Trump.
When you add college or non-college-educated into the equation, it becomes clearer that Trump’s strongest cohort of voters is White, male, non-college-educated voters. Amongst White college-educated voters, 60% support Harris, non-White college-educated voters are 65% for Harris and non-White, non-college-educated are 62% for Harris. Yet, White, non-college-educated voters are 63% for Trump.
A simplistic analysis of these voting intentions would suggest Sales and others perpetuating the Trump-working-class-hero trope are correct. However, this simplistic narrative belies a fundamental truth. If Trump is such a hero of the working class, non-college-educated community who have been apparently left behind by globalisation and free trade, why is it that non-college-educated people who are not White still overwhelmingly support the Democrats?
By completely leaving this large cohort of voters out of the analysis, analysts like Sales are implying that these voters do not matter, are ignoring their reasons for voting for Democrats, and are pretending that White, non-college-educated voters support Trump for reasons other than their true reason — an aggrieved entitlement that their White and male privilege is threatened by growing diversity.
The truth is that Trump has no interest in serving the economic interests of working-class people, whether White or non-White. Non-White, working-class people recognise this in their overwhelming support for Democrats. They can see that Trump is only interested in giving tax breaks to his billionaire mates and weaponises his base’s racism in order to gain the power to do that.
The reality is that Trump has worked to destroy whatever policy he can that aims to improve equality for working-class people, whether it be destroying access to healthcare and education, a safer environment, undermining workers’ rights and wages, and threatening the health of American democracy.
In contrast, the Democrats exist to serve the interests of those seeking greater equality — whether that be economic, industrial, gendered, racial or other intersectional inequities. This is the reality that is hidden by pronouncements that seek to justify the largely White MAGA movement’s cultish support of Trump.
White, non-college-educated and significantly male support for Trump has nothing to do with these people protecting their economic interests; if they cared about economic inequality, they would compare Republican and Democrat policies and would plainly see the Republicans have no intention of representing their interests.
The MAGA movement supports Trump because he promises to ban immigration, build a wall with Mexico, oppose movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, stop women from having abortions and underdo the civilised progression of American society towards a country where people – no matter the colour of their skin or their gender – have equality.
Trump supporters oppose equality because, among them, White men like their privilege and White women like to feel above non-White people. It makes them feel powerful. They determinedly hold onto this power because they feel lesser without it. By failing to point this out, commentators and analysts like Sales are failing to talk about the racism and sexism at the core of the MAGA movement.
In doing so, voting blocs of non-White voters, particularly non-White female voters, are ignored, disappeared and treated as unimportant to the future of American society. That misrepresentation is, in itself, a reflection of White, male privilege and the marginalisation of everyone else.
Dr Victoria Fielding is an Independent Australia columnist. You can follow her on Threads or Bluesky.
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