Not quite sure which part you are referring to data and research backing up, but if it's that people tend to vote their wallets, it's the opposite - at least not in the way people think of it. For instance, when
pollsters asked people about policies disconnected from the politician people overwhelmingly supported Harris' policies over Trump's across all issues and Harris tied or bested him specifically on the economy as well. Given people voting their interested based on what the candidate is actually going to do in office, Harris should win in a landslide. She didn't because that's not fundamentally how people vote.
To be fair, in California and LA in particular our prices were already high relative to the nation and thus we didn't suffer the same kinds of price hikes like everyone else did. Of course a major reason for said price hikes nationally was avian flu amongst the bird population shortly after a pandemic amongst the human one, so if we're blaming parties or people for pandemics ... hmmm ... that doesn't really track suddenly. That's why he brings up prices disconnected from anything else. (Oh and record profits from major food processors and grocery stores who backed the Trump campaign, not Harris ... weird!)
The reality is presidents have run on worse economies and won handily - Reagan's "Morning in America" economy was worse in every conceivable respect with much higher poverty, much higher unemployment, and yes much higher inflation with much greater price increases and yet he ran on the strength of the economy and won by a huge margin in 1984. Hell it's why 538's model on the economy, fundamentals gave Harris an edge because these numbers have historically been really good ones to run on.
I'll be shocked if they didn't support Harris. As the above points to, conservatives like Herdfan have never cared about those who are struggling. Ever. And in fact those who are actually struggling have tended to break towards the Democrats by large margins including 2016 and 2020 and this will almost certainly be true in 2024 as well. Not all of them of course, but the majority of them and the worse off they are the larger the break towards the Democrats. And the ultra-left voting for Stein or staying home ... almost certainly didn't do so in enough numbers to matter. This is both a good and bad thing.
The education gap is not 1-1 with the economic gap. If you look at who Trump improved with most in 2024, it was men - primarily those without college degrees and white or consider themselves white. This last point is important as well, people have been wondering how Trump convinced Latino men to vote for him in greater numbers - a Latino pollster broke it down (I'll see if i can dig up the link). Basically the men pollsters group as Latino that Trump did the best with are evangelical Latinos and those that don't consider being Latino as part of their identity - i.e. you'll notice on a lot of forms that ask about race/ethnicity sometimes it isn't just that they ask if you are Hispanic, but non-white Hispanic. Pollsters don't always distinguish.
Trump didn't run on the economy, not really. Trump ran on grievance. Grievance is not, am I doing worse today than I was 4 years ago?, but am I mad about others doing better and my own perceived lack of standing or the threat to that standing socially and politically? This gets to what
@Chew Toy McCoy posted above in the newsletter. This has been true since 2008 when a black man won the office of the President for the first time and created the Tea Party. The Tea Party was the forerunner of the Trump campaign. This allows people to say on a poll that the "Economy" is why they vote, but missing the nuance of what exactly that means. The economy isn't working for them ... relative to the groups they don't like seeing do well.
Again, living with the comfortable lies that its just tweaking this policy or this approach or its about pocketbooks so nonsensical. It ignores the deep divisions in race, ethnicity, gender, and rural/city cultural divide that supercharges the right wing and have been with us for a long time as a country. Something we desperately don't want to acknowledge, but we're going to have to if we're going to keep making improvements.
We have to get rid of the lies "it can't happen here" and "this isn't who we are". Yes it can, it just did, and yes we are.
