Readers respond to an editorial commenting on the Republicans’ rout in the US midterm elections
Your editorial on the US midterms (4 November) notes that culture war attacks, bigotry and smears failed this time. It is worth asking why they worked before. For a decade we have argued over whether Donald Trump’s support was about economics or culture. My research, combining a survey of 6,600 US residents with social mobility data, suggests the question was badly posed. Trump’s 2016 gains over Mitt Romney’s in 2012 were largest in counties where children born poor are least likely to rise, and people there describe success as luck and connections rather than effort.
The grievance was economic. The language it found was cultural. Factory jobs lost to China became Beijing; the end of the male family wage became feminism; the decline of coal towns became climate politics. Trump’s gift was to translate economic pain into identity, which is how his coalition absorbed tariffs, welfare cuts and tax cuts for the rich.