 Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump react outside the White House early Wednesday. (Andrew Biraj/Agence France-Presse) By Jeff Guo We knew all along that Donald Trump drew his strength from the white working class. We knew this from the patterns in the primaries. We knew this from the nonstop polling conducted over the past 18 months. We knew this from all of the campaign-trail dispatches showing his anti-trade, anti-elite message thrilling crowds in the heartland. Tuesday proved that this demographic remains a powerful force in U.S. politics — and the president-elect has thoroughly charmed the group. He vastly overperformed 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in the Midwest and the Rust Belt, in many cases flipping counties that had decisively voted for President Obama in 2012. For instance, Obama won Iowa's Howard County, a farming community that is 97 percent white by 21 points in 2012. On Tuesday, Trump took Howard County, which bills itself as "Iowa's Year 'Round Playground," by 19 points. In Luzerne County, Pa., a place just outside of Scranton, Obama won by five points in 2012; Trump took it by 20 points. In Juneau County, Wis., smack in the middle of the state, residents voted for Obama by a seven point margin in the 2012 election. Voters there picked Trump over his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, by 26 points. 
The specks of red — where Trump won counties that previously voted for Obama — dot the Rust Belt. And these counties all had something in common. They were dominated by whites without a bachelor's degree. In the charts below, I have plotted the correlation. Even within the Midwestern states, it was the counties with higher populations of working-class whites who handed Trump his victory. Many of these areas have been going red for decades — but Trump went above and beyond. He performed significantly better than Romney in places dominated by working-class whites. 
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