The Trump surprise: The reasons for the unlikely victory

Donald Trump’s victory in the United States presidential election on November 8, 2016 was one of the most surprising events in the history of US presidential elections. Even while Hillary Clinton won the electoral vote with a margin of almost three million votes, Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote. His success is due to his victory in almost all “swing states,” even though the margin was very narrow in several key states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin), and especially in the main deindustrialized states of the Rust Belt (Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania). He succeeded in mobilizing traditional Republican voters: male, aged over 45, high income, protestant, and rural. He also succeeded in attracting working-class voters, the famous non-college whites, through his protectionist and anti-immigration stance. At the same time, Hillary Clinton failed to significantly mobilize traditional Democrat voters. Two main reasons have been put forward to explain Donald Trump’s surprising victory at the 2016 presidential election: blue-collar workers’ feeling of socioeconomic insecurity and their feeling of cultural insecurity. In fact, these two different insecurities are closely linked.