By James Kwak
[Updated to add another headline leading with “white voters.”]
Two days later, some of the world’s leading newspapers—or their headline-writers, at least—are saying it was all or largely about race:
The respective roles of race and class in this year’s election are a highly contentious issue. I’d like to add to that contentiousness as little as possible while pointing out that this race-based framing isn’t really supported by exit poll data. I want to get ahead of the vitriol by stipulating that the exit polls don’t provide conclusive evidence for either side.
OK, here’s the data:
Those are vote shares in the presidential election by racial or ethnic group. The numbers at the right show you the shift from the previous election.* In this case, the Democratic-Republican gap among white voters shifted by 8 points toward the Republican. That’s evidence that the election was about white voters, right?
Except those are the 2012 exit polls. The 8-point shift is relative to the 2008 exit polls.
The Baseline Scenario 