The Closing of the Republican Mind<br />Among voters for Clinton, 27 percent lived in their hometown<br />and 43 percent lived 2 hours or more away from their hometown; among Trump supporters, 36 percent lived in their hometown and 37 percent lived 2 or more hours away.<br />One of the more interesting findings that came out of the 2016 election in the United States — a finding<br />that reinforces Goodhart’s thesis — is that voters who never left, or remain close to, their hometowns tended to vote for Trump, while those who moved away were inclined to support Hillary Clinton.<br />And thus when we observe the behavior of those who live in distressed areas, we are not observing the effect of economic decline on the working class, we are observing a highly selected group of people who faced economic adversity<br />and choose to stay at home and accept it when others sought and found opportunity elsewhere.<br />In a survey that was conducted from Aug. 23 to Sept. 2, 2016 — a month after Trump accepted his party’s nomination — Republicans’ positive assessment of colleges<br />and universities fell to 43 percent, while negative assessments rose to 45 percent.<br />Between 2010 and 2017, the Pew Research Center asked voters whether colleges<br />and universities have a positive or negative effect “on the way things are going in the country.”<br />From 2010 to 2015, solid majorities of Republicans and Democrats agreed that institutions of higher learning had a positive effect on America.<br />Somewhere voters, in Goodhart’s description, are<br />more rooted and have “ascribed” identities — Scottish farmer, working class Geordie, Cornish housewife — based on group belonging<br />and particular places, which is why they find rapid change more unsettling.
