Hillary Clinton: "I won in places that are dynamic, moving forward."

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

She's right, but it's an idiotic and unconstructive point to make regardless. She's free to speak her mind but she's not accomplishing anything when she makes comments like this.

LMAO so Vermont, New Mexico, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Illinois  are more dynamic and economically prosperous than Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina lmao.

You're being deliberately dense here. It's pretty obvious what she meant.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Clinton's claim is dubious to say the least, Trump won 7 of the 10 fastest growing states in terms of population between 2010 and 2017. Furthermore, the 30 states that he carried had 180 million people in them compared to the 140 million in the 20 states that she carried and had a GDP of around $9 trillion vs $8 trillion for the states Clinton won. In essence, Trump not only won a majority of states with a majority of the population and economic output, he also won most of the fastest growing states.

But she won the smart, successful people who are driving that growth. That was the point she is trying to make. (Or maybe trying not to make.)

"Smart," I assume, is to be equated with education, and "successful" is to be equated with income in this sentence?  Here is how the college-educated and highest income brackets voted in those 10 states:

1. TEXAS
College-Educated: 53% GOP, 41% DEM (White college grads went GOP 62%-31%)
Highest Income: 53% GOP, 41% DEM

2. NORTH DAKOTA: N/A ... I'd be shocked if Trump didn't win both groups, though.

3. UTAH
College-Educated: 38% GOP, 29% DEM (White college grads went GOP 39%-26%)
Highest Income: Not available ... again, I'd be shocked if the group didn't break for Trump, though.

4. FLORIDA
College-Educated: 49% GOP, 46% DEM (White college grads went GOP 62%-35%)
Highest Income: 56% GOP, 40% DEM

5. COLORADO
College-Educated: 54% DEM, 38% GOP (White college grads went DEM 53%-39%)
Highest Income: 51% DEM, 41% GOP

6. NEVADA
College-Educated: 49% DEM, 44% GOP (White college grads went GOP 51%-43%)
Highest Income: 58% GOP, 37% DEM

7. WASHINGTON
College-Educated: 57% DEM, 34% GOP (White college grads went DEM 58%-31%)
Highest Income: 59% DEM, 34% GOP

8. ARIZONA
College-Educated: 47% GOP, 46% DEM (White college grads went GOP 50%-44%)
Highest Income: 54% GOP, 40% DEM

9. Idaho: N/A ... I'd be shocked if Trump didn't win both groups, though.

10. SOUTH CAROLINA
College-Educated: 52% GOP, 43% DEM (White college grads went GOP 64%-31%)
Highest Income: 64% GOP, 32% DEM

So, of those 10 fastest states...

- Trump won 7 of them overall.
- Trump won the college-educated vote in 7 out of the 10 (and the White college grad vote, a recent obsession of Forum Dems, in 8 out of the 10).
- Trump won the wealthy voters in 8 out of the 10.

I'm sure Hillary Clinton is nothing short of ecstatic that she made gains among wealthy Republican leaners in solidly blue states, but her statement looks to be objectively false, regardless of how Democrats currently fancy themselves and their coalition ... probably won't sway Tekken Guy, though.  LOL.

Additionally, let's not act like the states that have had the worst growth are monolithic in their Republican support:

1. West Virginia: 68.50% GOP, 26.43% DEM
2. Vermont: 56.68% DEM, 30.27% GOP
3. Illinois: 55.83% DEM, 38.76% GOP
4. Connecticut: 54.57% DEM, 40.93% GOP
5. Mississippi: 57.94% GOP, 40.11% DEM
6. Maine: 47.83% DEM, 44.87% GOP
7. Rhode Island: 54.41% DEM, 38.90% GOP
8. Michigan: 47.50% GOP, 47.27% DEM
9. Pennsylvania: 48.18% GOP, 47.46% DEM
10. Ohio: 51.69% GOP, 43.56% DEM

Exactly half and half.  Republicans won the slowest growing state quite easily, but Democrats won the next three slowest growing pretty easily themselves.  This idea that we are in some type of realignment between the "forgotten" and the "cosmopolitan" is laughable.

I appreciate the fact that you're using data, and I agree that Clinton's statement is pretty coarse and unnuanced, but this analysis is woefully insufficient for analyzing whether or not people of higher education levels voted a certain way. You really should be comparing higher education voting patterns with those of lower education voters in the same state, while also controlling for other factors like race and income. Really this is the type of question that's best answered by a mixed effects model.

edit: also why are people doing geographic grouping at the state level? States aren't monolithic so it's really inadequate to say "X candidate won high-growth areas because they won state Y". If you look at the areas in these high-growth states, they mostly (with some exceptions like ND) are growing in cities and their sububs, which voted overwhelmingly for (and are trending quickly towards) Democratic candidates, including Clinton.

edit 2: I bet if you looked at these highest-growing states, they had shifts to Trump that were much smaller than corresponding slower-growing states. Even in some cases they trended Democratic (e.g., Texas, Arizona, Georgia).

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Obviously, an exit poll is pretty "simplified," and another layer to add is that certain fields predisposed to a certain ideology require different education.  A graduate degree in finance (a field that leans Republican) isn't that important to make a good living, whereas a graduate degree in education (a field that leans Democratic) is damn near required.  Also, as smilo said below, who cares if she made gains in certain wealthy areas if she didn't win them?  Her quote said she won them, not that she got beat there less than other Democrats before her (which, again, who cares at the end of the day?).

Yes, I think you are right that there are different fields and levels of education and those are associated with different cultures and voting patterns. For example, farm operators tend to have college degrees and mostly vote Republican. Maybe education-level isn't the only predictor of how much "growth" a geographic area experiences but if you had to chose a single variable that correlates well with economic dynamism in the 21st education, it's probably education level. There are three areas that are exploding in the economy right now: service (which sadly many people which were in higher paying manufacturing jobs are getting trapped in), health care (which, in certain rural areas, is getting squeezed by the cost of operating facilties in sparser areas, although the field is doing well in other places) and the "knowledge economy". All of the places which we consider to be economically dynamic (even if many people want to express cultural disdain at them) are places where the knowledge economy has attracted young, innovative talent. It's more fine grained to say those places are Austin than Texas, or Madison than Wisconsin. That's what I was trying to get at there.

Also re: why it's worth debating this point... I don't know, this is a place where people come to debate political geography and demographic trends. If Hillary won over a higher proportion of educated and wealthy people, and if Trump is unable to maintain the same level of support among WWC voters (see: PA 18) then that has potentially huge impacts on politics. Sure, what Hillary said may not have been literally true, but there is still a kernel of truth around it that illuminates a really interesting and consequential pattern (if it holds, which so far it looks like it is).