TL;DR: Please answer these five questions.

Feedback requested

I started this piece as a personal project months ago, and have been working on it during nights and weekends with a budget of $0. As I dug into the question of who actually got Trump elected, it kept getting larger: “But what about religion effects? Military service?” You have seen the charts and story that made the most sense to me, with dead ends left out.

This work is obviously not done; there are more states to cover, and we haven’t really touched “But why did noncollege whites vote like this?” However, after over half a year of work, I need to draw the line somewhere to start getting feedback from real people. My test readers have said encouraging things, but what do you think?

Please give me feedback! It helps me improve and produce better work. I have a small Google form if you’d be kind enough to tell me what you think.

The next presidential election is coming, and we don’t have much time to waste. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. If this has been a helpful essay for you, please share it and/or let me know!

Thank yous

Special thanks to my friends, family, and especially the test readers and collaborators that have sustained this project for almost a year. I would be lost without you.

• Mike
• Yong
• Pedro
• Bianka
• Swetha
• Erica
• Logan
• Molly
• Charlie
• Kit
• Owen
• Brandon
• Abby
• Meghan
• Miguel
• Jared
• Christopher
• and Ella

A final toy

Want to see how different specific states look in our original data cube? Try this:

I find the Michigan + Ohio line most striking personally, but some states like Tennessee can be surprising. Click a series to show/hide it, doubleclick to hide everything else.