A narrative seems to be taking hold that Clinton lost only because black voters and Latino voters didn’t turn out to the polls like they did in 2012 or 2008, when they elected Barack Obama.
This is for the most part not true.
Clinton lost primarily because white voters in the Midwest have overwhelmingly turned to the Republican candidate in the two presidential elections since 2008, as shown in that chart above.
Look at 2008. White voters approved of the Democrat in Illinois, sure, but also Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Ohio wasn't so far behind either. Since that election, white voters in the Midwest turned hard against Democrats, in both 2012 and 2016. White Michigan voters went 51% - 47% for Obama in 2008. Clinton just lost them 36% to 57%! A 25-point swing in just eight years!
It is almost the same story in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri. White voters moved 21 percentage points more Republican in Wisconsin, 19 percentage points in Ohio, 23 percentage points in both Indiana and Missouri.
In 2012, Democrats overcame the drop in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin by turning out minority voters, which was enough to keep the Midwest blue for a cycle. But the white vote continued to plummet for Democrats, and it was too much for minority voters to overcome.
And it wasn't turnout at all. The electorate in the Midwest was marginally more diverse than in 2012, and certainly more diverse than in 2004. It was just that white voters are voting for Republicans by much larger margins than they used to.
This is not a national trend however. Sure, the Northeast's white voters plunged more conservative too, but they started from a high Democratic Party preference. But the South's white voters did not grow more conservative with the Trump election, though white voters in the South remain staunchly Republican leaning. And white voters in the West even moved in Hillary Clinton’s direction!
However, the Midwest has seen its white voters grow rapidly conservative since they elected Obama in 2008, and given that four of the six states that Trump flipped were in the Midwest, the growing conservative nature of Midwestern voters was the primary reason that Trump won.
(I’ve got so many more charts at quibblingpotatoes.blogspot.com)