Demographics: Pew’s landmark study from a year ago that looked at the changing composition of the middle class over the decades becomes an interesting lens through which we can look at the 2016 presidential election. Pew’s definition of middle class was “between two-thirds of and twice the national median size-adjusted household income,” and, despite the conventional wisdom that declines in the manufacturing sector were wreaking havoc in one-time manufacturing-centered communities, the metro areas with the largest percentage of residents still in the middle class leaned heavily toward those mid-sized Rust Belt cities. (For instance, the top three percentage-wise, Wausau, Janesville, and Sheboygan, were all in Wisconsin.)
So now, Pew has matched up the list of metro areas by middle class percentage with the 2016 election results, and, as you probably anticipated given the “Rust Belt" descriptor, the places with the largest “middle class” communities are some of the ones that swung the hardest in the GOP direction. The question remains, though, whether they swung precisely because of their middle-classness, or because of other variables (those communities’ heavy whiteness, or perhaps just tactical factors like the Clinton campaign’s lack of investment in the upper Midwest for most of the campaign). Conversely, Hillary Clinton held ground or even gained in many metro areas that are disproportionately lower-class (which tend to be smaller Sun Belt cities with a large Hispanic population) or upper-class (which includes some of the largest cities).
Of the 57 predominantly middle class metros that Pew breaks out, Donald Trump defended all 27 of the ones won by the GOP in 2008, but Clinton lost 18 of the 30 that the Dems won in 2008. The ones listed as experiencing the biggest swing to the GOP in the 2008-16 period are Johnstown, PA; Muskegon, MI; Michigan City, IN; Wausau, WI; and Monroe, MI.