Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election caught many political experts by surprise. Looking to uncover the reasons for this unexpected outcome, social scientists presented several explanations in the election’s aftermath. In this article, I discuss one of these explanations: Trump’s success in winning white working-class voters by an overwhelming margin. I also discuss his success in narrowing the advantage that Democratic presidential candidates typically enjoy with voters in union households. Using data from the 2012 and 2016 National Election Pool (NEP), and the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), the results in this work show that Donald Trump won the support of white working-class voters and was competitive with voters in union households. By expanding previous Republican margins with white working-class voters and by narrowing the Democrats’ typical union household advantage, Trump secured himself victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which ultimately won him the election. Four years later, exit polls indicated that Trump’s support among these groups in the 2020 election was still strong but somewhat diminished.

唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）在2016年总统大选中获胜，令许多政治专家感到惊讶。为了找出导致这一意外结果的原因，社会科学家在选举后提出了几种解释。在本文中，我将讨论以下一种解释：特朗普以压倒性优势赢得了白人工人阶级选民的成功。我还讨论了他在缩小民主党总统候选人通常与工会家庭中的选民享有的优势方面所取得的成功。使用2012年和2016年国家选举池（NEP）以及2016年国会合作选举研究（CCES）的数据，这项工作的结果表明，唐纳德·特朗普赢得了白人工人阶级选民的支持，与工会中的选民竞争家庭。特朗普通过增加白人工人阶级选民的共和党边际利润，并缩小了民主党在工会中的典型家庭优势，在宾夕法尼亚州，密歇根州和威斯康星州赢得了胜利，最终赢得了选举。四年后，出口民意调查显示，特朗普在2020年大选中对这些团体的支持仍然强劲，但有所减少。