Writing at Quillette, Musa Al-Gharbi corrects some common misconceptions:

Following Election 2016’s “shocking” finale, many in academic and journalistic circles have seemed less interested in dispassionately analyzing why Trump won than finding excuses for why Hillary lost.

As far as excuses go, sexism or misogyny (like racism, “foreign meddling,” or “fake news”) is pretty effective: it isn’t that Clinton was a non-charismatic candidate with a lot of baggage and a boring platform who ran a bad campaign — instead, those who didn’t vote for Hillary were driven by irrational and immoral impulses, preventing them from embracing the only ‘legitimate’ candidate in this race. …

Yet there are many reasons to be skeptical of this consensus position. …

Clinton’s margin among women (relative to Trump), while solid, was not historic. According to New York Times exit polls, Bill Clinton won women by a bigger margin in 1996, as did Obama in 2008. Al Gore won women by about the same margin as Hillary in 2000. Nor was Trump’s margin among men unprecedented for Republicans: Nixon (’72), Reagan (’80, ’84) and George H.W. Bush (’88) all won the male vote by a larger margin than Trump. …

Placed in historical context, Trump’s performance among white women was middling at best for a Republican candidate. …

Clinton ultimately lost largely because of her poor performance with women. Had Hillary won the same shares as Obama, Gore, or even her husband with this constituency, or if she had equivalent (or especially increased) rates of female turnout, she almost certainly would be president today. …

[S]imilar peculiarities hold in the burgeoning literature on the role of race and racism in the 2016 election.

For instance, Trump’s victory is often described as a “whitelash” by voters eager to erase the legacy of America’s first black president. However, this narrative fails to take account of basic election data. For instance, the most decisive votes for the 2016 race came from people who had supported Barack Obama in 2012 (and often 2008 as well) but then switched to Trump. If these were people horrified by a black commander-in-chief, it is not clear why they would have voted to give him another four years to pursue his agenda (let alone have voted for him in 2008).

If the election were a referendum on Obama, as a politician or a symbol, one would expect his popularity to have declined over the course of the race — especially given how it ultimately turned out. Instead, Obama grew more popular throughout 2016, even as favorability for Trump and Hillary tanked. Two years into the Trump administration, Barack’s ratings continue to climb, with 66% of Americans offering a favorable opinion of him. …

More damning: Trump actually won a smaller share of the white vote than Mitt Romney. He was nonetheless able to win because he won more Hispanics and Asians than his predecessors, and more black votes than any Republican since 2004. …

Nonetheless, scholars bend over backwards trying to find ways to “prove” that Trump voters were especially racist or sexist. Such narratives may be edifying for those who count themselves among the “resistance” — however, the real-world costs of politicized research likely outweigh these emotional benefits. …

For those of us who would like to avoid another four years of Trump rather than circulate comforting stories to explain away his continued victories, it may be necessary to fundamentally rethink how we study the President and his supporters.

Read the whole thing. It’s fascinating.