The degree to which Trump’s victory can be ascribed solely to a white backlash can be overstated if we ignore the fact that Trump’s share of the white electorate was nearly identical to Mitt Romney’s four years earlier. That shows how in many ways Clinton lost more than Trump won. Nevertheless, the Trump campaign created a platform for the alt-right to mobilize white anger against feminism, Black Lives Matter, Muslims, and Latinos. His victory emboldened explicit and implicit white supremacy, energizing racism beyond numbers at the polls.
