With brawls breaking out at campaign rallies, voter anger is a major and surprising factor in this year’s presidential campaign.
Republican Donald Trump, widely written off when he declared his candidacy last summer, has become his party’s front-runner by harnessing the rage of older, less-educated Americans who feel they’re falling hopelessly behind. Democrat Bernie Sanders, once considered a pipsqueak next to Hillary Clinton, now rouses multitudes with his rants against crony capitalism. There’s a common theme: Even though unemployment is low and employers are creating more than 200,000 new jobs per month, a large part of America isn’t participating in the recovery and finds prosperity further and further out of reach.
The surprising role of free trade as a campaign bogeyman reveals the problem: Many Americans feel too many good jobs have migrated overseas, with nothing coming back in return. Some economists, typically proponents of free trade, are beginning to question the merits of offshoring jobs to lower-cost countries like China and Mexico. Trade is supposed to make economies more efficient and raise living standards for most people, but for a decade or more the expected results haven’t been materializing.
With trade and prosperity prominent in the campaign, Yahoo Finance analyzed economic data for each state during the last 10 years to determine which states seem to be feeling the most pain from globalization and the movement of jobs overseas. For each state, we calculated the change in manufacturing employment, total employment and income during the last 10 years. Then we ranked the states on their overall economic performance. (Full methodology is at the end of this story.) These 10 states are hurting the most:
[Click here to see how every state ranks.]
Not all of those are key early primary states where candidates are likely to hold rallies, which is why New Mexico, Rhode Island and Delaware haven’t been in the angry-voter headlines. But of the three angry states that have held Republican primaries—Alabama, Nevada and Mississippi—Trump has won all three. Hillary Clinton won the three Democratic primaries, although Bernie Sanders was a close second in Nevada. And Sanders spent little time in Alabama or Mississippi, which are Clinton strongholds.
Sanders did notch a surprise win in Michigan, which is the 11th angriest state. Total employment in Michigan has fallen by 1.7% during the last 10 years, while manufacturing employment has fallen by 9.8%. Incomes are up by 7.8%, but inflation over the same period of time has been 13.8%. So the typical Michigander is falling behind. Not surprisingly, Trump won there as well.
Two states holding March 15 primaries—Florida and Illinois—are among the top 10 angry states. Trump is favored in both on the Republican side, while Clinton is leading in the polls of the Democratic side—though Sanders has been surging in Illinois. Ohio, the other big state holding its primary on March 15, is the 19th angriest state, with employment up a scant 0.3% during the last decade, incomes up 14.3% (barely ahead of inflation) and manufacturing employment down 14.2%. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has a slight lead in the polls, but Trump, the anger magnet, is right behind him and could easily win.
There are also some placid states, where the economy is strong and voters are presumably more comfortable with the status quo. Here are the 10 least angry states:
Three of those states—North Dakota, South Dakota and Oklahoma—have been big beneficiaries of the fracking boom, which has obviously turned south lately. If the downturn lasts, voters in those states could be considerably more agitated by Election Day in November. Yet states such as Idaho, Utah, Washington and, to a lesser extent, Colorado are riding high on technology and attracting many businesses from costlier locations, mainly California. A healthy farm economy benefits Iowa and Nebraska. In Texas, the 12th most placid state, employment has grown 20.5% during the last 10 years, the most of any state.
Come November, the question will be whether there are enough outraged voters to overlook other issues and put the anger candidate over the top. You wouldn’t think so, given that the economy overall is doing pretty well. But angry voters have already surprised the political establishment, and there could be more surprises coming.
Methodology: We calculated 10-year growth in overall and manufacturing employment using statewide data for the month of December in 2005 and 2015. Income data is also from December of each year, though those numbers date to 2007, the first year the figures were available state-by-state. Income figures are not adjusted for inflation. The unemployment rate for each state is the most recent. In each of the four categories, we ranked the states (plus the District of Columbia) from 1 to 51, with 1 being best and 51 being worst. Then we added those 4 numbers together and ranked the states by the aggregate of the four rankings. We weighted all categories equally.
Rick Newman’s latest book is Liberty for All: A Manifesto for Reclaiming Financial and Political Freedom. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
