 Hello and let's talk about the U.S. elections and specifically the Trump voter. Counting is still on and it's a nail-biting contest. As of shooting of this show, and that same important thing, as of shooting of this show, Joe Biden has egged out a slight advantage in the state of Georgia as well. If he wins Georgia, his part of the presidency seems pretty much certain, but it's still too early to say. Meanwhile, a lot of questions have been raised about the results and the voting. And a key question has been that, how do people still keep voting for Donald Trump? Now we know that people voted for him in large numbers in 2016. At that point, people said this was an aberration, this was just a novelty factor, Trump was an outsider and that was the reason. But four years later, a pandemic later, an economic recession has happened. And despite all this, a lot of people still have voted for Donald Trump. So what really explains the mindset of people who have been voting for him? Who are his core base, so to speak, the hardcore voters who have turned out for Trump, despite all that has happened in the United States? And it's a very important question to understand because there are even some parallels maybe with the case of India as well. We talk to journalists on India's Chakravarthy to find out more. Thank you, Arindu, for joining us. So it's been a chaotic couple of days at least here. Have you also been sort of refreshing continuously on the New York Times and other sites and polls to sort of see what's happening? Yeah, you know, I prefer, I always like to look at what I would call the ideological opponent. So I have been refreshing the Fox News page and interestingly, Fox News has been more aggressive in giving, you know, these electoral votes to Biden than New York Times. So you know about the entire controversy which happened, I think, over Arizona, which the Fox News gave to Biden, even though others did not. And I think New York Times is still not given. No, they haven't. In fact, a lot of liberal commentators are expected surprise. But nonetheless, Trump, especially when we look at the pre-election narrative that was there, of course, Trump was not expected to lose by a landslide or anything. But nonetheless, there was a strong expectation that Trump would not perform well. Of course, there's been the pandemic, there's been the economic downturn because of the pandemic, his polarizing narrative, which and obviously his crude statements, everything that basically, you know, there's been this, but in fact, considering that he's performed pretty well, it's still today is the 6th of November. The election was held on the 3rd and still we have not reached a decision. So are you surprised at what happened? What do you think about it? Personally, I'm not surprised because, you know, in 2016, I was, I believe that Trump is going to win. And, of course, I believe that Trump is going to win based on electoral votes, because obviously there are places where there's a lot of, there are a lot of number of people, but not necessarily translating into electoral, finally, electors. The reason I believed it was because of what the head of Gallup, you know, the guys who do polls had written about the fact that Americans have become poorer over the eight year period. A large number of Americans have become poorer over the eight year Obama administration period and many of them actually are scattered in these blue states, which Democrats have traditionally carried and many of them are whites who will switch to Trump. And Trump is, in a sense, someone who promises Pundralak and Achyuddin in 2016. And again, I think this is a crucial difference that we also see in India, which is the sense that my gain is being restricted by a power elite, which is holding on and that elite is actually on the East Coast in New York, and maybe in California in Los Angeles and New York, Massachusetts, and, you know, Boston, that's the, in the U.S., when one thinks about it. And when we look at India, we talk about the Lutians elite, the Lutians elite has kept India back and they are the people who support the Congress and they are the people who Modi has taught a lesson. But Trump was working on that rhetoric, in my opinion, and successfully and continues to do. Absolutely. Right. So in this context, I think it's still, especially for all of us to sort of, it's still a bit difficult to figure out exactly who the Trump voter is because, I mean, especially in India on social media, there's a lot of jokes, memes are a ton of plenty because the same thing happens with Modi also. But nonetheless, it's also true that both of these figures carry a very strong current of support. In Trump's case, we often tend to underestimate it all the more because of his personality that comes out. So could you maybe take us through, say, what is the kind of composition of people who are actually voting for Trump today? So obviously this is based on the exit polls that were done in 2016 and now in 2020. If you look at it broadly, and I'm looking at the 2020 exit polls, it's going to be updated as it goes on. And we know that Trump's vote has been higher than what the exit polls have predicted. But let's just look at the numbers and we'll see that the core of Trump's vote continues to be whites, right? If you look at white people who make up about 65% of the voters in and these exclude the Latino or the Hispanic whites, there is a category of Hispanic Latino whites who are not counted. If you take all of that, then the population of white people in the U.S. is close to 70, 71%. But you remove that and then you get about 62 to 63 and in terms of turnout and registration of voting, because that's also a crucial thing in the U.S., whites account for about 64, 65%. So that's what the thing looks like. And there, Trump has an overwhelming majority of about 57%. Now the interesting thing to me is that whites we know are the people who earn more in the U.S., they are the people who are the richest and despite all the talk of, you know, it's similar to what we hear here that, oh, appeasement, yeah, Hindu Katra and appeasement and there it is affirmative action, you know, there's racism card, there's all rubbish and stuff like that and that there too much is being given to the non-whites. This is despite that we know that actually whites account for most of the rich people in the U.S. and also most of the people who are graduates, right? So if you look at the U.S., then 44 or 45% of people in the U.S. voters are graduates, right? College graduates, right? Out of that, out of that 45%, about 66 to 70% are white people, right? You would say that that is more or less representative of the population of whites. So yes, that's true, but those who are non-college graduates in the U.S. amongst non-whites tend to be very poor. Those who are whites, but non-college graduates, a chunk of them are still not very poor. So if we look at the breakup in terms of, in terms of popular earnings, then you will see that Trump's biggest support base comes from those who earn more than $100,000 a year. Now $100,000 a year works out to about, I think, 75 lakh rupees a year in Indian money. But if we work it out in terms of what that can buy in the U.S. and compare that, even then it's about 22-25 lakhs a year. So that's in India that is equivalent to a 2 lakh per month salary, which we know is even in India would be a high salary and a 200,000 that goes to an equivalent of 4 lakhs a month salary, right? I'm not taking the actual dollar exchange rate. I'm taking what is called purchasing power, parity, what can be bought in India. So that's the story that the rich whites, but I think Prashant, there's a story hidden inside that as well. And that probably to me is the key of Trump's support, that hidden story. Also, could you elaborate on that as well? Yeah, as you know, the point is that if one looks at two things. One is the college graduate versus the non-college graduate white, right? So obviously those who are college graduates generally tend to be people from better richer families with better access to resources. Maybe even able to take student loans easier than others can. So the family has a better credit score, which is an important thing in the U.S. Now, here's the thing that if you look at white college graduates, I told you that amongst white people, Trump clearly has a lead. He has a 57 percent voter support amongst white people. And Biden gets only 42 percent, which is dramatically different from their final overall vote total, right? So if you look at white college graduates there, both are equal. So Trump and Biden have an equal support. So look at it, overall whites, Trump has a huge gap, right? A 15 point gap. But as soon as you come to college graduates who are about 31 percent or half, about half of all the whites, about, I'll say 45 odd percent of white voters college graduates. So they're even Stevens. But as soon as you go to white non-college graduates, those who have not gone to college, haven't finished college, then there's a dramatic difference. Two-thirds of those voters, Prashant, white voters who have not gone to college, vote for Trump. And that translates also into income levels, right? Because I said that if you look at it, if you look at the blunt numbers, then anyone who earns more than $100,000 is more likely to vote for Trump than for Biden, which means that the rich are more conservative. They don't want to pay taxes and stuff like that, which is what conservatives always promise. That's what the Republican Party promises. It opposes giving subsidies to the poor. So that is also something that the rich would like. And therefore, we would assume that that is the kind of support that it gets. But as soon as we break it up between the rich, those in Indian terms, again, I remind the viewers, I don't mean Indian terms that are translated a dollar into rupees. I'm taking rupee into what a dollar can buy and what rupee can buy in real terms, which is purchasing power parity. In Indian terms, if we take those who earn between two lakh rupees a month to four lakh rupees a month, which is rich people in India and pretty rich in the US, well-to-do people in India, amongst them, Trump has a clear, clear greater support because there, again, he has 57%, almost equal to the overall white support he gets, 57% of support. And Biden has only 41%. But as soon as you cross the threshold of that $200,000, which is four lakh, approximately in Indian terms, four lakh rupees a month or more, in absolute dollar terms, $200,000 would work out to about 1.5 crore rupees a year, so about 12 lakh rupees in dollar term per month or more. There, Biden is actually ahead. So the super rich are basically do tend to go for Biden, yes. So here's the thing, the super rich, the 7% super rich are probably in your East Coast states in California sitting there, they don't like Trump. They are still with, they want to support the Democrats and it would be interesting to see what has happened compared to last year, last election. So this is a crucial gap that we see and in fact, there's a lot of research on the fight between the, within the whites. So this is not only about white supporting Trump. Even if one looks at the breakup of those who are white Christians, most whites would be Christians or Jews, those who are what are called, and this you would probably be better able to explain to our viewers who these people are. These are the white evangelical and white born again Christians. So, you know, amongst them and they account for 27% of overall population, which leaves about, I would say about 38 odd percent as non-evangelical, non-born again Christian whites, right? So if one takes a look at that, then again, it's broadly, approximately about 40% of whites are white evangelical or born again Christians. And these are more conservative, they tend to be in that Bible Belt area here. And they're also very well organized, which is as important because the social and cultural bonds and the structural bonds that keep them together are far more cohesive as opposed to the more traditional churches, which are facing a crisis, so to speak. Yeah. And in fact, that is why probably we see that video of that lady Paula one. And I saw some new video in the morning where there are these people who are counting and outside the electoral, you know, counting centre, right? So they probably are part of that entire process. And it's interesting because it's the same in Brazil also, where Boltona's victory was propelled very, very strongly by the evangelical block, which perhaps played one of the most significant roles in making sure he came to fall. Wow. That is extremely interesting because I think that to a certain extent, even also as a social reason for them to go towards these kind of religious cults, if one could call them. Absolutely. So if one looks at it amongst those people, Trump has a 76% voter base, 76% white evangelical or white born again Christians are not those who go to traditional churches, 76% support. And so if I look at all the whites together, who I said make up 65%. And I take that 65% out of that 65 odd, right? If one looks at it, 37 out of that 65 vote are voting for Trump in any case, right? But out of that 37, 21, 37, you take out 21 are actually these born again or white evangelical or born again Christians. So you're left with just about 16, 16 out of those and there the split would be equal for Trump. So if you look at it, the split actually amongst those who are traditional whites, there, if you take the split, then you actually have a split of 16% to 21%. So the non-evangelical, non-born again Christian space that exists within that even whites, a majority actually support Biden and they do not support Trump. So this is, this again, I don't know much about it. I only have a vague idea about it, but I would assume again, these would be whites in the traditional, more developed, in the East Coast and places like that where the churches still play a role and maybe would might not be actively religious as well. They might be believers, they might be believers, but they're not necessarily actively religious. So this is very interesting to see that how the support is actually broken up exactly like India into those who have a belief or a grievance, not only against the bottom, not only against those they think are not letting them rise or are taking away the pie and therefore they have not gained, but also to the top. So there is this great feeling that there is this elites, this elite which controls everything and they are taking away and exactly that is what that is what Trump played on and played on extremely successfully. Which is also highly ironic considering his own background as a billionaire. Absolutely. Whether he's a billionaire is debatable, but as a big industrialist, a baron, a staple of that same liberal culture as well. He was associated with Hollywood, reality shows, all that kind of stuff. And he was a registered Democrat as always. He suddenly, even I think in 2016 when there was doubt about whether the Republican party would give him the nomination and he was asked in one of the interviews that if you don't get the nomination, will you still fight the elections and he said I'll fight it as an independent. So clearly he has no real love for the Republican party. He knows how to get power and I think the interesting thing is that he has sensed and we see many strands which come together. When you're part of this entire process where you believe that there is an elite which controls everything, then you're more likely to believe conspiracy theories. Those conspiracy theories also get amplified by the Polo whites of the world or Trump himself. So these conspiracy theories that there are these people, there's a deep state which controls everything and you don't know them. They're the freemasons. You see a lot of these documentaries on YouTube, right? There are these people who actually did 9-11 and they blamed Afghanistan for it. There are all these things and they're being done by whites. So all these things come together. The belief in fake news, the ability to spread fake news, right? The belief in a strong leader, the belief that WHO has lied about COVID and this is all rubbish. These are all things that I think closely tied together and there is what I'm trying to argue here is that you see a very similar economic basis for the rise of the right wing in the US as in India because I have always been trying to argue that in India the main thrust, I mean there is always there are alliances that are made but the main thrust, the core of the BJP support base is the new elite, the mercantile elite which had money but never had social capital. It never had prestige. It is the same thing that we're seeing in the US that there is a bulk of people. There is a significant about a quarter or more of the population which earns reasonably well between 100,000 to 200,000 dollars. Most of them would be whites and they support Trump overwhelmingly because they seem to believe that they couldn't cross over to the 200,000 dollar rate because they didn't get a college education. They looked down upon and the white and the elites who also are, there's also this belief that the elites rule not because, not just because they don't have the numbers. So the whites believe white supremacists or those who are sympathetic believe that the elites don't have the numbers. They get the numbers by bringing in people. So they get immigrants in to create and they give them sops and they take our taxes and give it to them and these people then become, they do crimes and all that and therefore the elite gets repeatedly re-elected because they're reducing the space for the core American which is the Bible where it worked. And this is precisely the argument for the CA also, in some senses. Exactly. Exactly. That's precisely the argument for CA. Exactly. You're absolutely right. Absolutely. Sweet. Thank you so much, Anandu, for talking to us. This is definitely a topic we will keep coming back to especially the aspect around India as well because the support base of the Modi wave too needs to be understood in a similar way. Thank you so much. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back on Monday with more news from the country and the world. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.