What changed during this 4-year period to facilitate his support? This panel provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine the basis of mass support for the winning candidate, support that ultimately elected Donald J. However, for the two most recent presidential elections, a large, representative probability sample of the American public was interviewed in both October 2012 and again in October 2016, shortly before Donald J. The major data collections pertaining to elections are cross-sectional in design. Surprisingly, there are few panels available to examine most election outcomes. When analyzed appropriately, they have the ability to eliminate most potentially spurious associations. In observational settings, panel data are widely acknowledged as the ideal basis for causal conclusions ( 1). Neither approach is the best that can be done. As a result, most interpretations of election outcomes either rely on cross-sectional associations in survey data or are inferred from aggregate data on voting patterns by geographic areas. Because elections are not amenable to experimentation, it is difficult for scholars to make strong causal claims. Nonetheless, even in high-profile American presidential elections, this important task typically is left to journalists and pundits who are unlikely to have the ideal tools, or adequate data to address this question. When the people have spoken, it is critical to understand what it is that they have said. Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change. Candidate preferences in 2016 reflected increasing anxiety among high-status groups rather than complaints about past treatment among low-status groups. Instead, the shorter relative distance of people’s own views from the Republican candidate on trade and China corresponded to greater mass support for Trump in 2016 relative to Mitt Romney in 2012. Results do not support an interpretation of the election based on pocketbook economic concerns. Second, I consider the possibility that status threat felt by the dwindling proportion of traditionally high-status Americans (i.e., whites, Christians, and men) as well as by those who perceive America’s global dominance as threatened combined to increase support for the candidate who emphasized reestablishing status hierarchies of the past. First, using unique representative probability samples of the American public, tracking the same individuals from 2012 to 2016, I examine the “left behind” thesis (that is, the theory that those who lost jobs or experienced stagnant wages due to the loss of manufacturing jobs punished the incumbent party for their economic misfortunes). This study evaluates evidence pertaining to popular narratives explaining the American public’s support for Donald J.

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