A Closer Look at Trump's 'Coattails Effect'

During the presidential campaign, it was commonly said by analysts on the left and the right that any other Republican nominee would be beating Hillary Clinton handily. (Well, maybe any other Republican except for Ben Carson.) That piece of conventional wisdom should have been a clue that those analysts were underestimating Donald Trump’s chances: If anyone else would have beaten her, it meant that she was a very weak candidate; and if she was so weak, maybe he would beat her, too.

The actual results suggest that this pre-election mantra was wrong: that other Republicans wouldn’t have beaten her as soundly in the Electoral College as Trump did. A more conventional Republican candidate than Trump -- say, Marco Rubio or John Kasich -- would probably have won more white voters with college degrees and fewer white voters without those degrees. (Trump’s numbers were lower than Mitt Romney’s in 2012 in the first group and higher in the second.)