Wealthy, educated voters fuel Trump’s sweep

WASHINGTON/BETHESDA: Wealthy, well-educated voters helped carry Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump to victory in this week’s East Coast primaries, a demographic the famously blunt-spoken billionaire had struggled to attract in the past.

His sweep of Pennslvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island on Tuesday included wins in some of the richest and best-educated counties in the country - like Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Newport County, Rhode Island - and added to victories in his more traditional strongholds of white working-class neighborhoods.

Exit polls from Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maryland showed Trump winning about half of Republican voters with college degrees, and over half of Republican voters making more than $100,000 a year.

“On its face, it is hard to believe he’d be improving with a demographic group that has been so averse to his style, his denigrating language,” said Randall Miller, a professor of American politics at Saint Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania.

“But I think people may have gotten used to Trump, he’s not as outrageous as he used to be,” he said, adding that familiarity with the businessman’s brand in the Northeast may also have helped him.

Still, the five states could be an uphill battle for Republicans in the Nov 8 presidential election.

The last Republican presidential nominee to win any of them was George H W Bush in 1988. The challenge for the New York billionaire could be to replicate Tuesday’s performance in other parts of the country as he seeks to lock down his party’s nomination, with 10 state contests remaining.

Nationally, likely voters with a college degree have become increasingly critical of Trump in recent months, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.  He is also increasingly unpopular with those who make more than $100,000 a year.