As pundits grappled with the realization that Donald Trump would be the next president in the days and weeks following election night, a common-sense narrative took hold. This election was about “the revenge of working-class whites,” the blue-collar, non-college-educated men across the key Rust Belt states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin whose lives had been devastated by globalized trade and deindustrialization — and who abandoned the Democrats to vote for Trump in droves.

According to this narrative, these voters’ frustration with the economic and social destruction they had experienced for decades exploded in a rage against “the establishment,” and found an unlikely tribune in Trump, who struck a nerve with his anti-trade, anti-immigration message.

Against this conventional wisdom, some countered that race and gender, not class, proved decisive. Pointing out that voters with annual household incomes under $50,000 voted for Clinton, they argued that Trump’s support was based in a layer of older white men who have seen their power and dominance threatened in an increasingly diverse United States.