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Deaths of Despair and Support for Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election

Shannon M. Monnat Pennsylvania State University Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education
Trump over performed the most in counties with the highest drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates. Much of this relationship is accounted for by economic distress and the proportion of working-class residents. However, this relationship should not be interpreted as causal. What these analyses demonstrate is that community-level well-being played an important role in the 2016 election.
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