Reader Edit: A brown-er America voted in Trump. It's not racism

'I am with her' was Hillary's campaign slogan. America was not. Nearly all the pollsters got this wrong. It was Donald Trump against the polls, the media, his own party, and he did it.

Trump tapped into a vein in America. A vein that ran deeper and wider than most thought. It's too easy to say that Trump found a racist America. Some of that is true. But America did elect an African American as President.

Twice. And Obama's America has only grown browner. America is less white than it was in 2008 and 2012 when it elected an African-American President.

Trump tapped into something besides a racist vein. He tapped into a deep economic malaise hitting the American middle class. Thinkprogress reports between 2009 and 2012, American income grew 37.4 per cent, but the top 1 per cent of Americans captured 99 per cent of that gain. 99 per cent of Americans saw very minimal economic growth. States that voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012: Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, decisively swung to Trump. Along with North Carolina (which President Barack Obama won in 2008 and lost in 2012), these states have been hurt by a loss of manufacturing jobs.

Donald Trump went against Republican party orthodoxy and eschewed support of free trade, promising to rip free trade agreements. Rightly or wrongly, the promise to end of free trade and more stringent immigration policies led Trump to capture the American heartland. White, high school educated voters came out in swarms and voted for Trump. In the 1950's, 60's and 70's, it was possible to earn a high school degree and earn a good living in a manufacturing plant. That changed with the advent of Japanese cars which began to hurt Detroit, Michigan. Ronald Reagan, an outspoken advocate of free trade, led the charge to create trade barriers to Japanese cars. In doing so, he earned the votes of Michigan and Wisconsin sweeping the rust belt.

Fast forward some thirty years later, the children and grandchildren of those workers have turned to Trump. Trump promises to make America great again; #MAGA, is the twitter tag line. He harkens back to the 50's and 60's of the United States. Trump rails against cheap Chinese imports.

Swathes of North Carolina have for generations produced furniture for much of America. Starting in the 1990s, North Carolina shed jobs in furniture and textile manufacturing. These are the jobs that white, high school educated workers found a decent living. They disappeared. Trump's anti-trade message resonated with these voters. So did Bernie Sanders anti-trade message, Hillary Clinton's primary opponent. Sanders won Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota beating Clinton. North Carolina, with a large African-American population, was barely won by Clinton. Among North Carolinian white Democrats, Sanders won decisively.

Trump appealed to the Sanders voters repeatedly. He said he would protect them. He said Sanders had been wronged by Clinton. A portion of those voters showed up on Tuesday, more than any pollster suspected, and voted for Trump.

The sense of being wronged, being screwed by the system is not unfamiliar to voters across the world. Be it Duterte in the Philippines or AAP voters in Delhi or the Brexit voters in the English countryside, there is a feeling in counties with democratic systems that the ruling elite looks after themselves and has forgotten the common man, the Aam Aadmi. Dynastic politics, which Hilary Clinton represented, finds itself in strong disfavor.

The trouble becomes not in winning elections, but governing. AAP founders in Delhi, Duterte shots from the hip in the Philippines, and exiting in reality isn't so easy for the UK. For Trump, the governance of the United States will be the challenge. For the world and Americans, it will be a challenge. Tweeting #MAGA (#MakeAmericaGreatAgain) is easy. Doing it will be harder.

The author is Founder and CEO of Impact Analytics.