[Brendinooo]

It's anecdotal, but most people I know who voted for Mr. Trump did so because they disagreed with Sec. Clinton on matters of policy (SCOTUS was a big one) and/or character.

I voted third party, and those who disagreed with me doing so told me that voting for a candidate doesn't mean you align with all of the candidate's policies. I think most people in this camp knew of Trump's character issues, but thought that Clinton's character issues (corruption, e-mails) were more directly tangential to the office the two candidates were running for.

I don't doubt that racist folks voted for Trump because they identified with some of his rhetoric. But to label every Trump voter is unfair in the short term and may make them more likely to identify with the label in the long term.

[JBlue42]

Character matters though. I have close family members, in a battleground state, that abstained despite voting Republican their entire lives.

And, personally, I consider voting for a person, a person who's entire election has been based on personality and rhetoric, is endorsing their character.

Which is also the problem with the lack of enthusiasm you could hear in a lot of Hillary voters as well but people would still vote for her because it'd be an incremental step forward (on some things) instead of a big step back (on a lot).

[Brendinooo]

I don't disagree with you in terms of endorsing character. That's certainly a valid way to look at voting.

Remember when some people didn't vote for Bill Clinton because of the character issues in his personal life? Other people said that the stuff in private didn't matter if he was good at the job.

My perception was that in the case of Trump, those two arguments were the same but many of the people who said them flipped. I thought that was really interesting to watch.