As anger over being shut out of America’s economic recovery fuels the 2016 presidential race, a new poll pulled the curtain back on the credit profiles of potential voters.
In a nationally representative survey of 765 potential voters, personal finance Web site WalletHub reported that a surprising percentage of voters with bad credit are supporting Donald Trump.
Twenty percent of the Republican billionaire’s supporters said they had poor credit. That’s nearly twice the number of John Kasich supporters in this category, and substantially higher than the percentage of voters with bad credit supporting Trump’s main rival, Ted Cruz.
Kasich might wish that appeal to voters with high credit scores translated directly into delegates in the contest for his party’s nod. Nearly 60 percent of Kasich’s supporters had excellent credit, the highest for any candidate. He also had by far the highest percentage of supporters with good credit, 26 percent.
Trump also appeals to those with excellent credit — roughly 50 percent of his supporters reported scores of above 720. High credit scores typically correlate with wealth and older demographics.
On the Democratic side, the credit scores of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton supporters were very close. The largest difference turned up in the realm of bad credit, which 26 percent of Hillary’s supporters reported.
“This data is consistent with the argument that Trump is drawing … support from individuals who feel financially insecure, and … are supporting him because they feel like they have been economically marginalized,” said Gregory Wawro, a political science professor at Columbia University.