"Perhaps It's Time Someone Asked Them"

"In short, the story of a white working-class revolt in the Rust Belt just doesn't hold up, according to the numbers. In the Rust Belt, Democrats lost 1.35 million voters. Trump picked up less than half, at 590,000. The rest stayed home or voted for someone other than the major party candidates.

"This data suggests that if the Democratic Party wants to win the Rust Belt, it should not go chasing after the white working-class men who voted for Trump. The party should spend its energy figuring out why Democrats lost millions of voters to some other candidate or to abstention. Exit polls do not collect information about why voters stay home."

Konstantin Kilibarda and Daria Roithmayr at Slate argue that turnout, or lack thereof, was key to the 2016 presidential election.

Eric Levitz follows up at New York.