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[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

Translation: I do not understand math.

ETA: Apparently I'm avoiding work again, so let's play with very basic statistics.

Here's a set of data with a median income of 72:

1, 3, 4, 5, 72, 347, 774, 852, 982

Can we say that 72 is typical of incomes in this group? No. Can we say that the typical person in this group is not affluent? No. Can we say that in general, people in this group are struggling? No.

Of course, this set is not likely to reflect the real world, but it illustrates what you can and cannot say about a group based on the median.

Here's another set of data with a mean, or arithmetic average, of 72:

0, 0, 0, 144, 144, 144

Can we say that 72 is typical of incomes in this group? No. Can we say that the typical person in this group is not affluent? No. Can we say that in general, people in this group are struggling? No.

Now, we could say that assuming a normal distribution of incomes, an income of 72 is typical of the group, except that we know that incomes are not normally distributed, especially on the high end.

Here's another set of data, this time with a mode of 72:

0, 1, 3, 7, 72, 72, 72, 72, 72, 72, 747, 894, 999

This is what you're looking for if you'd like to generalize about what's typical in a set of data we know is far from normally distributed.

Anyway, again, the Trump voter median income is about 40% greater than overall median income, which tells us that the set of Trump voters is, overall, significantly more affluent than the generally population. It either contains a lot more higher incomes or a lot fewer lower incomes (someone else posted data suggesting it's the latter, btw, a fact your could have used in your favor if you weren't busy arguing in favor of your straw man and against the observation that the poorest didn't support Trump).

If you want to compare that information to the overall mean income, you're going to need the mean income of Trump voters. The fact that the median income is higher than overall median may suggest that the mean is also higher than overall, but we don't know that for sure because we don't have any information about the distribution of incomes within the sample.

Okay, that was a waste of time.

This all rests on the assumption that income is far from normally distributed. If I remove that assumption and replace it with the assumption income is distributed with a high a number of modes near the median, which is just as likely, your theory goes up in smoke.

And I merely said Trump voters were not affluent. 2/3 make less than $100k. Under $100k is not affluent.

You chose to assess them against the general public because you cannot argue that people making less than $100k are generally affluent.

Your comment, that they are more affluent than the broader public, also dovetails with what I said earlier: "That a shitload of this country earns a subsistence living does not undo the point that a typical Trump voter is likely struggling to keep up with cost of the American Dream." 2/3 of Trump voters under $100k are struggling to attain the American Dream, as $100k is not a lot of money, particularly for a family household. That a whole lot of other Americans are doing worse does not undo this fact. It just means that, below the struggling 2/3 of Trump voters are people struggling even more.