(Credit: Getty/Drew Angerer/Alex Wong) The narrative that the 2016 presidential election was determined by “economic anxiety” among the white working class has again been shown to be largely untrue. Writing in the New York Times, Stephen Phillips explained that “hundreds of articles” have argued the importance of pursuing lower-income white voters who supported Barack Obama in 2012 and then “bolted” to Donald Trump last November. The far more important — and largely untold — story of the election is that more Obama voters defected to third- and fourth-party candidates than the number who supported Mr.