"It used to be... that the lower and middle classes were stuffy and constrained by social convention while the freethinkers at universities and in the ruling class..."

"... got to experiment with unconventional ideas. If their experimenting got enough success, then it might eventually filter down to ordinary people. (The sexual revolution worked this way, more or less). But now it’s our ruling class that is hidebound by political correctness, and it takes movement by the masses to give it permission to express a controversial view. That’s a major change, and it’s one that the ruling class isn’t likely to appreciate much. But having subjected itself to the chains of 'acceptable' opinion, what can it do?"

So ends Glenn Reynolds's new USA Today column "Glenn Reynolds: A Trump wave is on the way/As plebes make the Donald increasingly acceptable, expect elite Trump supporters to come out of the closet."

There's a lot in there about Brexit as well as the American presidential election and some detail about "preference falsification" — when people "hide unpopular views to avoid ostracism or punishment" — and "preference cascades" — when people suddenly stop hiding. I'm credited as an early predictor of a preference cascade for Trump — with a link to my January 21st post "The coming cascade of smart, educated people embracing Trump."

The wonderful thing about voting is that we do it in secret. You don't have to come out of the closet to express the opinion that has the most clout. And others see that the votes are there, creating the sense of safety. The viewpoint is indeed widespread. We've been stuck at a point where people have felt that only low-educated people liked Trump, but the news from the primaries and caucuses is cutting against that idea (an idea much-promoted in elite media). In Nevada, exit polls showed Trump leading in all groups. It's getting safer to say you support Trump. Well, it's safe enough that people in all groups are telling exit pollsters that they voted for Trump. So it's not just the secret voting. It's disclosure to at least one other person, the pollsters.