After all, throughout the Republican primary, Trump had branded himself as a nationalist unconstrained by fealty to conservative dogma. At various points, he feigned openness to raising taxes on plutocrats and increasing the minimum wage — a heresy he explained by declaring, “I’m very different from most Republicans.”

A considerable amount of Clinton’s paid media was devoted to affirming this claim.

And a growing body of evidence suggests this was a bad mistake.

This notion — that Donald Trump does not share Paul Ryan’s ideology — was indispensable to the former’s victory: Trump simply could not have won without the support of white Democrats who have little affection for GOP orthodoxy.

Synthesizing data from voting returns, exit polls, the census, and preelection polling, the Upshot’s Nate Cohn concludes that Clinton did not lose because Rust Belt Democrats stayed at home, but rather, because they voted for Trump in large numbers.

Many of these voters were Obama supporters in 2008 and 2012 — in fact, 19 percent of white working-class Trump voters said they approved of Obama’s performance on November 8 of 2016. Ten percent of these voters told exit pollsters that they wanted Trump to continue Obama’s policies, while 38 percent said they hoped he would pursue policies that were “more liberal” than Obama’s.

But the fact remains: Clinton lost the White House because a bunch of white Democrats who despise most of the GOP agenda — but like the cut of Trump’s jib — decided to cross the aisle.

Some of these voters may learn that Trump is a regular Republican the hard way — by losing access to their health care or local Planned Parenthood. But many will not.