A big part of the core Republican base is people who aren't particularly educated but are fairly wealthy. Car dealership owners, farmers and ranchers (not farm workers, there is a difference). A lot of what people base assumptions of economic class on is just aesthetics - someone who has a lot of higher education and works at Starbuck's codes as "elite" while a rural farmer who owns a ton of land codes as "non-elite" even though the latter is likely immensely wealthier than the former.

What is the profile of the most out-there Trump supporters, the ones who show up at Trump rallies and pro-Trump protests and at Washington during Jan. 6? Don’t these small business owners etc. have a lot to lose in the event of a massive civil war? I get preparing for potential civil unrest but some of the most extreme ones are threatening a civil war.

I am admittedly a progressive Democrat so I've got my biases, but I'm not trying to come across as demeaning or insulting to small business owmers or social conservatives here, just describing the situation as it appears. Also obvious caveat that I'm not referring to every single small business owner or social conservative. They feel like they are already losing and are desperate to reverse their perceived losses. In general the strongest supporters of far-right movements are the small business owner class, because they actually have something to lose, and unlike the ultra-wealthy, they are painfully aware that they *can* lose it. They are desperate to reach the level of those with more wealth than them, but even more desperate not to fall to the level of those who are less wealthy. As to where the perception of loss comes from, I think it's pretty clear that there's been massive economic shifts in recent decades - globalization, the 2008 recession, and so on - that make people feel threatened. A lot of that class also tend more socially conservative - they're not like the elite cosmopolitans who have no attachment to anything, they're anchored in specific communities, often where they've got generational ties, and they feel far more threatened by crime or disorder than a multimillionaire would be. A robbery does way more harm to a small business than to a global megacorporation. So this largely socially conservative class looks around and sees the rapid success of social liberalism (homosexuality was illegal in multiple states as late as 2003, and by 2015 same-sex marriage was legal in every state), massive declines in religiosity, and a rapidly diversifying American population (a disproportionate number of Jan. 6 rioters came from areas that had seen massive increases in their non-white population in recent years). All of this creates the perception of "traditional America" being under siege, which boosts the strength of the far-right. The most impoverished classes in society aren't generally as interested in the far-right, and when they are they're rarely as militant. They already feel like they've got nothing left to lose, and that siege mentality is a really crucial component of far-right belief. You have to feel like you have something that will be lost if "the left/the liberals/the globalists" win. They may also be resentful or distrustful of the "traditional middle class" where racial/ethnic/religious conflicts are relevant - why would a black person want to return to the values of the 1950s, back when legal segregation still existed? The poorest demographics in American society are black people and Native Americans, after all. The most run-down forgotten parts of rural Appalachia are the only white areas of the country that come close to poverty like on most reservations.

Wouldn’t a massive civil war actually cause them to lose everything though? Also the thing about massive increases in nonwhite population-seems a lot like the suburban areas. But it seems like the suburbs actually tend to align with the establishment over Trump-aligned candidates in GOP primaries. Why is that?

The perception is that they will lose that either way. A civil war is an act of desperation. The South before the Civil War felt that slavery, and its accompanying way of life, were inevitably doomed under the contemporary system, so they seceded because even if warfare had only a small chance of truly preserving their way of life, they felt like that small chance was higher than what would happen if they let it continue unabated. A lot of rural areas have also seen rapid diversification over recent years, but it's also the case a lot of what's driving suburban shifts left is less staunch Republicans changing their minds and more a consequence of generational turnover, migration, and diversification itself. The median suburban Romney voter was almost certainly still a Trump 2020 voter, but their new neighbors might be Biden voters, their kids might be Biden voters, or they might have moved from an inner-ring suburb to a farther exurb.

So interacting with Biden voters softened their views even if they remained loyal to the GOP.

I swear this data contradicts itself. One moment rich white suburbs are shifting to Biden, the next moment they aren’t. I’m not sure the exit polls are accurate on fiscal/demographic data

I don't really know. I know here in Massachusetts, the Upper Middle Class to Upper Class towns shifted massively towards Biden compared to the Obama years, while Trump gained in the more working class towns.

Could it be because the so-called educational divide is fueled by the millennial educated-poor? Also as a matter of fact, the biggest shift to Joe Biden in terms of education were people with some college education, or associate degrees, not more educated voters, and among college-educated white men. With that, what’s the profile of the average Trump-to-Biden voter? A middle-class white man with some college education?

Upper Middle-Class people were the ones primarily affected by lockdowns (poor people were working and rich people were able to get around the restrictions) and were also the most receptive demographic to law-and-order rhetoric. Most upper-middle-class people also tend to be small business owners and the PPP loans definitely swayed at least a few of them.