Donald Trump stormed to victory last night in both the popular vote and the electoral college, in an undeniable sign of the enthusiasm of the American people.
While the final votes are still being counted, Trump has so far won 292 points in the electoral college, 22 more than he needed.
And he still holds the lead in the popular vote: with 51 percent, above Harris’ 47.5 percent, scuppering any notion that Democrats could repeat their 2016 complaints that he was the least popular choice. throughout the country.
Donald Trump at his election night event in Florida
Trump also made gains with nearly every voting bloc he lost in the 2020 election and built a coalition of multiethnic working-class voters to defeat Kamala Harris.
And Harris fared worse Tuesday than Joe Biden in the 2020 race among key voter groups, including women, the working class and Latinos.
That’s what the exit poll numbers show.
But the election results also come down to this: Trump had a vision for America, while Harris had a word salad, voters trusted him more to fix the economy, and the American people thought Biden had put the country in the race. Wrong way.
It all added up to Donald Trump overcoming a criminal conviction, accusations and an assassin’s bullet to return to the White House.
And Trump did it overwhelmingly. The election that was predicted to be nail-biting was instead a red tsunami.
Trump not only won the electoral college but also the popular vote, earning 71.2 million votes to Harris’ 66.4 million. Tellingly, Harris got fewer overall votes than Biden in 2020. That year, her ticket got 81 million votes.
The popular vote is still being counted, but Trump could be the first Republican president since George W. Bush to win it.
‘One of the main reasons President Trump won the nomination is that he made clear how he will improve the lives of all Americans and the fact that he can do it immediately. You don’t need one, two or three years to figure out where things are and how Washington works. We have that economy and that secure border. “You can do it right away,” Trump adviser Jason Miller told The Today Show on Wednesday.
In the end, Trump scored a victory almost identical to his 2016 campaign. Here’s a breakdown of how he did it:
WORKING CLASS VOTERS
Trump won white working-class voters in the 2016 race and took another step this cycle, bringing in black and Latino working-class voters to boost his vote count.
At the beginning of his campaign he aimed to form this expanded coalition. Working class voters were the key to Trump’s victory in 2016, just as they were to Biden’s victory in 2020.
Trump’s campaign relied on those numbers to recruit black and Latino voters.
Those two groups, particularly men, leaned more toward Trump this year than in 2020, with Black support nearly doubling to 15% and Latino support growing by 6 points, to 41%, according to preliminary results from AP VoteCast.
The biggest movement among these men was those without college degrees, commonly known as working-class voters, who strongly supported Trump.
CAREER
Trump made massive changes to win over minority voters — a major new chapter for the Republican Party and a warning sign for Democrats who have taken the group for granted.
The president-elect won non-college voters of all racial backgrounds by 12 points over Harris, compared to a 4-point lead in 2020.
Trump’s biggest advantage compared to his performance against Biden in 2020 was Latino men.
The numbers show that the late focus on comedian Tony Hinchcliffe mocking Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally did not cause the damage the Harris campaign hoped it would.
The gains were most concentrated among Latinos under 65 years of age.
In Florida, majority-Latino Miami-Dade County had backed Democrat Hillary Clinton by 30 points in 2016 and Biden by 7 points in 2020. On Tuesday, Trump won by nearly 12 points.
Trump also made gains in key places among black men, more than doubling his 2020 performance in North Carolina.
Harris performed slightly worse among black voters than Biden four years ago. He won the support of 86% of black voters compared to 90% for Biden in 2020.
Kamala Harris fared worse than Joe Biden among black voters and women voters
YOUNG VOTERS
Trump made significant gains among young voters, particularly men, who made a dramatic shift to the right after backing Biden four years ago.
He courted the group intensely and it paid off.
Trump appeared on numerous podcasts and at other events (mixed martial arts matches and car races) that appealed to young men, selecting many of those options on the advice of his 18-year-old son Barron.
Trump won among men ages 18 to 29 by 13 points. Harris lost ground to Democrats among that group, which Biden won by 15 points in 2020.
Young voters were clearly divided along gender lines.
About 6 in 10 women ages 18 to 29 voted for Harris, and more than half of men in that age group backed Trump.
Barron Trump, seen above with his parents Donald and Melania on election night, helped his father win over young voters
GENDER
In what may be one of the most shocking results of the night, Biden led Harris among women voters.
Harris did not make gender a centerpiece of her campaign, relying on Trump’s accusations of misogyny to give her that voting bloc.
The group won, but not enough to give them the White House.
Women favored Harris by 10 points on Tuesday, but favored Biden by 14 points in 2020.
Men preferred Trump by 10 points, up from nine points four years ago.
The only segment of the electorate with which Harris made notable gains over Biden’s 2020 performance was with college-educated women — those are the same voters who helped Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.
Trump made huge gains among Latino voters: above, voters in Miami wait to cast their vote
THE ECONOMY
Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 with the famous phrase “the economy is stupid.”
That maxim is valid today.
Multiple pre-election polls and polls conducted on Election Day conveyed the same message from voters: the economy is our number one issue.
Time and time again, voters cited high prices as Americans are still recovering from inflation that hit its highest level in four decades in June 2022.
About 9 in 10 voters were very or somewhat concerned about the cost of food, and about 8 in 10 were concerned about their health care costs, their housing costs or the cost of gasoline, AP VoteCast found.
The share of voters who said their family’s financial situation was “falling behind” rose to about 3 in 10, up from about 2 in 10 in the last presidential election.
And, on Election Day, those voters put their trust in Trump.
ABORTION
Abortion was not the prominent issue as it was in the 2022 midterm elections.
Florida on Tuesday became the first state since Roe v. Wade in rejecting a ballot measure on abortion rights. It did not meet the state’s 60% threshold for approval, meaning the state’s six-week ban remains in effect.
But Harris also performed much worse than Biden among voters who said they thought abortion should be legal in most cases.
Four years ago, Biden won that group by 38 points. Harris won them by just 3 points.
Abortion was important, but the economy was more important when it came time to vote.
Kamala Harris could not separate herself from Joe Biden, above the duo who campaigned in Pittsburgh in September
SUPPLY FACTOR
The current commander in chief was a factor for Harris, mainly because she struggled to separate herself from him.
She told The View last month that she wouldn’t have done anything differently than Biden.
But polls showed that most Americans believed the United States was on the wrong path, illustrating how voters were eager for a change in leadership.
Additionally, AP’s VoteCast found that about three-quarters of young voters said the country was headed in the wrong direction, and about a third said they wanted a complete and total upheaval in the way the country is run.
And nearly three-quarters of voters said they were dissatisfied or angry with the way things are going in the United States, according to CNN exit polls. Trump won about three-fifths of those voters.
And Biden was in deep trouble, with 58% of voters saying they disapprove of his performance as president. Four in five of those voters backed Trump.