Election outcomes breakdown reveals how Trump gained by a landslide – taking each the favored vote and the essential electoral vote
Donald Trump stormed to victory in both the popular vote and the electoral college last night in an undeniable sign of enthusiasm from the American people.
While the final votes are still being tallied, Trump has so far won 277 electoral college points – seven more than he needed.
And he still retains the lead in the popular vote – with 51 percent, over Harris’s 47.5 percent, throwing cold water on any idea that Democrats could repeat their 2016 complaints that he was the less popular choice across the country.
As of noon, Wednesday, only six states remained uncalled – Arizona, Alaska, Nevada, Michigan and Maine.
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 put together a coalition of multi-ethnic working-class voters to defeat Kamala Harris.
And Harris did worse on Tuesday than Joe Biden in the 2020 contest among key voting groups including women, the working class and Latinos.
That is what the numbers from exit polls show.
But the election results also comes down to this: Trump had vision for America while Harris had word salad, voters trusted him more to fix the economy, and the American people thought Biden put the country on the wrong track.
It all added up to Donald Trump overcoming a criminal conviction, indictments, and an assassin’s bullet to return to the White House.
And Trump did it in a landslide. The election that was predicted to be a nail biter instead was a red tsunami.
Trump didn’t just win the electoral college but the popular vote, garnering 71.2 million votes to Harris’ 66.4 million. Tellingly, Harris garnered less overall votes than Biden in 2020. That year their ticket won 81 million votes.
The popular vote is still being tallied but Trump could be the first Republican president since George W Bush to win it. The president-elect could also sweep all seven battleground states – Michigan and Arizona are still being counted.
‘A major reason why President Trump run won because he made it clear how he will improve the lives of every American and the fact that he can do it right away. He doesn’t need one or two or three years to figure out where things are and how Washington works. We have that economy and that secure border. He can do it right away,’ Trump adviser Jason Miller told The Today Show on Wednesday.
In the end Trump had a near-mirror win of his 2016 campaign. Here’s a breakdown of how he did it:
WORKING CLASS VOTERS
Trump won white working-class voters in the 2016 contest and took it a step further this cycle, bringing in black and Latino working-class voters to increase his vote count.
Early on his campaign had the goal of putting together this expanded coalition. Working-class voters were the key to Trump’s win in 2016, just as they were key to Biden’s win in 2020.
Trump’s campaign built on those numbers to incorporate black and latino voters.
Those two groups, particularly men, tilted 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 referred to as working-class voters, who broke heavily for Trump.
RACE
Trump made massive shifts toward winning minority voters – an important new chapter for the Republican Party and a warning sign for Democrats, who have been taking the group for granted.
The president-elect won noncollege voters of all racial backgrounds by 12 points over Harris, compared with a 4-point lead in 2020.
Chief among Trump’s gains compared with his performance against Biden in 2020 was Latino men.
The numbers show the late focus on comedian Tony Hinchcliffe mocking Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally didn’t cause the damage Harris’ campaign hoped it would.
The gains were concentrated most heavily among Latinos under age 65.
In Florida, the heavily 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 it 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 with black voters than Biden did four years ago. She won the support of 86% of black voters compared to the 90% Biden won in 2020.
Kamala Harris did worse than Joe Biden among black voters and women voters
YOUNG VOTERS
Trump made major gains among young voters – particularly among men, who made a dramatic shift to the right after backing Biden four years ago.
He courted the group hard 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 18- to 29-year-old men by 13 points. Harris lost ground for Democrats among that group, which went Biden won by 15 points in 2020.
Young voters were plainly divided among gender lines.
About 6 in 10 women between 18 to 29 voted for Harris, and more than half of men in that age group backed Trump.
Barron Trump – seen above with parents Donald and Melania on Election Night – helped his dad win over young male voters
GENDER
In what may be one of the most shocking results of the night, Biden outperformed Harris among women voters.
Harris didn’t make gender a centerpiece of her campaign, banking on accusations of misogyny from Trump to hand her that voting bloc.
She won the group but not by enough to hand her the White House.
Women favored Harris by 10 points on Tuesday but they 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 that helped Democrats in the 2022 midterm election.
Trump made huge gains among Latino voters – above voters in Miami wait to cast their ballot
THE ECONOMY
Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 with the famous phrase ‘it’s the economy stupid.’
That maxim holds true today.
Multiple polls ahead of the election and polls taken on Election Day carried the same message from voters: the economy is our number one issue.
Time and time again, voters cited high prices as Americans are still reeling from inflation that spiked to a four-decade high in June 2022.
About 9 in 10 voters were very or somewhat concerned about the cost of groceries, and about 8 in 10 were concerned about their health care costs, their housing costs or the cost of gas, 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 roughly 2 in 10 in the last presidential election.
And, on Election Day, those voters put their trust in Trump.
ABORTION
Abortion was not the salient issue it was in the 2022 midterm elections.
Florida on Tuesday became the first state since Roe v. Wade was overturned to reject an abortion-rights ballot measure. It fell short of the state’s 60% threshold to win passage — meaning the state’s six-week ban remains in place.
But, additionally, Harris 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 cast a ballot.
Kamala Harris could not separate herself from Joe Biden – above the duo campaigning in Pittsburgh in Septembe
BIDEN 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 from Biden.
But polls showed a majority of Americans believed the U.S. was on the wrong track, which illustrating how voters were itching for a change in leadership.
Additionally, AP’s VoteCast found about three-quarters of young voters said the country was headed in the wrong direction, and roughly one-third said they wanted complete and total upheaval to how the country is run.
And nearly three-fourths of voters said they were dissatisfied or angry with the way things are going in the United States, CNN’s exit polls found. Trump won about three-fifths of those voters.
And Biden was deeply underwater, with 58% of voters saying they disapprove of his performance as president. Four in five of those voters backed Trump.
