Election results breakdown reveals how Trump won by a landslide – taking both the popular vote and the crucial electoral vote

Donald Trump stormed to victory last night in both the popular vote and the electoral college, in an unmistakable sign of the enthusiasm of the American people.

With the final votes still being counted, Trump quickly gained the 270 Electoral College votes he needed.

And he still maintains the lead in the popular vote — with 51 percent, compared to Harris’ 47.5 percent, throwing cold water on the idea that Democrats could repeat their 2016 complaints that he is the less popular choice in the entire country was.

Trump also made gains with nearly every voting bloc he lost in the 2020 election, assembling a coalition of multi-ethnic working-class voters to defeat Kamala Harris.

And Harris underperformed Joe Biden on Tuesday in the 2020 contest among key voting groups, including women, the working class and Latinos.

This is evident from figures from exit polls.

But the election results also come 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 was putting the country on the wrong track.

It all led to Donald Trump overcoming a criminal conviction, indictments and an assassin’s bullet and returning to the White House.

And Trump did it in a landslide. The election that was predicted to be a nail-biter was instead a red tsunami.

Trump won not only the electoral college, but also the popular vote, with 71.2 million votes to Harris’ 66.4 million. It is telling that Harris received fewer votes than Biden in 2020. That year their ticket won 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.

“A big reason why President Trump won the run is that he made clear how he will improve the lives of every American and the fact that he can do that right away. He doesn’t need one, two or three years to figure out where things stand 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 pulled off a victory that was almost a mirror image of his 2016 campaign. Here’s a look at how he did:

WORKING CLASS VOTERS

Trump won white working-class voters in 2016 and went a step further this cycle by bringing in black and Latino working-class voters to boost his vote base.

Early on, his campaign aimed to put together this expansive coalition. Working-class voters were key to Trump’s victory in 2016, just as they were key to Biden’s victory in 2020.

Trump’s campaign built on these numbers to integrate black and Latino voters.

These two groups, mostly men, leaned more toward Trump this year than in 2020, with Black support nearly doubling to 15% and Latino support growing 6 points to 41%, according to preliminary results from AP VoteCast.

The largest movement among these men were those without college degrees, commonly referred to as working-class voters, who broke heavily for Trump.

RACE

Trump has made huge strides toward winning over minority voters — an important new chapter for the Republican Party and a warning sign for Democrats, who are taking 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 most significant gains compared to his performance against Biden in 2020 were Latino men.

The numbers show that the late focus on comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who mocked Puerto Rico during the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, did not cause the damage Harris’ campaign hoped.

The gains were most concentrated among Latinos under 65.

In Florida, heavily Latino Miami-Dade County had backed Democrat Hillary Clinton by 30 points in 2016 and backed Biden by 7 points in 2020. On Tuesday, Trump won by almost 12 points.

Trump also made significant gains among Black men, more than doubling his performance in North Carolina in 2020.

Harris performed slightly worse among black voters than Biden did four years ago. She received the support of 86% of black voters, compared to the 90% Biden won in 2020.

YOUNG VOTERS

Trump has made big gains among young voters — especially among men, who have made a dramatic shift to the right after supporting Biden four years ago.

He courted the group hard and it paid off.

Trump appeared on numerous podcasts and other events — mixed martial arts competitions and auto races — that appealed to young men, and he selected 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 to Democrats among that group, allowing Biden to win by 15 points in 2020.

Young voters were clearly divided between genders.

About six in 10 women ages 18 to 29 voted for Harris, and more than half of men in that age group supported Trump.

GENDER

In what may be one of the most shocking results of the night, Biden outperformed Harris among female voters.

Harris did not make gender a centerpiece of her campaign and counted on accusations of misogyny from Trump to give her that voting bloc.

She won the group, but not enough to get her the White House.

Women favored Harris by 10 points on Tuesday, but in 2020 they were ahead of Biden by 14 points.

Men favored Trump by 10 points, compared to nine points four years ago.

The only segment of the electorate where Harris made notable gains over Biden’s 2020 performance was among college-educated women — those are the same voters who helped Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.

THE ECONOMY

Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 with the famous statement ‘it’s the economy stupid’.

That maxim still applies today.

Multiple pre-election and Election Day polls conveyed the same message from voters: the economy is our most important problem.

Time and time again, voters cited high prices as Americans are still reeling from inflation, which hit 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 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 highest-profile issue 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 didn’t meet the state’s 60% threshold to win passage — meaning the six-week ban remains in place.

But in addition, Harris performed much worse than Biden among voters who said they believed 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.

BIDEN FACTOR

The current commander-in-chief was a factor for Harris, especially as she struggled to break away from him.

She told The View last month that she wouldn’t have done anything differently than Biden.

But polls showed a majority of Americans believed the U.S. was on the wrong track, illustrating how voters craved a change in leadership.

Additionally, AP’s VoteCast found that about three-quarters of young voters said the country was heading in the wrong direction, and about a third said they wanted a complete and total change in the way the country is governed.

And nearly three-quarters of voters said they were dissatisfied or angry with the way things are going in the United States, CNN’s exit polls showed. Trump won about three-fifths of those voters.

And Biden was in deep water: 58% of voters said they disapproved of his performance as president. Four in five of those voters supported Trump.