MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In the days leading up to election night, news outlets across the country - including ours - were predicting a historically close race, one that could take days to call. But as last night progressed, it became clear former President Donald Trump was on a path to victory, so much so that before anything was official, he thanked his supporters from his campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DONALD TRUMP: They came from all corners - union, nonunion, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American, Muslim American. We had everybody.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Then, Wednesday morning at about 5:30, the Associated Press called Wisconsin for Trump, giving him more than the 270 electoral votes he needed to become the 47th president of the United States. And though we are still awaiting final tallies, it appears that Trump is on track to win the popular vote for the first time.
KELLY: This afternoon, his opponent - that would be Vice President Kamala Harris - called now President-elect Trump and formally conceded the race. Later, Harris addressed a crowd of supporters at Howard University, and while she said she accepts the results of the election, she struck a somewhat defiant tone.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KAMALA HARRIS: While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.
(CHEERING)
SUMMERS: Now, with the race that was expected to be historically tight behind us, the question is, how did Trump win so decisively? That's something we're going to unpack with two veteran political strategists, Democrat Anna Greenberg and Republican Sarah Longwell.
KELLY: All right, we'll say welcome to you both. And I want to walk through who turned out for Trump and what issues drove them. Let's start with women. Anna, early indications showed women were going to turn out in high numbers. The thinking was that would help Harris. It didn't. What happened?
ANNA GREENBERG: Well, first of all, I think that, like many people, myself included, we got a little bit ahead of our skis in the early vote, where you saw actually a pretty significant gap in turnout between men and women, suggesting that there would be an even bigger gender gap than there normally is in turnout. And it turned out that it was not the case. Fifty-three percent of the electorate was female, which is fairly standard. And there was a gender gap, but it wasn't as big as many were predicting. And so Harris won 53% of women, while Trump won 55% of men. And clearly, that wasn't enough.
KELLY: Yeah. So Sarah, jump in on this and your take on the so-called gender gap, which didn't really materialize. Does that tell us female voters were not as fired up over reproductive rights, over the issue of abortion, as everybody thought they were?
SARAH LONGWELL: Yeah. I also think that it was just - look, it was the economy. The economy - look, I do focus groups all the time, and I always start them by asking people, how do you think things are going in the country? And for years now, people have been saying they do not think things are going good. Inflation's been killing them. You know, they're frustrated with immigration. And so the Dobbs effect was just minimized.
And I think that what women - you know, they did obviously break for Harris somewhat, but it wasn't nearly at the scale she needed to make up for the fact that, you know, Democrats were doing poorly with men of all races, and the bottom was falling out with Hispanics. They really needed white women to make up for those numbers, and they didn't.
SUMMERS: If I can just jump in here. I want to talk about Latino voters because an NBC News exit poll found that Trump won Latino voters by 25%. Particularly interesting was Latino men. So Sarah, do we have a sense of what it is about Trump's message that is driving such seemingly decisive support with this group in particular?
LONGWELL: Yeah. When I do focus groups with Hispanic voters, you know, they sound just like sort of white voters who vote for Trump. And there's been very little difference. And they tend to be very hawkish on immigration. They, too, cite the economy as the No.1 issue, hit hard by inflation. And then there's also certain cultural elements. A lot of it is just they sort of do not like the sort of Democratic Party's more identitarian politics. They tend to reject that. And they have been culturally breaking more and more for Republicans now for a while, and then the bottom really fell out this election cycle.
SUMMERS: Anna, let me bring you in here. I mean, this is a group that has traditionally supported Democrats. I will just note that Vice President Harris trailed President Biden's 2020 numbers with this group. Explain to us what you're seeing here. Why is the party losing support?
GREENBERG: Well, I think that there has been a change in the Hispanic electorate that has been underway for some time, because as the population grows and more and more Hispanic voters were born in the U.S., our native English speakers consume more English - almost exclusively English-language media, they start politically seeming like just everybody else, right? And as the population grows in that segment in particular, you would expect - just like historically, Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, Polish - to assimilate and be like everybody else.
So in some ways, from a demography standpoint, it's not that much of a surprise, and Hillary Clinton also underperformed among Hispanic voters. And I think that Democrats need to think about this in a way as the new normal, and start thinking differently about how you reach out to Hispanic voters, in particular, understanding the differences in the population and communities from state to state, from region to region, generationally, language, even country of origin.
KELLY: We've already touched on one of the other big issues of the campaign, so let me just park us for a moment on the economy. I want you all both to listen to what we heard from a voter in Michigan earlier this week. This is Michael Gee (ph). He was talking about how he sees the difference between the economy now and the economy under President Trump.
MICHAEL GEE: I think people were more confident. Things were running smoother - could provide for our family. I was in 7-Eleven yesterday. Eggs were $6.99 for a dozen eggs. I've never seen eggs that expensive in my life.
KELLY: Sarah Longwell, did Trump's victory really boil down to something like the price of eggs?
LONGWELL: I actually think yes, that that is one of the biggest factors, and we heard it all the time in the groups. And in fact, I do think it's sometimes tough for people in big cities to understand that - how price-sensitive these voters are. When I do focus groups with voters - and this is one of the reasons I think Democrats underperformed with young people - people just - they know exactly how much milk costs, they know exactly how much eggs cost. They're very sensitive to the price of gas.
And this is - look, in the inflationary environment that we had post-COVID, it has felled incumbents across the globe. People have - you know, incumbents are losing at a rapid rate in this post-COVID environment, because inflation is something that really does end presidential elections.
KELLY: Although we know, Anna, that inflation has returned mostly to something resembling normal levels. So why didn't that resonate with voters?
GREENBERG: Right. And incomes have risen and the stock market's doing great. All those things. I think a couple - first, I agree with Sarah, but I think it also more broadly suggested this was a failed administration. And if you look at Joe Biden's job approval numbers and his favorability, obviously incredibly low, stayed incredibly low. Even after we saw the switch in the ticket, his numbers not get - did not get any better. And in many ways, this was a change election. And so I think the inflationary pressures and the sense that it came from the Biden administration was part of, you know, a vote for change.
KELLY: One more theme we heard in our exit polls, our reporting from swing states, is that people - including Republicans who didn't necessarily like Trump. I interviewed one Republican in Georgia a few weeks back, who said, look, I wouldn't want to marry the guy, but he's a strong leader. He's going to make my life better. Reconcile those two things for me.
GREENBERG: Well, I think we have to keep in mind that people are living in siloed information environments. And so I think the perception that the economy was better under Trump - which is actually, in many ways, not true - and that the Biden administration didn't do anything for people - also not true. But if you are living in siloed information environments, whether it's the media you consume, the people you talk to, the places you work, you're going to have a certain sense of how things are going, not just where you are, but all over the country. And that was very, very negative for most of the Trump voters.
SUMMERS: Sarah, let me ask you this. I've got just a big-picture question for you. We saw Trump win big last night. He made gains in nearly every demographic. He's won all five of the seven swing states that have been called so far. You look at a map, it looks quite red. One could surmise that the whole country is swinging right. Is that the case?
LONGWELL: It is, and it's not just the swing states. Places like Illinois, other - you know, New Jersey - they all saw swings to the right. But I don't know that that necessarily means that the country's getting more conservative per se. I do think it has much more to do with the fact that people were really frustrated with the economy. It was a widespread situation.
You know, the fact that there was that much movement in states where they weren't having advertising, they weren't having Get Out The Vote operations, you know, like the swing states were, indicates that there was a massive macro, you know, frustration with the Biden administration and the economy and immigration that led the country to sort of roundly reject Kamala Harris as somebody who was seen as the incumbent.
KELLY: Anna Greenberg, the Democrats have lost the White House. They have lost the Senate. We don't know yet where the House will land, but it's not looking great. Are Democrats ready now to change their message, to do the work to change who feels that they belong in the Democratic party?
GREENBERG: Well, I think that's an enormous question that is difficult to answer, especially the day after the election. I think that there will definitely be soul-searching, and there will be, you know, an autopsy, just like there was for Republicans in 2012. But I think when you are a party that represents a diverse coalition racially and regionally, in terms of education level, the notion that you can sort of turn on a dime and say, well, I'm just going to talk about things that men care about, and hopefully, I'll win an election, isn't really how it works.
And I'm not suggesting that Democrats have a wonderful message to men. I'm not even suggesting that all men are actually a good target for the Democratic Party, but the idea that it's such a diverse - I mean, the Republican advantage in terms of message is its homogeneity. And the Democrats' advantage around its diversity is that it makes it - is both that it is broadly representative but also much more challenging for this - what I think is a minority - homogeneous set of voters, even though Trump obviously won the popular vote.
KELLY: Sarah Longwell, a very quick last word from you. Are Republicans ready to do the work to welcome all Americans? - because Donald Trump's going to be president for everybody.
LONGWELL: Look, I do think the Republicans have been making an active effort to become a multiracial working-class party and that that is where the party is going. It is not going back to the party of Mitt Romney or George W. Bush.
KELLY: OK. That is Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and Democratic pollster and strategist Anna Greenberg. Thanks very much to you both.
GREENBERG: Thank you.
LONGWELL: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
