Donald Trump has been elected as the 47th president of the United States, and now that most of the election returns are in, the deep dive can begin into who showed up in the polls.
The results and exit poll data reveal the undercurrents of what has shaped an election full of twists and turns.
Among the biggest storylines of the contest were groups of Latino and rural voters swinging toward Trump by a staggering margin.
Mike Dabadie, chief executive officer and managing partner of the nonpartisan Heart & Mind strategies, a Reston-based research firm, joined WTOP’s John Aaron and Michelle Basch to discuss how the former president won the election.
Listen to the full interview below or read the transcript. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Michelle Basch: Your firm always delves into post election polls. Can you give me any early sense of how you think we got here?
Mike Dabadie: There’s some real clear indicators now that we’re here in the morning, Michelle, just a couple of things I’ll point out. First off is that Donald Trump really increased his margins from 2020 to 2024, with a couple of particular groups. First off are among Hispanics. He increased his margins from 32% to 45%. That’s up 13.
And among Asian voters, he’s up plus four. But the other story that’s here is the increase in rural vote. That went up six percentage points from 57 to 63. So, it’s really a significant story where the campaign concentrated on running up the margins, and particularly among rural voters and also among Hispanics.
John Aaron: So, why didn’t polls leading up to the election necessarily reflect what we’re seeing now?
Mike Dabadie: Well I think some polls did, of course not all of them, but I think the adjustments that many of the pollsters made where it was showing such a close election, at least nationally, panned out. Some of the states, of course, panned out the way that they thought, like in Virginia.
But in the Blue Wall, in Wisconsin and Michigan and in Pennsylvania, and even down to Georgia, but particularly those three, I don’t think that they were picking up, to your point, these numbers among particularly Hispanics and also rural. Rural voters can be difficult to poll in reaching them, so that might not have gotten picked up as much, but some polls did.
John Aaron: So are you saying that President Elect now, Trump, got Hispanics and Asians to turn out when they may not have been Republicans or may have been Republicans?
Mike Dabadie: Well, he got them to turn out, I’m not sure that I would say Republicans or Democrats, but he really ran up the margins among Hispanics, and particularly among Hispanic men. So like I said, his margins went up from 32% in 2020 among Hispanics to 45% in this race.
Now let’s break that down by gender, because that’s the other issue, is the gender gap. Hispanic women went for Trump 37% versus where he was in 2020 by 30%, so he went up seven points. But, among Hispanic men, Trump was at 36% in 2020. He got 54% among Hispanic men. And among women, let me just back up to the gender gap because I mentioned that, Trump actually increased his female vote from 2020 to 2024. He got 42% nationally in 2020. He got 45% in 2024.
John Aaron: It’s an open ended question, but how did he do that? What was the messaging that made that work?
Mike Dabadie: Well, like I said, I think it’s the issue agenda there. Trump was messaging very strongly on a message that was both rational, the issues like pocketbook, and then also taking that and connecting it to how people are going to benefit personally in their lives, by focusing on inflation, the economy and I will also say immigration, because those were, in addition to democracy, those were the top four issues. So, he was messaging very strongly on an issue agenda that resonated with voters.
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