If there’s a throughline for the last decade of elections, it’s the stealth Donald Trump vote. Yesterday, the electorate veered towards Trump in a way many polls and talk of late momentum for Kamala Harris failed to capture. It’s evident that many of the lower-propensity voters who didn’t show up in 2022 but did in 2024 were once again both tougher for pollsters to measure and more open to supporting the populist Republican, powering Trump’s gains versus four years ago in virtually every state.
Much as when Trump beat expectations in 2016 and 2020, polls did point to a few trends that ended up materializing, including Trump’s mammoth gains with Latino voters and significant inroads with Gen Z and millennial voters. But they failed to anticipate other trends, including Harris impressively matching Biden’s showing with working-class whites while Trump notched surprising gains in highly college-educated suburbs — including just outside DC.
At this point, the most likely outcome is a GOP trifecta, including a continued narrow Republican House majority. Yet given the breadth of Trump’s triumph, it’s remarkable many down-ballot
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