Donald Trump‘s resounding US election victory is far more comprehensive than anyone had predicted, as he rode a wave of support from black and Latino voters to retake the White House.
Central to his battle over Kamala Harris were the seven crucial swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, yet despite polls showing the pair ‘on a knife edge’ Trump is now set to win them all and – in contrast to 2016 – the popular vote too.
Dailymail.com pollster JL Partners was one of the very few to correctly predict Trump would win both the electoral college and the popular vote.
His triumph would have been impossible without a huge surge of support from black and Latino Americans at the same time as women voters – who liberal pundits had hoped would push Harris to victory – failed to turn out for her as expected.
It marks an astonishing moment of political redemption for a man who was written off after his 2020 loss to Joe Biden before facing a string of unprecedented legal cases and, finally, two shocking assassination attempts.
As so often with Trump, his win marks a series of firsts, with the Republican becoming the first former president to return to power since Grover Cleveland in 1892, the first person convicted of a felony to be elected and, at 78, the oldest person elected to the office.
And just as typically, pollsters who continually forecast the election as too close to call were proved spectacularly wrong. Yet ordinary Americans placing bets on the result appeared to be in less doubt about who would win, with the odds of a Trump win put at 62 per cent within hours of the polls opening.
As of 8.00 ET (13.00 GMT) Trump has already won the swing states of North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and is currently ahead in Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona.
Some of the reasons for his triumph can be found in exit polls, which showed Hispanic men backing Trump over Harris by a 10-point margin of 54 per cent to 44 per cent.
By contrast, in the 2020 contest Joe Biden won Latino males by a 23-point margin of 59 per cent to 36 per cent.
And while Harris still gained a majority of Latinas – 62 per cent – this was still down by the 69 per cent achieved by Biden.
Crucially, Trump also made inroads with black voters, more than doubling his support among this key demographic in Wisconsin compared with 2020, according to NBC’s exit poll.
Overall, about eight in 10 black voters backed Harris, down from the roughly nine in 10 who backed Mr. Biden.
Even as the results started rolling in for Trump, many pollsters maintained that Harris stood a decent chance of winning last night.
James Johnson, of JL Partners, can count himself among a tiny minority who correctly predicted a definitive Trump victory.
He believes traditional pollsters are consistently missing Trump voters, who don’t trust the establishment and won’t engage with ‘some weirdo’ who phones up asking how they intend to vote.