Donald Trump cruised to a decisive election victory over Kamala Harris with the support of some voters Democrats once trusted.

The Republican president-elect has demonstrated strength with the white working-class voters who first brought him to the White House in 2016; He garnered strong support from Latino voters and performed better than expected among young Americans, especially men.

Among Latinos, who have been a key part of the Democratic voter base for decades, Trump enjoyed a whopping 14 percentage point increase compared to the 2020 election, according to exit polls.

Nowhere is Trump’s reshaping of the electorate more evident than in the coveted “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that helped propel Joe Biden to victory in 2020.

This time, Trump won all three states, dashing Democrats’ hopes that Harris could find a path to victory despite early election night losses in the southern states of North Carolina and Georgia.

Trump, who is preparing to win the popular vote, described the result as the “largest, broadest, most united coalition” in American history in his victory speech in Florida.

“They came from all walks of life. Union, nonunion, African American, Hispanic American,” he told the roaring crowd. “We had everyone and it was beautiful.”

In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, Trump enjoyed overwhelming support from the state’s growing Latino population.

Exit polls show Latinos in Pennsylvania make up about 5% of the total vote. Trump garnered 42% of those votes, compared to 27% when he ran against Joe Biden in 2020.

Polls will continue to change as votes are counted, but they are generally representative of election trends.

Some voters in the state’s “Latino belt” — the eastern industrial corridor that has moved right in the last two elections — said they were not surprised by the result.

“It’s actually very simple. We liked the situation four years ago,” said Samuel Negron, a Pennsylvania state trooper and member of the large Puerto Rican community in the city of Allentown.

Mr. Negron and other Trump supporters in the majority-Latino city have listed other reasons why their community is turning to Trump, including social issues and the perception that family values ​​are now more aligned with the Republican Party.

But the most common factor was the economy, especially inflation.

“You pay $5 for a dozen eggs here. It used to be $1 or even 99 cents,” Mr. Negron added. “I think a lot of us have woken up from the Democrats’ lies that things were better. We realized things were better back then.”

Polls conducted before the election found that many Latinos in the United States, and especially in Pennsylvania, were attracted to Trump’s proposals to block immigrants at the US-Mexico border and enact much stricter immigration laws.

Venezuelan American Daniel Campo said that Trump’s slowly advancing “socialism” claims reminded him of the situation he left in his own country.

“I understand what immigrants are leaving. But you have to do it the right way. I came the right way,” he said. During the Biden-Harris administration, “Things need to be done legally. Many of us were concerned that the borders had just opened,” he said.

Collectively, the turn of Latinos toward Trump, his dominance of white working-class voters and his growing support among non-college-educated voters generally have presented an insurmountable obstacle for Harris’ campaign.

But Trump has also improved his position through some surprising twists and turns.

In 2020, Joe Biden had a 24-point advantage among voters under 30. This time the gap narrowed to just 11 points. While black voters nationally still overwhelmingly support Harris (85%), in Wisconsin Trump’s support among that demographic more than doubled, from 8% in 2020 to 22% this election.

Some of the most important battlegrounds in Wisconsin were the three counties surrounding Milwaukee—Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington—known as Wow counties. Not only did Harris fail to significantly increase Biden’s 2020 vote share in these suburban counties, she also suffered losses in rural, white parts of the state dominated by Trump.

Preliminary results also show that Harris did not receive as many votes as Biden in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest, most diverse city.

Michael Wagner, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said his direct appeal to working-class voters may not make much of a difference given the national political climate.

Ted Dietzler cast his vote at a fire station on the outskirts of the small city of Waukesha.

“I’m voting for Trump because of the border, the economy, and no more wars,” he said, wearing a Green Bay Packers hat.

“We saw a huge difference when Trump became president,” Dietzler said, adding that she was impressed by Trump’s embrace of former Democrats such as Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, who both appear to have roles in the Trump administration.

“Inflation is a very important issue, and I don’t think Harris fully understands that,” he said. “I think it would be better for all of us with Trump back.”

Trump’s national economic messages also caught the attention of working-class voters in the Midwestern state of Michigan.

With nearly all the votes counted, Trump leads the state he lost in 2020 by nearly 85,000 votes. He increased his share of the vote in rural areas as well as in Macomb County, where most working-class voters in the Detroit suburbs are located.

One of them, Nahim Uddin, a delivery driver and former Ford auto worker, voted for Trump because the former president said he would lower prices.

“I went to buy a car, interest rates rose rapidly,” the 34-year-old actor said. “That’s the real reason I voted for him.”

The same was true for Yian Yian Shein, a small business owner in the city of Warren who said Trump would lower income taxes and help people like him.

Democrats have tried to adapt their economic message in Michigan, touting investments in electric car production while gaining support from United Automobile Workers President Shawn Fain, a frequent critic of Trump.

But Michigan State University professor Matt Grossmann said Republicans were able to “neutralize” those messages by arguing that a switch to electric vehicles would come at the expense of jobs.

Ultimately, what blue-collar voters across demographic groups cost Democrats was the perception that they were responsible for high prices and tight budgets.

“Voters have felt economic pain largely due to the post-Covid inflation period, and they are taking it out on Biden and Harris,” University of Michigan professor Jonathan Hanson said.