Trump poised to sweep the swing states, propelled by broad gains

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to sweep the seven swing states this election.

The Associated Press has yet to call Arizona and Nevada, but Trump is leading as of Thursday afternoon in both states.

Trump has won the battleground states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The northern "blue wall" fell, with Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes the biggest prize.

Trump got Pennsylvania voters to go with a Republican presidential candidate for just the second time in over 30 years.

Trump's victory was fueled by broad gains, from big cities to small towns.

, a political scientist at Colby College in Maine, said Trump's gains in cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia really swung the outcome.

Trump captured 63% of the vote in rural areas and small towns, up from 60% in 2020.

Trump trailed Vice President Kamala Harris in the cities and suburbs, but he narrowed the gaps.

He added two percentage points to his support in both cities and suburbs.

Trump solidified his areas of strength and chipped away at the areas the Democrats needed to turn in strong performances.

"The whole country moved to the right in the voting booth," said , the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

Republicans also flipped the Senate and look like they might hold onto the House, continuing a roughly 30-year trend of a new president entering office with unified government.

More Hispanic voters, 42%, supported Trump – a seven-percentage point increase from 2020.

"If you want to look at Hispanic voters, especially in certain localities, the movement towards the GOP is clearly a trend," said Oklahoma State University politics professor .

The Latino gender gap also increased from six percentage points in 2020 to nine points in 2024.

Men overall turned out in greater force this year for Trump than they did in 2020, though Trump won the majority of men both cycles.

Trump got 54% of the male vote this year, up from 51% in 2020.

The gender gap was eight percentage points both times.

"Donald Trump said to men, young men, especially non-college educated men, 'You're being blamed for a lot of stuff. That's unfair. I'm standing up for real men and real people,'" Loge said.

The gender gap increased among some groups, including Black men and young men.

Trump got nearly a quarter of Black men – 15 percentage points more than Black women this year. The gender gap among Black voters was just six percentage points in 2020.

And Trump increased his share of the vote from men 18-29 years old to 56%, up from 41% in 2020.

"This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before, and frankly this was I believe the greatest political movement of all time," Trump told supporters at an election night party.

Voters had real, tangible concerns, Jacobs said.

"Top of mind, those concerns were not about Donald Trump," he said. "Those concerns were about the economy. Those concerns were about immigration."

And Jacobs said a lot of voters didn't feel like the current administration was taking care of business.

"I think for the last four years, when voters have been saying that exact thing, the Biden administration and the Harris campaign just pointed to a bunch of statistics telling them, 'No, things are actually fine,' and held out hope once again that demographics would be destiny," Jacobs said. "And I think the results show just how futile that line of thinking is right now."

The uniformity in swing state results tells us that short-term conditions pushed the electorate in the same direction, McKee said

Trump had the wind at his back, and Harris was anchored down by bad short-term conditions, McKee said.

"I do think that the problem that Democrats have had for some time is that they're not connecting with downscale, non-college educated voters, who used to be a key component of the Democratic Party," he said.

AP voter surveys show Trump performed better this year than he did in 2020 among people with less income.

Trump captured half the vote from households making under $50,000, a five percentage-point improvement for him over four years ago.

The "diploma divide" grew, as 55% of those without a college degree sided with Trump. That's up from 51% in 2020.

Overall, 39% of voters said the economy and jobs were the top issues facing the country.

Over 60% of Trump's supporters saw the economy and jobs as their biggest concerns.

Overall, 63% of people said in the AP voter surveys that the economy was not so good or poor.

Under 30% of Harris' supporters gave the economy bad marks, compared to nearly 70% of Trump's supporters.

And 83% of voters said they wanted to see at least substantial change in how the country is run, with Trump supporters 14 percentage points more likely to express a desire for significant change.

"I really think the top line of this presidential election is a weather vane that tilted towards the GOP based on short-term conditions that were pretty lousy in the minds of the swing voter," McKee said.

People just want politics to work, Loge said. And the majority of voters saw Trump as the candidate better equipped to fix their perceived wrongs.

"They don't want to think about politics. That's the politician's job. If things aren't working, they'll fire the politicians and hire a new set, just like you do the plumber," Loge said. "For a lot of people, things weren't working. Things aren't working. For others for whom they are working. It feels like it's not working. And Donald Trump has spent four years saying everything's broken. So, you fired the folks who are in charge, and you hire a new batch of folks to fix it."

, the Political Management program director at GW, said inflation, particularly the higher costs of groceries and housing, was a problem for voters. Even if inflation has essentially been corralled, the economy is growing and wages are growing.

"There's a saying, you can't outrun a person's feelings," Belt said.

Harris entered the race with just 107 days to go and was never able to put together an economic message that resonated with voters, he said.

"And what she came up with was pretty hastily cobbled together, and because it was, it looked like it was pandering," Belt said.

Both McKee and Loge said Democrats will have to find a better way of reaching voters in the middle.

Loge said Democrats need to talk to people where they are about things they care about if they want to give themselves more paths to victory outside the cities and affluent suburbs.

He called it "pragmatic progressivism."

And both said Republicans would be wise to avoid overreaching with their agenda, despite the likelihood of entering Trump's term with unified government.

Every newly elected president since Bill Clinton in 1992 has , and they typically lose at least one chamber of Congress at the midterm.

McKee said voters want Washington to focus on "bread-and-butter issues."