Why voters chose Trump

President-elect Donald Trump has been a divisive, unpopular political figure for years, and he remains so. Even as he improved on his previous two runs for office by winning the popular vote, it seems Americans by and large didn't change their minds about Trump personally — many still have misgivings about his character and bombastic, sometimes anti-democratic campaign rhetoric. So what drove so many to vote for him?

An analysis of 2024 exit polls show a clear divide based on what issues voters say most impacted who they voted for. Around a third of voters ranked each of "the state of democracy" and "the economy" as their most important issue. Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump, respectively, each had sizable advantages among voters who prioritized these issues. After those, though, Trump had an edge: Harris won around three in four voters who prioritized abortion, but Trump's advantage was even greater among those who prioritized immigration, and he won a solid majority of the smaller share who prioritized foreign policy.

These numbers suggest that Trump won on immigration and the economy, while losing on abortion and democracy. We took a deep dive into polling to see what Americans think about Trump's policies and rhetoric, and how these opinions helped Trump win. Ultimately, many Americans agreed with his hardline stances on immigration and bought into his message on the economy, while they didn't necessarily think he would act on his more extreme anti-democratic statements or enact unpopular abortion restrictions.

Immigration

Since the start of his 2016 presidential run, Trump has made curbing immigration into the United States a signature piece of his campaigns — including through often-inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric suggesting that dangerous criminals are "flooding" the country through the southern border with Mexico. Many of Trump's oft-repeated claims about immigration have been proven false, such as his claims this year that immigrants coming into the country were released from "insane asylums" — possibly a mixup with the term 'political asylum,' which many are seeking when they arrive at the border — and the online conspiracy theory that gangs from Venezuela had taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado.

During the presidential debate in September, Trump also repeated a false claim amplified by Vice President-elect JD Vance that illegal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating local dogs, cats and other pets. (A post-debate YouGov poll found that 54 percent of Americans thought that claim was probably or definitely false, but 52 percent of those who planned to vote for Trump said it was probably or definitely true.)

But these sometimes outlandish statements were part of a broader strategy by Trump and Republicans to underscore what they see as the negative impacts of immigration, and that strategy seems to have been effective this year. Republicans have blamed the Biden administration for what they say is lax border security, although — under pressure from Trump — they scuttled a bipartisan border security and immigration reform bill supported by President Joe Biden that would have enhanced border security while also tackling other areas of immigration reform. The move may have helped Trump maintain his advantage on immigration, as he continued to lambast the Biden-Harris administration's handling of the issue on the campaign trail and promised "mass deportations" of illegal immigrants.

While Trump's proposals for an extreme crackdown on immigration are a vague promise that many experts say wouldn't work and would likely be difficult and expensive to carry out, they may have resonated, as voters continued to worry about immigration and said they trusted Trump more than Biden or Harris to deal with the issue. An ABC News/Ipsos poll also from early October found that 56 percent of adults supported deporting all undocumented immigrants in the U.S., up from just 36 percent who said they generally thought undocumented immigrants should be deported in March 2016, during Trump's first campaign. Back then, half of voters said those immigrants should be allowed to stay.

In a Marquette University Law School poll from early October, 58 percent of likely voters similarly said they somewhat or strongly favored "deporting immigrants who are living in the United States illegally." Notably, though, that number dropped to 37 percent if the question specified undocumented immigrants who had been in the country for a number of years, are employed and have no criminal record, suggesting that Republican messaging about the dangers posed by illegal immigrants has been effective — but could also be countered with different messaging.

A poll from the University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation similarly showed that question wording and additional information made a difference in how people felt about mass deportations. When presented with arguments for and against mass deportations, they found both sides' arguments convincing, and support for the policy was ultimately lower than in other surveys that did not present these arguments.

This polling suggests that directly calling out potential negative effects of deportations might have helped Harris erode support for Trump's plan. Her campaign instead tended to focus on Trump's (and Vance's) influence on Congress to tank the bipartisan border law earlier this year. While that bill's immigration provisions were widely popular among Americans at the time, Trump seemed to confuse the matter — first preempting the attacks by inviting blame, then changing tune and attacking the bill head-on while misrepresenting its policies.

Rhetoric aside, Americans want Trump to make immigration a priority. In an Ipsos/Reuters poll after the election, a quarter said immigration is the top domestic issue they wanted to see Trump tackle in his first 100 days in office, making it the top issue overall. And whether or not they support his immigration policies, Americans expect him to follow through: 82 percent in that survey thought he would institute mass deportations. Trump seems inclined to capitalize on this, and the reality of what mass deportations might entail may soon become clear. The president-elect has already named immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as his incoming deputy chief of staff, and has named Tom Homan, a former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement official and an architect of the family separation policy in Trump's first term, as his "border czar," an advisory role that doesn't require Senate confirmation.

Abortion

While immigration seemed to drive voters toward Trump and Republicans, abortion has been a weak spot for Republicans since the overturning of Roe v. Wade two years ago. Most Americans prefer abortion to be legal in all or most circumstances, and the various bans or restrictions that went into effect in 21 states after Roe fell are extremely unpopular. Indeed, seven of the 10 states that had abortion-rights initiatives on the ballot last week passed those protections, making abortion a constitutional right in those states.

But polling shows that, unlike immigration, abortion wasn't a top issue for most voters who planned to vote for Trump. AP VoteCast, a large survey conducted after the election, found that about three in ten voters who supported abortion-rights initiatives in Arizona, Missouri and Nevada also voted for Trump. That echoed the results of an analysis by PerryUndem of their April survey data, which found that 35 percent of 2020 Trump voters (especially those who were women, younger, or voters of color) would at least lean toward voting for a constitutional amendment that protected the right to abortion in their state.

It may be that voters who supported abortion rights simply placed a higher priority on issues like the economy in deciding to support Trump. But another important stat could also explain their votes: Unlike with immigration, most voters don't believe Trump will restrict abortion nationwide, despite long-standing pressure within the Republican Party to pass a national ban. Forty-nine percent of all likely voters and just 27 percent of Republicans in a September New York Times/Siena College poll thought he would support a national ban. In the Ipsos/Reuters post-election poll, 60 percent of registered voters and only around a third of Republicans thought he would more broadly sign a federal law "imposing new restrictions on abortions." The fact that many voters thought they could reelect Trump without compromising abortion rights likely helped neutralize Democrats' advantage on this hot-button issue.

Economy

Dissatisfaction with the economy was a top concern for voters throughout Biden's presidency, and a big reason voters gave for supporting Trump over Harris. Despite the fact that the economy is performing extremely well on many measures, Harris's campaign faced an uphill battle in distancing itself from voter's perceptions that the economy was worse off under Biden, as consumer prices remain elevated and the ways Americans perceive the economy have shifted in the wake of COVID-19. Indeed, how voters felt about their personal financial situation and the national economy were strong indicators of whether they supported Harris or Trump, per this year's exit polls: For example, around 90 percent who said the economy was "excellent" or "good" supported Harris, while strong majorities of the larger share who said the economy was "not so good" or "poor" supported Trump.

Most of Trump's economic promises centered on boosting domestic oil drilling and reducing both corporate and individual taxes, especially on tips and overtime, echoing conservative economic principles that Republicans have long favored. But another of his most high-profile campaign promises has been to raise tariffs on goods imported from foreign countries, a proposal that's put him at odds with many in his own party but picked up public support. In an Ipsos poll for Politico Canada, 52 percent of Americans supported across-the-board tariffs of 10 to 20 percent on all imported goods, and 53 percent supported a 60 percent tariff on goods imported from China — both policies Trump has floated this year.

But tariffs are admittedly a complicated policy issue, and ultimately it's not clear that many voters understand that American companies pay the tariffs on goods they import, and often pass those costs onto consumers in the form of higher prices. Fewer than half of registered voters surveyed in a mid-September poll from Florida Atlantic University/Mainstreet Research thought that tariffs would increase costs for American consumers. Twenty percent thought that the foreign countries would absorb the costs of the tariffs, 22 percent didn't know and 9 percent thought there would be no effect. (Trump has claimed on the campaign trail that foreign countries will pay these tariffs, reminiscent of his 2016 promise that Mexico would pay for a border wall.)

A YouGov/Yahoo News survey from late October presented arguments for and against both tariff policies: 44 percent of Americans found the pro-tariff argument that "hundreds of billions of dollars will come in through tariffs to benefit Americans" more convincing, while 34 percent were more convinced that the tariffs would be "effectively a big new sales tax" and increase inflation as companies pass the costs onto consumers (22 percent were unsure). When a similar question was framed in relation to existing trade policy and principles, though, results were more mixed: In a September University of Maryland poll, only 31 percent of Americans (and 39 percent of Republicans) said the U.S. should impose 10- to 20-percent across-the-board tariffs as opposed to continuing to have low tariffs on a mutual basis with other countries.

Meanwhile, a February poll by YouGov for the Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank that supports free trade) suggested that support for tariffs dropped steeply if they would increase consumer prices or prompt retaliatory tariffs from other countries — both outcomes that economists have suggested are likely in response to Trump's proposals.

Most economists — and some businesses — remain skeptical of Trump's economic plans, but often for complicated, wonky reasons voters may not pay much heed to. Instead, Trump's economic policy proposals seemed to dovetail with and amplify his "America First" rhetoric and appeal to voters' dissatisfaction and desire for change on the economy. For example, Trump claimed his proposed tariffs would inspire domestic manufacturing by discouraging reliance on imported goods — though the jury is out on whether tariffs would have this effect, bolstering American manufacturing is a priority widely popular among voters across the aisle and one that both parties have argued they would make progress on. But Trump's message seems to have resonated most in an environment where voters persistently remained unhappy with Biden's economy and were voting against it.

Democracy

A common refrain from Democrats during this campaign season was that Trump posed a threat to American democracy, and the issue of "democracy" regularly ranked as a top concern for voters in addition to major policy issues like the economy, immigration and abortion. In focus groups we conducted with PerryUndem earlier this year, we found that Trump's threats to democracy were a common concern — but while that drove some voters away from Trump, it was also something others were inclined to overlook because they preferred his economic or other policies.

Ultimately, Trump's anti-democratic tendencies deeply concerned many Americans — like the half who labeled him a "fascist" in an October ABC News/Ipsos poll — but some voted for him anyway. That's despite the fact that many also think he will make good on some of his more extreme campaign talking points. Sixty-three percent of respondents in the Ipsos/Reuters post-election poll said they think Trump will use the Department of Justice to go after people he views as his enemies and 57 percent said they think U.S. institutions will not be able to check his use of power. While those numbers were boosted by almost all Democrats agreeing, both opinions were shared by over half of independents and at least a quarter of Republicans. Fifty-three percent of all respondents also thought Trump would act as a dictator, though only 13 percent of Republicans shared that concern. (Notably, this survey includes the views of people who said they did not vote.)

Potentially balancing that, though, many Americans do seem to think checks are in place that could prevent Trump from enacting more extreme policies. More than half of Americans and more than six in 10 Republicans in the same Ipsos poll thought that Congress would try to block his agenda, and similar numbers thought unelected civil servants would. Plus, other surveys suggest that Trump supporters are more likely to share Trump's anti-democratic views or believe anti-democratic actions are justified. In a June PRRI survey, nearly one-third of pro-Trump Republicans agreed that "patriots may need to resort to violence in order to save our country."

Voters don't like Trump, but don't care

Strikingly, voters still had and have a fairly low view of Trump. In 538's favorability tracker, 52 percent of Americans view him unfavorably, giving him around a -8 net favorability rating. (Though it's an improvement from his ratings right after leaving office, when he was around 18 points underwater.) In a YouGov/Yahoo News poll from right before the election, 42 percent of Americans said Trump was "dangerous," and 41 percent said he was "extreme on the issues." (Fewer — 29 percent and 27 percent, respectively — said the same of Harris.)

In contrast, Harris's net favorability rating had briefly broken into positive territory in the run-up to Election Day — though it dipped back to around -2 in early November. In a Pew Research Center survey from early September, Harris beat Trump on eight of nine positive personal qualities, with Americans saying she was more even-tempered, a good role model, down-to-earth, mentally sharp, honest, cared about the needs of ordinary people, had a good sense of humor and was well-informed, in relation to Trump. Trump beat Harris on one metric, with more respondents saying he "stands up for what [he believes] in." In a Gallup survey of registered voters from September, Harris similarly had a large advantage (ranging from 22 to 8 percentage points) over Trump on likability, moral character and honesty.

But other intangibles seemed to matter more to voters, driving them to Trump: Voters tended to think of Trump as a stronger leader and as a candidate who represented "change." In the Gallup survey, he had more than a 10-point advantage over Harris when it came to who voters thought "can get things done" and "is a strong and decisive leader." That was carried through in exit polls: Voters who said a candidate's good judgment or "car[ing] about people like me" mattered most to their vote broke decisively for Harris, but more (58 percent) said either leadership ability or ability to bring change mattered most, and those voters broke decisively for Trump.

In all, whether voters liked or even trusted Trump didn't matter as much as the policies and change he represented and the fact that they thought he was ready and able to do the job, regardless of what he said on the campaign trail.

Mary Radcliffe and Cooper Burton contributed research.