Exit Polls Analysis: How Donald Trump Won
With Donald Trump making history Wednesday morning by pulling off one of the most improbable election victories in recent memory, there are a number of important keys that factored into the billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star's successful campaign for the Oval Office.
As Trump has campaigned on the premise that he is a political novice with the goal of breaking up the political establishment to restore greatness to America through opposing international trade agreements, being tough on immigration and nominating constitutionalists to the Supreme Court, exit polling suggests that Trump's campaign rhetoric has struck a chord with a good chunk of the American population expressing concerns over the direction of the country and the prospect of the American economy.
CNN's exit polling, which is based on interviews of at least 24,537 voters in 28 states across the nation, shows that a good portion of the American voters didn't think either Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton were qualified to be president and most of them still voted for Trump.
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People who were disgusted with their options voted for Trump
According to the CNN exit poll, 14 percent of the respondents believed that "neither" Trump nor Clinton were "qualified" to serve as president. Among those who expressed such a view, 69 percent of them voted for Trump, while only 15 percent of them voted for Clinton.
Additionally, 14 percent of the respondents said that neither Trump nor Clinton has the "right temperament" to be president. Of those voters, 71 percent voted for Trump, while only 12 percent voted for Clinton.
Nearly half of voters bothered "a lot" by Clinton's email scandal
According to CNN's exit poll, 45 percent of the voters said that Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state bothered them "a lot." Of those voters, 87% percent said they voted for Trump, while only 7 percent of them said they cast ballots for Clinton
Of the 63 percent of voters who broadly said that Clinton's use of a private email server did bother them, 70 percent of them said they voted for Trump, while only 24 percent of them said they voted for Clinton.
For comparison, 70 percent of respondents said that Trump's treatment of women bothered them and only 65 percent of those voters said they voted for Clinton, while 29 percent said they voted for Trump.
Less minority support for Clinton
The only major racial demographic that Trump was able to win was white people.
According to CNN's exit poll, 70 percent of the respondents white white. Of the white voters, 58 percent of them said they voted for Trump, while 39 percent of white voters voted for Clinton. Trump's result actually represents a slight one-percentage-point decrease compared to white voters who voted for Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.
Eighty-eight percent of the black respondents and 65 percent of the Latino respondents said they voted for Clinton, compared to the 93 percent of black voters and 71 percent of Latino voters who reported voting for Obama in 2012.
As some were expecting Trump to become the first Republican nominee in 60 years to lose the majority of the white college-educated vote, the exit polling finds that 49 percent of white college graduates voted for Trump and 45 percent of them said they voted for Clinton.
As predicted, Trump won among non-college-educated whites, which accounted for 34 percent of the exit poll respondents. Sixty-seven percent of the non-college-educated whites said they voted for Trump, while 28 percent of them voted for Clinton.
