Republican Donald Trump won the US election in a landslide victory, despite months of polling suggesting Kamala Harris the race to the White House was neck-and-neck and could even result in a Democrat victory.
Now questions are being asked about how the polls got it so wrong.
Trump needed 270 Electoral College votes and as of Thursday morning had collected 292 votes after flipping Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan and holding onto North Carolina.
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He also led Harris by more than five million votes in the popular count.
Many voters remained frustrated by higher prices even amid record-high stock markets, fast-growing wages and low unemployment.
Voters identified jobs and the economy as the country’s most pressing problem, according to Reuters/Ipsos opinion polls.
Hispanic communities, traditionally Democratic voters, and lower-income households hit hardest by inflation helped fuel Trump’s election victory.
On Thursday, political scientist Simon Jackman appeared on Sunrise with Matt Shirvington, where he explained the discrepancy between the result and poll predictions.
“I think it is a systematic under-sampling of the Latino community, in particular — that’s a community that has shifted at least 15 points in the direction of Donald Trump,” Jackman said.
“I think in a way that either the pollsters weren’t able to survey correctly or potentially people weren’t telling us what they were really thinking is another possibility.
“The other thing is trying to estimate how big these non-white, non-high propensity voting communities are going to ultimately be on election day and that’s one of the stories in the data you can see.
“In non-white communities, Philadelphia County is a great example, in the heart of Philadelphia, they turned up and voted the Democrats down.
“Bad news for any Democratic candidate and the hard thing, I think, for pollsters to get their head around.”
Shirvington then turned his attention to gender.
“The thought was that women would turn out in droves for Kamala Harris. It just didn’t happen. Where did Harris’ campaign go so wrong?” he asked.
“It’s the economy stupid — everyone underestimated how important that was … it is tough to get excited about issues two, three and four that the Democrats might be putting in front of you, when issue number one, the hip pocket, isn’t being taken care of.”
Jackman said he believed Trump was going to make good on his promise, to hit the ground running and turn America’s foreign policy around, including in Russia and Ukraine.
“I take him at his word on that. I think he understands he’s got a narrow window as well,” he said.
“And I think he’s going to be looking at the mistakes, in his view, that he made in his first administration of letting himself get suckered in or cornered by the DC establishment.
“Expect some big moves there. I think in the early going. And as we move towards January 20, on January 6, guess who presides over a joint sitting of the House and the Senate to certify the electoral count vote?
“Kamala Harris has that role. Last time someone had to do that, presiding over their own election loss, was Al Gore in 2000.”
– With AAP
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