US election: How did we miss Donald Trump's victory by a mile?
Updated
It was a trip through Western Pennsylvania and Ohio a couple of weeks ago that really convinced me that Donald Trump had a real shot at winning the Presidential election.
Many times during the campaign over the last year I've had that goose bump feeling. This trip confirmed it.
Over a week we barely saw a Stronger Together sign. Almost every house was proudly Trump/Pence, Make America Great Again.
At the time the polls were strongly pro Hillary Clinton. It was at the end of that weeklong trip that the FBI dropped the news it was reviewing the investigation into her emails and her poll numbers went south. I'm sure that affected her eventual returns, but I doubt that drop alone was responsible for her loss.
For months we've seen thousands at Donald Trump events. Even in places where it seemed unusual — like the safe Democrat state of Virginia a week or so ago — where thousands turned out and waited beyond midnight in freezing temperatures just to see him
It was when we drove out that it struck me, again.
Along the winding country roads cars were parked in every nook and cranny.
At the freeway entrance vehicles were wedged haphazardly on verges, and up the freeway ramp and then along the freeway itself for maybe two kilometres, cars parked bumper to bumper. People walked miles to see this man.
And yet the polls were all in Hillary Clinton's favour.
Analysis
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- Crabb: Election exposes great divide in female voters
- Daniel: What will a Trump presidency mean for the world?
- Cassidy: Australia not immune from Trump's global waves
- Should we be scared of Trump's access to nuclear weapons?
The polls are wrong, Trump supporters told me over and over. He's going to win in a landslide. It seemed to me they were right, according to what I was seeing with my own eyes. And yet the polls.
In the evenings my husband Rowan and I debated the numbers, and the fact that they didn't match what I was seeing in the field. Maybe I'm getting a skewed perspective, I wondered. I'd been spending a lot of time with Trump supporters.
Cameraman Brad Fulton and I, driving around these places, talked about it and decided he would win it, but again, wondered if we were blinkered by "Trumpland".
Contacts who worked on the Hillary campaign dismissed my queries. No, she has it, they would say. Really? I asked. It just never seemed clear-cut to me.
Make no mistake, I've closely observed Hillary Clinton at her rallies and she's warm and personable and gentle with people one on one, taking a thousand smiling selfies. But her baggage overwhelmed trust. Too many people just don't like her history, and her public persona.
The silent majority
Today we returned to Western Pennsylvania, a state that's now red for the first time since 1988.
Donald Trump is now the President-elect.
"He tapped into that silent majority. People were pissed off and said enough was enough," said Mike McMullen, a supporter of Mr Trump who I first met at the Republican National Convention in July.
But what about the fear? The planned trade tariffs, the Muslim vetting, the Wall, the deportation of illegal immigrants, even if families are split?
"I don't think people need to be afraid," he said.
"Yes there's going to be some concerns about breaking families apart and so forth but if you're here illegally, go through the process."
His friend Maryanne interjected: "I don't think they're going to literally pull people out. I think they're going to say you need to do this this and this and give them a chance, so I can understand why people would be afraid of that but we have to have rules."
Over dinner, his friends agree on the central elements of Mr Trump's appeal.
"He appeals to the common, the everyday man. He talks to us and he wants to help us, the forgotten man," said Anne Harrold.
"He knew where to touch the nerve in America. He was listening to the people that no one else was listening to," agreed Patrick Danahey.
We visit a local volunteer office. They're eating Victory cake and wearing President Trump 2016 t-shirts, somehow printed last night. They have cookies with Donald Trump's face on them and Trump champagne and they're celebrating because while they may have been invisible to pollsters, they were seen by Donald Trump.
Topics: federal-election, us-elections, government-and-politics, foreign-affairs, world-politics, united-states
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