WASHINGTON — Donald Trump reshaped the American electorate once again this year, racking up support from Hispanic voters, young people and Americans without college degrees — and winning more votes almost across the country as he regained the presidency .

After the Republican’s populist campaign, in which he promised to protect workers from global economic competition and offered a wide range of tax cut proposals, Trump’s growing strength among working-class voters and non-white Americans helped increase its vote share almost everywhere.

The biggest increase may have been the 14 percentage point change in Trump’s share among Hispanic voters, according to an Edison Research exit poll. Some 46% of self-identified Hispanic voters chose Trump, up from 32% in the 2020 election, when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Hispanics have largely favored Democrats for decades, but Trump’s share this year was the highest for a Republican presidential candidate in exit polls dating back to the 1970s, and just higher than 44’s share % won by Republican George W. Bush in 2004, according to data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

In counties where more than 20% of voting-age Americans were Hispanic, Trump’s margin over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris improved by 13 points from her 2020 performance against Biden.

“Young Hispanics don’t have the same muscle memory as their grandparents who voted for Democrats for 50 years,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a Republican media strategist who worked on Hispanic outreach for Trump’s 2020 campaign .

This time, Trump won 55% of Hispanic men, up 19 points from the 36% he won four years earlier, while he won the support of 38% of Hispanic women, up 8 points compared to 2020.

Trump has made opposition to immigration a cornerstone of his political career, pledging to carry out mass deportations of people living in the United States illegally. Many Hispanic voters supported Trump’s hardline positions, according to the poll by Edison Research. About a quarter of Hispanic respondents said most undocumented immigrants in the country should be deported to their home countries, compared with 40% of overall voters in the poll.

ECONOMIC CONCERNS

Hispanic Americans are more working class than the country’s white majority, with a larger share of Hispanics lacking a college degree, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Hispanics also tend to be younger than average in the United States, meaning many have had less time to build wealth and have also been more exposed to the economic challenges of recent years, including high inflation and a surge in mortgage interest rates. Trump won 43% of voters aged 18-29, 7 points more than in 2020.

About two-thirds of voters considered the U.S. economy in poor shape, compared to about half of 2020 voters. Some 46% said their family’s financial situation was worse than four years ago, compared to 20% who said the same thing in 2020.

“Republicans have consistently beaten Democrats in terms of connecting with voters on the economy,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice president of the nonpartisan UnidosUS Latino Vote initiative. “This was a referendum on the economy, and that has always been the number one, two or three issue for Hispanic voters.”

In the battleground state of Arizona, a state Biden won in 2020, Arturo Laguna, of Mexican descent, became a U.S. citizen earlier this year and voted for the first time in the United States for Trump , citing the Republican’s conservatism and his support for restrictions on access to abortion.

“The three most important things are family values, being pro-life and religion,” said Laguna, a 28-year-old business executive. “I don’t feel like Kamala represents those values.”

Nationwide, where almost all votes were counted — about 2,200 counties across the country — Trump’s margin was 5 points higher than in 2020.

This broad increase – a rising Republican tide – is partly due to Trump’s gains among voters without college degrees, a massive class of voters that spans racial and ethnic categories and made up just over half of the electorate on Tuesday.

Some 56% of voters without a degree chose Trump, up 6 points from the Republican’s share in the 2020 polls. Harris won 55% of voters with a degree, unchanged from the Republican’s share. Biden in 2020, when affluent suburbs contributed to the Democrat’s victory.

Trump’s gains build on major shifts in the electorate since his triumph in the 2016 presidential election, when he far outperformed former Republicans among white, working-class voters. He largely maintained his dominance within the group this year, winning 66% of the vote, with his share down 1 point from 2020, according to the Edison Research exit poll.

However, among people without a college degree and who are not white, Trump’s vote share increased by 8 points.

While Trump gained ground in the vote count across most of the country, some of his biggest gains came in and around big cities, areas that have been critical to past Democratic victories.

Trump flipped Nassau County – just east of New York on Long Island – by winning about 52 percent of the vote there.

And in the 25 large urban counties where almost all votes had been counted as of Wednesday morning, Harris won 60% of the vote, down about 5 percentage points from Biden’s 2020 performance and the lowest share for a Democrat in these counties since at least 2012.

Harris won 53% of the female vote, while Trump won 55% of the male vote, with Trump scoring slightly with both groups compared to 2020. REUTERS