Winning every single swing state in what was projected to be a tight election wasn’t the biggest surprise Tuesday. It wasn’t even how quickly the election was decided.

The biggest surprise was Trump appearing to win the popular vote, something a Republican has not done in two decades. GOP strategists explained to the Daily Caller that Trump did so by peeling away from the Democratic base that typically runs up the popular vote total in big cities, specifically by using surrogates to target black and Latino voters.

“When you look at a campaign and the whole idea is shaving away your opponent’s base, Donald Trump did that. If you look at youth vote, black vote, Hispanic vote, men and women, he had gains in all, and then if you look at demographics based off of urban, suburban and rural, Donald Trump gained in urban, suburban and rural,” Trump surrogate Harrison Fields told the Caller.

“There wasn’t an area where he regressed at all. And I think that’s the winning formula,” he added. 

Kamala Harris, with >95% of precincts reporting, is polling at 67.8% of the vote in New York City.

If that holds, that would be the WORST performance for a Democratic Presidential candidate in the five boroughs since 1988 (!!!!)

A disastrous evening for Democrats in Gotham.

— Michael Lange (@MichaelLangeNYC) November 6, 2024

As of Friday morning, Trump was on track to win the popular vote, as he maintains about a four million vote (three percent) lead with final counts trickling in across the country. The most impactful state still counting a significant amount of votes is California, but most prognosticators expect Trump will maintain a lead even after the Democratic stronghold finishes counting.

If you just extrapolate out the mail voting states with significant #s of uncounted votes (AK, AZ, CA, CO, OR, UT, WA) it gets you to a popular vote of Trump 50.2%/ Harris 48.2% or thereabouts.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 8, 2024

Fields explained that was possible because Trump over-performed with key demographics that typically vote blue. In Texas, for example, Trump won seven more counties along the southern border than he did in 2016, indicating an increase in support from the Hispanic community, according to The New York Times. One of those counties was 97% Latino Starr County, which hadn’t been won by a Republican since the 19th century.

Trump flipped Dearborn, Michigan, the nation’s largest Arab-majority city, from blue to red. His victory over Harris was nearly six points in the city, with 18% of the vote going to third party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, according to the Detroit News.

While Trump diminished the Democratic base, Harris widely underperformed compared to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Ninety-two percent of black Americans voted for Biden in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2024, 86% of Black Americans backed Harris and 12% voted for Trump, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Research. Most of that increase came from men — Harris only won about 78% of black men, according to one CNN exit poll.

Her support among young voters, ages 18-29 also slipped. Biden won the age group by 24 points in 2020, but Harris only won the age group by 13% in 2024.

Trump defeats Harris in both popular and electoral vote, delivers Senate landslide.

CNN: “Let’s see where Kamala has outperformed.”
Jake Tapper: “Holy Smokes, LITERALLY NOTHING?!” #election2024 pic.twitter.com/VMfWCAp7EH

— Kristine Froeba (@Kristine_Froeba) November 6, 2024

GOP strategist and CNN commentator Shermichael Singleton told the Caller that the Republican party is now the “multiracial, working class party.” He explained that when he began working in politics in the 2010s while Obama was in office, Republicans didn’t have success trying to peel off parts of the Latino and black American base like Trump did in 2024.

“They helped propel Donald Trump. When you look at North Carolina, his black numbers increased to 21%. You look at Pennsylvania, he increased his numbers of black men from 10% in 2016 to a 25% rate. Look at his black numbers with black men in Texas, went from 19% to 34%, that’s a 19 point increase,” Singleton told the Caller.

After weeks of speculation over when the election could be called or how long it would drag out, Trump’s victory was rather decisive, called not long after midnight on Nov. 6, first by Fox News. The former president went to his watch party to address his supporters in Florida, while in Washington, D.C., Harris fans trickled out of Howard University as her path to victory dwindled.

Harris camp’s closing message to staff didn’t resonate with some, per @AlexThomp:

“It was detached from the reality of what happened,” one said. “We are told the fate of democracy is at stake, and then the message was, ‘We’ll get them next time.’ “https://t.co/Hw5FcTH5fX

— Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) November 8, 2024

On Wednesday, the vice president called Trump to concede the race and addressed her supporters. Since, Democrats have begun the finger-pointing, trying to decide who to blame for losing key blocs of their base. Some Democratic officials are blaming Biden for his handling of inflation but also for staying in the race too long and giving Harris a short runway to work with in the final stretch of the 2024 election, numerous outlets reported. (RELATED: Biden Skips Harris Election Watch Party To Hang At White House)

Republicans aren’t pointing to a poorly run Harris campaign or Biden’s hesitancy to drop out as the reason Trump was able to win the 2024 election. Rather, they’re pointing to the work the Trump campaign did and the agenda the president-elect put forth as the reason for the historic race.

“He empowered surrogates like Byron [Donalds] and Janiyah Thomas on our team, and even me, to communicate a message that would speak directly to blacks, to kind of broaden the message, but also like bring it back to, ‘Hey, we’re here to fix your problems.’ We didn’t pander, that’s one thing we didn’t do. Black and Hispanic. We don’t want to be pandered to. We don’t want to be lied to,” Fields told the Caller. 

“I think it was really a united message around success. And I think the American people just felt like he was stronger, going to be more successful and he was more credible,” he added.