It's official; Donald Trump will be US President again in January 2025. With the results from two states still pending, according to the Associated Press (AP), whose standard DW follows, Trump has comfortably won not only the Electoral College, but also the popular vote.

As of Wednesday evening local time in Washington, the Republican candidate and president-elect had more than 72 million votes, while his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris had fewer than 68 million votes.

While some heads of state and government such as India's Narendra Modi and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu enthusiastically congratulated Trump, the mood among many people in Western Europe is one of shock and incomprehension.

DW shared a video on the social media platform X in which several Germans show how they are sad, scared and disappointed. While this applies to about half of people in the US, others expressed excitement about Trump's victory.

It's fair to say that there is a big gap between the expectations of people outside the US and the way Americans actually voted.

“There's no doubt that Trump had a strong electoral majority and even won the popular vote, which was unexpected,” said W. Joseph Campbell, professor emeritus at American University in Washington DC and author of the 2024 book “Lost in a Gallup: Election Failure in U.S. Presidential elections.

“But the shock and surprise this year is nothing compared to what it was in the US in 2016,” when Trump won for the first time, Campbell told DW.

Trump has managed to win over important sections of the population

Now Trump has won a second time. An important factor was the coalition of voters he was able to build.

“Trump has done pretty well with minorities, which is unusual for a Republican candidate,” Campbell said.

Trump increased his support among both Black and Latino voters in the 2024 election compared to the vote shares he won in 2020.

Four years ago, 8% of black voters voted for Trump, this year it was 16%. According to the AP, his share of Latino voters increased from 35% in 2020 to 42% in 2024.

The former president and president-elect also managed to win over young men. According to the AP, 45% of men ages 18 to 44 voted for Trump in 2020, and this year that number rose to 52%.

Among male voters ages 18 to 29, Trump won by 13 percentage points over Kamala Harris. Four years ago, Joe Biden managed to win this group by a margin of 15 percentage points.

“Trump aggressively targeted 18- to 29-year-old men of various ethnic groups and was successful,” Michelle Egan, a professor of politics, governance and economics at American University, told DW.

“One factor was that he was able to reach them through social media and didn’t rely on traditional ballot measures like door knocking.”

Harris' fight for abortion rights did not reach young men

Another problem for Harris was that a key issue she raised at nearly every campaign appearance failed to reach young male voters: abortion rights.

“Harris relied on this theme and it appealed to 18- to 29-year-old women, where she prevailed,” Egan said. “But it didn’t really appeal to 18- to 29-year-old men.”

Harris had said she would fight to restore the nationwide right to access abortion, which a conservative Supreme Court majority struck down in 2022.

Egan said the big issues that defined the 2024 election — and that hurt Harris — were “the two selves: inflation and immigration.”

Biden had put Harris in charge of immigration and border security, and Trump used that to blame her for a variety of problems that Republicans say are due to irregular immigration across the southern U.S. border.

Inflation was a major contributor to Kamala Harris' loss

“I think a lot of it was because prices remained high under Biden,” J. Miles Coleman, an analyst at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, told DW.

Egan emphasized that “people vote with their wallets.” Many Americans, she said, are focused on how expensive everything from food to gas to housing has become under the Biden-Harris administration.

Campbell agreed that the economy played a major role in Trump's victory.

“Elections in this country are almost always a referendum on the incumbent government, and Harris has not sufficiently distanced himself from that,” he said.

“The difficult economic times are not over yet. Many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, buy a home or put food on the table.”

Ukraine is not a major concern for voters

There are concerns from the European side that Trump will sharply limit aid to Ukraine because of his closeness to Putin and the skeptical way in which he has spoken about NATO.

This potentially limited support for Ukraine did not hurt him in the election.

“Many of the things Americans care about are domestic issues,” Egan said. “Ukraine and Israel just weren’t that important.”

Edited by: Wesley Rahn