It’s now been a little more than year since the 2016 presidential election, and the vast majority of Americans still remember watching the election results pour in live and clearly recall how they felt when they first heard the words “President-elect Donald J. Trump.”
These data—and the vastly different perspectives of Trump voters vs. those who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton—come from a poll we conducted alongside the dynamic podcasting duo from “The Pollsters” for a live episode of LRC Live! - Left, Right & Center on KCRW.
Needless to say, people recount very different feelings.
The top words mentioned by Trump voters when describing their first reaction to hearing that Donald Trump would be the next president were: happy, relieved, excited, elated, and—yes—surprised.
Clinton voters were clearly more disappointed, expressing shock, disbelief, horror, and disgust.
Clinton voters expressed the most surprise that Trump won the election.
More than a quarter of people didn’t know that Trump had won until they woke up the next morning.
Methodology: This SurveyMonkey online survey was conducted November 4-6, 2017 among a national sample of 3,227 adults ages 18 and up. Respondents for this survey were selected from the nearly 3 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States. The modeled error estimate for this survey is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. Crosstabs linked here.
