Five surprising things we learned from the 2024 results

Donald Trump won big. Polls predicted a tossup, but he ended up running the table in swing state after swing state. His third election could end up being his best. Many Americans thought his political career was over after Jan. 6, 2021, but he emerged stronger and with broader coattails, helping sweep more Republicans into power in congressional races as well. “This was a movement like nobody has ever seen before," Trump said in the early hours of Wednesday.

The Republicans will control the Senate with a potentially comfortable majority. Multiple Senate races broke toward the GOP as the night went on. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio fell to Republican Bernie Moreno, an auto dealer and Colombian immigrant. Sen. Joe Manchin, who became an independent earlier this year after leaving the Democratic Party, retired. He will be replaced by Republican Jim Justice, the state’s governor, who won on Tuesday night.

This means Trump will have a much easier time getting his cabinet confirmed and passing things like changes to the tax code. It was still too early to determine which party would control the House of Representatives. If Republicans retain control of that chamber, Trump will have a much clearer path to implement his agenda without obstruction from Democrats in either chamber.

One reason Republicans performed so well is because of the major inroads Trump made with younger male voters. Voter survey numbers from Tuesday showed Trump won 18- to 29-year-old men by 11 percentage points, securing 54% of that group compared with 43% for Kamala Harris. In 2020, VoteCast data showed that President Biden won those voters by 15 percentage points, 56% to 41%.

Trump made targeting younger men a cornerstone of his campaign and it appeared to pay off. He appeared on numerous podcasts and other events that were aimed at appealing to young men, who are traditionally lower-propensity voters.

Democrats failed to grow their margins in cities. This made it easier for Trump to run up big victories; he grew in popularity in rural and suburban counties but Harris failed to counter that by growing her urban advantage. Fulton County in Georgia, home of Atlanta, offered one example. Harris won about 72% of the vote there on Tuesday night, just under the 72.6% that Biden won there in 2020. The same was true in Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, which includes Charlotte. She won just under 66% of the vote there Tuesday, while Biden won a little more than 66% in 2020.

The education gap grew. Those without a college degree moved rightward, according to the data. Harris won college-educated voters by 16 percentage points on Tuesday, while Trump won those without a college degree by nine points, according to VoteCast. That is a difference of 25 percentage points. Back in 2020, Biden won college-educated voters by 16 points—the same as Harris—but Trump won those without a degree by only 4 points—for a difference of 20 points.

The nation’s political divide around educational attainment has been growing for years and these results suggest it isn’t likely to stop soon.

The GOP also made big gains with nonwhite voters. Among Black voters, Trump saw his share of the vote grow to 15%, compared with 8% in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. There was a similar jump with Hispanics. On Tuesday, Trump won 41% of the Hispanic vote, 6 points higher than in 2020.

The biggest increase came from Black people who didn’t have a college degree.

In addition, Trump yet again rallied more rural white voters, helping him run up margins in a number of states. In 2016 and 2020, critics were skeptical that Trump could find enough voters in rural counties to compete with all the votes coming out of big urban centers, but he did it again on Tuesday. In Pennsylvania, he notched big gains in places like Fayette, which he won by 38 percentage points after winning it by 33 points in 2020. He won Lumpkin County, Ga., by 62 points, up from 58 points in 2020.

That is what he needed to do to win.

Write to Dante Chinni at dante.chinni@wsj.com