Instead, in a hastily scheduled speech in a dreary hotel ballroom on Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton gave her concession speech, declaring the country “more deeply divided than we thought.” 
 
 “This loss hurts,” she said. “But please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.” 
 
 The weaknesses in her candidacy, Ms. Dunn and other Democratic leaders said on Wednesday, were more than demographic. Though she and outside groups raised half a billion dollars to take on Mr. Trump with the most sophisticated ground game modern politics had seen, spanning the barrios of Orlando, Fla., black churches of North Carolina and the casinos of Nevada, the rationale for her run seemed more of a repudiation of Mr. Trump than Mrs. Clinton’s own positive vision for the country. 
 
 Even Mrs. Clinton’s closing chant in the final days of her campaign — “Love trumps hate!” — sounded like a play on her opponent’s name rather than her own inspiring vision. 
 
 Her campaign had built-in contradictions and challenges. She wanted to make history as the first female president, but she did not want to play it up so much so that she would turn off men. She vowed to help the little guy, but she accepted millions of dollars for speeches to Wall Street. She wanted to bring the country together, but she suffered from a stubbornly high number of voters who did not trust or like her. 
 
 Mrs. Clinton’s campaign tested out 84 slogans. There was “She’s Got Your Back,” “Strength You Can Count On” and “Real Fairness, Real Solutions.” 
 
 “Do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be?” Joel Benenson, the campaign’s chief strategist and pollster, asked the chairman of her campaign, John D. Podesta, ahead of a New Hampshire speech, according to a hacked email that was among the thousands released by WikiLeaks. ||||| President-elect Donald Trump on Nov. 10 pledged to accomplish "spectacular things for the American people" as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) sat by his side. (Reuters) 
 
 It's been 36 hours (or so) since we were all witnesses to the biggest political upset in presidential history. As President-elect Donald Trump and President Obama huddle in Washington on Thursday, and as the gears of the incoming government begin to grind in earnest, I'm still totally captivated by the “how” of this election. How did this happen and what can we learn about ourselves and the country as a result? 
 
 The best way to do that — still — is the exit poll, the national survey of voters that gives us a portrait of who we are and what we believe. As you might expect in an election this historic, there are lots and lots of remarkable — and remarkably contradictory — findings in the exits. My take-aways — offered only in the order I came up with them — are below. (A caveat: When you talk about slicing and dicing exit polls, you are, at times, dealing with very small numbers of actual people on which broad conclusions are based. Consider that as you go through these numbers.) 
 
 1. Trump won the white vote by a record margin 
 
 In 1984, Ronald Reagan won the white vote by 20 points on his way to a 525 electoral vote smashing of Walter Mondale. Mitt Romney matched that 20-point victory in 2012 while losing relatively convincingly to President Obama. On Tuesday, Trump one-upped them both — literally. He won the white vote 58 percent to 37 percent. 
 
 The white vote also continued its decline as a percentage of the overall voter pool. In 1984, whites made up 86 percent of the total electorate. That number was 72 percent in 2012. And 70 percent in 2016. 
 
 2. There was no surge of female voters 
 
 For all of the talk that Trump's comments about women — and the allegations of sexual assault made against him by a dozen women — would mean historic turnout among female voters (and a historic margin of defeat for Trump), it simply never materialized. 
 
 Women made up 52 percent of the overall electorate in 2016 — down from 53 percent in 2012. And Hillary Clinton's 12-point margin over Trump among women was pretty darn close to the 11-point win among women that Obama claimed over Romney four years ago. 
 
 3. There was no surge of Latino voters 
 
 Trump built his campaign on a pledge to build a wall on our Southern border and make Mexico pay for it. He suggested during the campaign that a judge of Mexican descent might not be able to rule fairly in a case involving Trump University. He said that Mexico was sending “criminals” and “rapists” to the United States. 
 
 All of that led to predictions of historically high Hispanic turnout, with many predicting that 2016 would be the election that Latinos emerge as the electoral force that their population numbers suggest they should be. 
 
 It just didn't happen. 
 
 In 2012, Hispanics made up 10 percent of the overall electorate. That bumped up, marginally, to 11 percent in 2016. And, far more interestingly, Trump actually performed better among Hispanics than Romney did — 29 percent to 27 percent. More tellingly, Clinton underperformed Obama's 2012 showing among Hispanics by six points (71 percent for Obama, 65 percent for Clinton), an underperformance that allowed Trump's slight overperformance among white voters to matter more. 
 
 4. Education level mattered yugely in your vote choice 
 
 In 2012, Obama won both voters who had graduated from college and those who hadn't; he took 50 percent among the former group and 51 percent among the latter. This time around, there was a far bigger divide. Clinton won voters with a college degree 52 percent to 43 percent. Trump won voters without a college degree by eight points. 
 
 Also, contrary to some of the conventional wisdom out there about the 2016 voter, this was a more highly educated electorate than in 2012. It split evenly — 50 percent for each — between college grads and non-college grads. Four years ago, 53 percent of the electorate was non-college grads as compared to 47 percent who had a college degree. 
 
 5. Trump did better with white evangelicals than Romney 
 
 Trump didn't do much to court white evangelical voters. And his personal story — three marriages, two divorces — doesn't seem like one that many evangelicals could or would identify with. But Trump actually did better among white evangelicals than Romney had in 2012; Trump won 81 percent of “white evangelical or white born-again Christians” while Romney took 78 percent. (White evangelicals made up 26 percent of the electorate in both elections.) 
 
 How to explain it? One theory is that as a Mormon, Romney was always viewed skeptically by evangelical whites. Another is that with social issues on the wane as voting issues, white evangelicals acted more tribally; they're an overwhelmingly Republican bloc and voted like it. Or maybe Trump's antiabortion stance — and Clinton's support of abortion rights — was enough. 
 
 6. Trump didn't bring lots of new voters to the process 
 
 Just 10 percent of voters said that the 2016 election was their first time voting. Of that group, Clinton won 56 percent to 40 percent over Trump. Of course, new voters often overlap with younger voters who are eligible to vote for the first time; Clinton won among 18- to 24-year-olds by 21 points. 
 
 7. The economy was the big issue — and Clinton won it 
 
 A majority (52 percent) of voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the country. (Voters were given a choice of four issues; “terrorism” was the second most commonly named “important” issue, with 18 percent choosing it.) Among those economy voters, Clinton beat Trump by 10 points. 
 
 Scratching your head yet? More below — but this is one of several findings in the exit poll that suggest people weren't voting on issues. Like, at all. 
 
 8. This was a change election. And Trump was the change candidate. 
 
 To me, this is the single most important number in the exit poll in understanding what voters were thinking when they chose Trump. Provided with four candidate qualities and asked which mattered most to their vote, almost 4 in 10 (39 percent) said a candidate who “can bring needed change." (A candidate who “has the right experience” was the second most important character trait.) Among those change voters, Trump took 83 percent of the vote to just 14 percent for Clinton. 
 
 The desire for change appears to be at the root of the choice lots and lots of voters made. And Trump was change while Clinton was more of the same. 
 
 9. Obamacare was a wind beneath Trump's wings 
 
 The late October announcement that the average premium for people in the federal insurance exchange of the Affordable Care Act would rise by an average of 25 percent landed like a lead balloon on a not-insignificant portion of the electorate. 
 
 Almost half of the electorate (47 percent) said they thought Obamacare “went too far.” Trump beat Clinton 83 percent to 13 percent among that group. 
 
 10. Trump's personal image was and is horrible 
 
 Trump's victory should be in no way interpreted as a vote of confidence in him or his capacity to do the job. Less than 4 in 10 voters (38 percent) had a favorable opinion of him. Only 1 in 3 said he was “honest and trustworthy.” Thirty-eight percent said he was “qualified” to be president. Thirty-five percent said he has the “temperament to serve effectively as president.” 
 
 How can a candidate win with numbers like these? Because the desire for change was so great that it overrode all of the doubts — or at least many of the doubts — people had about Trump. 
 
 11. Clinton's email hurt her 
 
 Democrats spent the entire election — and the two days since the election! — insisting that Clinton's decision to exclusively use a private email server as secretary of state was a nonissue. Turns out they were wrong. Almost two-thirds of Americans (63 percent) said that Clinton's “use of private email” bothered them “a lot” or “some.” Among that group, Trump won 70 percent to 24 percent. 
 
 12. This was a deeply pessimistic electorate 
 
 Just 1 in 3 voters said they thought the country was “generally going in the right direction.” Clinton won 90 percent of that group. But, among the two-thirds of people who said things were “seriously off on the wrong track,” Trump took 69 percent. 
 
 Again, “change versus more of the same” as the dominant theme of the election. And evidence that Trump's willingness to say, “Yeah, things suck now ... but I will fix them” was a genius strategic decision. 
 
 13. People didn't think Trump lost the debates as badly as I did 
 
 I named Clinton the winner in each of three presidential debates — and I didn't think any of the three were particularly close. Lots of people who voted Tuesday did not agree with me. Among the 64 percent who said the debates were an “important” part of their vote for president, Clinton won by a narrow 50 percent to 47 percent margin over Trump. Of the 82 percent of people who said the debates were a “factor” in their decision for president, Trump took 50 percent to 47 percent for Clinton. 
 
 Want more exit poll data? Explore it here.
– The Democrats have, somewhat belatedly, spotted two huge problems with Hillary Clinton's campaign, the New York Times reports. One was her status as a Washington insider with strong links to Wall Street, and the other related problem was a failure to connect with the white working class that helped send her husband to the White House twice. Insiders say that she turned down an invitation to a University of Notre Dame St. Patrick's Day gathering because her campaign didn't think it was important to reach out to white Catholics—and despite Bill Clinton's urging, the campaign decided to target college-educated suburban voters instead of trying to cut into Trump's lead among whites without college degrees. Strategists say the Clinton campaign blundered by expecting young minority voters to turn out for her in the same numbers that they did for Obama. Her standing with working-class white voters fell even further after her "basket of deplorables" comment. An insider tells the Times that after the remark, she told an aide she knew she had "just stepped in it." In a look at the national exit poll, the Washington Post reports that the expected surge of female voters and Latino voters that might have saved Clinton did not materialize. The poll also shows that Trump won white voters by a record 21-point margin, 58% to 37%. The previous record was 20 points, set by Ronald Reagan in 1984 and repeated by Mitt Romney in 2012. (Trump says "forgotten men and women" gave him the win.)