How He Won

Inside Donald Trump’s stunning upset.

- Zeke J. Miller

CHRIS REILLY, A COMMISSIONER IN YORK COUNTY, Pennsylvania, has lived in the heavily Republican area north of Baltimore for 28 years. On the day in September after Mike Pence spoke to some 800 folks in downtown York, Reilly scanned a panoramic picture of the crowd in the local paper and had a shock. “I recognized one face,” he said. That’s when the party stalwart knew something was going on.

Then, on a recent Friday, Reilly got word that the county had received 9,000 absentee-ballot applications in a single day. It had to mail them out by Monday but had no money for extra help. So Reilly turned up at the election office on Saturday to stuff the applications into envelopes himself. As he did, he noticed something surprising. The applications were running 10 to 1 male. And when he peeked at the employment lines, he saw a pattern. “Dockworker. Forklift operator. Roofer,” Reilly recalled. “Grouter. Warehouse stocker. These people had probably never voted before. They were coming out of nowhere.”

Back in Manhattan, at the gilded Trump Tower, the most unconventional campaign in history put its faith in these voters. Hillary Clinton and her allies had run three TV ads for every one that Donald Trump got on the air. Her ground operation had tens of thousands more volunteers and hundreds more field offices. Trump had lost each of the debates against Clinton, and he had spent weeks defending himself from a video in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women. But only the Trump campaign had a candidate who had struck a nerve. Only the Trump campaign had a message that was breaking through.