One caveat about the national exit polls: They are designed to broadly represent the American electorate. Their sample design and lack of Asian language support may not be accurate in estimating the absolute support of subgroups in a given election. But the comparisons across years should give us a decent sense of how those groups move from year to year.
It’s also important to note that polling firms Latino Decisions and Asian American Decisions found much higher support for Clinton among Latinos and Asian American voters in a survey fielded in the week prior to Election Day. As I’ve noted before, it’s possible that differential turnout on Election Day among Democrats and Republicans might account for part of this discrepancy.
There are different benchmarks one can use to see how Trump performed compared with prior Republican nominees. Comparing yesterday’s results with 2012, as this Washington Post feature does, shows that Trump actually performed slightly worse among white voters than Mitt Romney did. He did, however, perform better than Romney among blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans, making it more difficult to claim that racial resentment was the dominant factor explaining Trump’s support nationally....
This week’s exit polls, in light of prior elections, raise these important questions about race and public opinion — not just about whites, but also about blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans. And it will be up to a new generation of research — done not just through surveys, but also through case studies and community fieldwork — to help us better understand what happened this week, and what it will mean for the future of U.S. politics.