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As we saw in 2016 and again in 2020, traditional survey research is finding it harder than it once was to assess presidential elections accurately. Pre-election polls systemically misjudge who is likely to vote, and exit polls conducted as voters leave the voting booths get it wrong as well.

Now, using a massive sample of validated voters whose participation has been independently verified, the Pew Research Center has published a detailed analysis of the 2020 presidential election. It helps us understand how Joe Biden was able to accomplish what Hillary Clinton did notand why President Trump came closer to getting reelected than the pre-election surveys had predicted.

How Joe Biden won

Five main factors account for Bidens success.

How Trump kept it close

Despite (or perhaps because of) non-stop controversy about his policies and personal conduct, President Trump managed to raise his share of the popular vote from 46% in 2016 to 47% in 2020. His core coalition held together, and he made a few new friends.

Longer-term prospects

With electoral mobilization at a peak for supporters of both political parties, turnout surged to its highest level in a century. The Democratic vote total increased by 15.4 million over 2016; the Republican total, by 11.2 million. In future elections, much will depend on whether mobilization is symmetrical, as it was in 2020, or asymmetrical, as it is when one party is enthusiastic while the other is discouraged or complacent.

This said, Republicans are facing a structural dilemma. For the most part, their coalition depends on groupsnotably whites and voters without college degreeswhose share of the electorate is declining. Moreover, as elderly Americans, who now tend to be supportive of Republican candidates, leave the electorate, they will be replaced by younger cohorts whose views of the Republican Party are far less favorable. Among voters under age 30, Joe Biden enjoyed a margin of 24 points over Donald Trump, and political scientists have found the voting patterns formed in this cohort tend to persist.

There are potential countervailing forces, however. If the Democratic Party is regarded as going beyond what the center of the electorate expects and wants, Democrats gains among suburban voters and moderate Republicans could evaporate. And if Democrats continue to misread the sentiments of Hispanics, who now constitute the countrys largest non-white group, their shift toward Republicans could continue. There is evidence that among Hispanics as well as whites, a distinctive working-class consciousness is more powerful than ethnic identity.

As my colleague Elaine Kamarck has observed, Hispanics could turn out to be the Italians of the 21st centuryfamily-oriented, hardworking, culturally conservative. If they follow the normal intergenerational immigrant trajectory rather than the distinctive African American path, the multi-ethnic coalition on which Democrats are depending for their partys future could lose an essential component.

Despite these possibilities, Republicans have made scant progress at the presidential level over the past two decades, during which they gained a popular vote majority only once. In the four most recent elections, their share of the popular vote has varied in a narrow range from a high of 47.2% in 2012 to a low of 45.7% in 2008. Despite labelling Mitt Romney a loser, Donald Trump failed to match Romneys share of the popular vote in either 2016 or 2020. Trumps gains in some portions of the electorate have been counterbalanced by losses in others. If Republicans cannot move from their current politics of coalition replacement to a new politics of coalition expansion, their prospects of becoming the countrys governing majority are not brightunless Democrats badly overplay their hand.

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New 2020 voter data: How Biden won, how Trump kept the race close, and what it tells us about the future - Brookings Institution