I think the same mistake was made in both Brexit and this election. The people at the top looked around them, and they assumed the people they saw were a representative sample of the population. Because usually, they're more or less right.
There's a whole demographic out there that doesn't really care about politics. It doesn't matter who POTUS is because nothing will really change in my city. They don't bother voting because none of the policies particularly interest them. Suddenly you've got this guy who isn't a politician, and he's promising to do things that decades of politicians haven't been doing.
Trump got the people who are disaffected by traditional politics to come out and vote, and that's enough to make a big difference, just like it was with Brexit.
There's a whole demographic out there that doesn't really care about politics. It doesn't matter who POTUS is because nothing will really change in my city. They don't bother voting because none of the policies particularly interest them. Suddenly you've got this guy who isn't a politician, and he's promising to do things that decades of politicians haven't been doing.
Trump got the people who are disaffected by traditional politics to come out and vote, and that's enough to make a big difference, just like it was with Brexit.