The president ... did a good deal better with minorities in 2020 than he did in 2016.

Assuming the exit polls are more reliable than the ones that predicted a blue wave, Joe Biden did what he said he would do on Election Day in the upper Midwest—just not how he said he would do it. In 2016, millions of people in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who had supported Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 opted to back Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. It was these voters, not the Kremlin or Ku Klux Klan sympathizers, who delivered the White House to Republicans.

For liberals who are happy enough to be rid of Mr. Trump, this is a distinction without a difference. But for anyone playing the long game, it’s clear that the president’s brand of Republican populism isn’t going away.

intriguing is the increasing racial and ethnic diversity of that coalition. The president, who is regularly dismissed in the media as a bigot, saw a small uptick in his support among black and Hispanic voters. The black increase is notable but less impressive when put in context. Between 1976 and 2004, Republican presidential candidates averaged just over 11% of the black vote. John McCain won 4% in 2008 and Mitt Romney 6% in 2012, but they had to run against Barack Obama. In 2016, Mr. Trump, who didn’t have that excuse, managed only 8%, an improvement to be sure, but still below the pre-Obama norm. Mr. Trump’s 4-point increase this year gets him back to the GOP’s traditional share of the black vote. The president’s performance among Latinos, which jumped to 32% from 28%, is more interesting.

Mr. Trump also won 26% of nonwhite voters, according to NBC’s exit poll, driving commentators on the left crazy. One described these voters as “distracted.”

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