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Expert: How Donald Trump Won, And What To Expect From His First 100 Days In Office

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- With America waking up to the news that Donald Trump will be the nation's 45th president, some are asking what happened and what's next?

Jeanne Zaino, a political science professor at Iona College, offers some insight into the stunning upset that put Trump in the White House, and what America can expect from his first 100 days in office.

Zaino called Election Day 2016 a "big moment for Republicans."

PHOTOS: Trump Delivers Victory Speech

"I don't think any of us predicted this could happen...there was a chance the Democrats could take the Senate and Chuck Schumer could become the first New Yorker to be majority leader and yet that didn't happen. The Republicans managed to hold the Senate, they held the House, and now of course they have the White House back," Zaino said.

CBS2: The pundits, the polls were so wrong about everything from the Senate races right down to the presidential election. So why are the numbers so off?

Jeanne Zaino: I think this is the question we're going to be asking ourselves, particularly people in my profession for a long time to come. There's a few explanations floating around out there. One is that some Trump supporters were reluctant to tell pollsters that they supported Donald Trump. You know if you were a woman and you supported Donald Trump you may feel it might be anti-feminist to say you were going to vote for him. So there's that sense out there and another thing is that pollsters may have underestimated who was actually going to go out to the polls. We have a tendency to say, "You didn't vote last time, we're not going to count you this time." And that may have been a mistake because Donald Trump may have gotten more people out to the polls who wouldn't vote in 2012.

CBS2: Where do you see Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie in Donald Trump's administration?

Jeanne Zaino: I think, if they want, will both have a place in a Trump administration. I think the question is what is it they see themselves doing? I think some people have talked about Chris Christie as potentially a chief of staff or something along those lines. We know already he's leading the transition and Rudy Giuliani, you know obviously this is somebody who's been a prosecutor, a lawyer, certainly a mayor. So there's an awful lot, if he wants to get back into politics in that way, that he can do in an administration.

CBS2: Four years ago, Obama had 63 percent of the youth vote, this time around Clinton got 55 percent. Fifty-eight percent to 39 percent of white women voted in favor Donald Trump, according to late exit polling. The disconnect between Hillary Clinton and these numbers that should've been so much stronger in her camp. What is her camp saying this morning as they asses these numbers?

Jeanne Zaino: I don't think they've had time to really asses them fully but I do think they have to think long and hard about how they lost women, particularly white women, and the millennial vote. We knew that was a problem for her all along and it ended up being a big problem for her. Donald Trump got out his voters, particularly white males and white females, in much larger numbers than all of the people that Hillary Clinton had working for her ever imagined. It was a big night for him.

CBS2: Now that he is president-elect, what do you think we can expect from a Trump administration and those first 100 days?

Jeanne Zaino: I think the first thing Donald Trump is probably going to do is what he hinted at last night which is try to bring people back together. It's been such a divisive and bruising campaign on all sides. So I think he's going to spend some time, he had some very kind words to say about Hillary Clinton at the beginning of his remarks, he also asked Democrats and Liberals who hadn't supported him, even Republicans we know hadn't supported him, to come back to the fold so we could try to work together and get things done. So I think he's going to focus there. And then I think he's probably going to take a lot of clues from Republicans in the Congress in terms of their attempt to repeal Obamacare I think is certainly something on the table, immigration reform certainly might be something he'll tackle, and also he's going to be dealing a lot with some foreign policy issues -- we've already heard Putin has come out and made some statements as well. So he's got a lot on his plate as he goes in and of course this is a huge change from what we've had for the last eight years with president Obama.

CBS2: Some of the talk during the campaign -- about deporting Muslims, building a wall in Mexico, draining the swamp, talk of that nature -- do you think he continues down that path or does he pull back a little bit more?

Jeanne Zaino: I think he's going to have to pull back. It's very difficult to continue campaign rhetoric like that which was very tough and alienated so many constituencies. So he's going to have to work very hard and I think he's going to have to make amends with some of these groups that he's managed to alienate along the way. It's going to be I think very difficult if he doesn't do that and let's not forget he's alienated members of the Republican party that he has to work with now in Congress. So he's going to have some fence mending to do as he tries to move his way into the White House and I think it's going to be the first big question, who does he bring into his cabinet and his administration to help him through? He's somebody, our first president, who's never had any experience in public office whatsoever.

John Dickerson, host of "Face the Nation," also weighed in on the state of politics and a Trump presidency during an appearance on "CBS This Morning" on Wednesday.

Charlie Rose: "We're seeing all these words like 'historic,' 'the most remarkable upset in political history.' Is it gonna change politics in America?"

John Dickerson: "Yeah it's gonna change politics, in a couple of different ways. The Democratic party is now scrambling – I mean who is the leader of the Democratic party? Go! You know?"

Rose: "Elizabeth Warren."

John Dickerson:"Elizabeth Warren is one part, but then what does Chuck Schumer do? Donald Trump might want to make some deals in Washington and he'll need the Democrats — Chuck Schumer might be able to make some deals with Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. So that might be at odds with what Elizabeth Warren wants, so that's an open question. The Republican party is going to be, there will be those who are going to run to the front of the parade that Donald Trump is now leading. There will be other Republicans who will resist him on policy grounds. There are a number of things he believes that conservatives do not believes, and there are a number of Republicans who stick to their conservative principles and they're not malleable. So what are they gonna do? This, in talking to Republicans, particularly those who are in Congress, they really think this is sort of a renaissance for Congress even though it's controlled by Republicans because they will be pushing back sometimes against their Republican president, or so the thinking goes at the moment"

Norah O'Donnell: "Profound policy changes — top of the list, repealing Obamacare?"

John Dickerson: "Profound, yes, repealing Obamacare, repealing a number of his executive orders. Also, his first Supreme Court nominee, Donald Trump is going to offer a Supreme Court nominee that will get immediate opposition from the Democrats. One of the ways the Democrats can rally is by opposing his first Supreme Court nominee."

Norah O'Donnell: "And he said in the debates he will appoint justices who repeal Roe v Wade."

John Dickerson: "That's right, he has already gotten that litmus test out there and that immediately will bring a partisan back-and-forth. And then there's the wall, there's whether he follows through on his deportation ideas, there's a long list."

Charlie Rose: "There are two Democratic Supreme Court justices who are in their 80s."

John Dickerson: "Well that's the thing, Donald Trump could name three people to the bench. It could be in his four-year term, he could determine jurisprudence in America for 40 years."

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