He added: “They didn’t like Hillary. She just didn’t come off as being honest.”

Polls got wrong something that residents in swing states plainly saw: Enthusiasm for Mr. Trump was boundless, while the feeling for Mrs. Clinton, outside of a handful of liberal strongholds, was like a body on life support. John McCall, 70, a lawyer who drove from his daughter’s house in Philadelphia to his home in Canton, Ohio, said he was surprised by the difference in yard signs.

“We were amazed,” Mr. McCall, who voted for Mr. Trump, said as he ate lunch at Athens Restaurant in Canton. “Once you got to the middle of Pennsylvania, it was Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. But where were her signs? There was just a complete lack. It was the same in Ohio.”

He added, “When we got home, I told my wife that this election is a complete lock.”

The numbers in Stark County tell the tale. In the 2012 presidential election, there were about 79,000 registered Democrats, compared with about 63,000 registered Republicans, according to the county’s Board of Elections. In this election, the number of Democrats had fallen to about 42,500, while the number of Republicans had risen to more than 72,400. (Unaffiliated registrations also rose, and some said Democrats were changing parties to block Mr. Trump in the primary race.) Ultimately, Mr. Trump took 56 percent of the county’s vote, to Mrs. Clinton’s 39 percent.