Kellyanne the pollster

After decades spent in the trenches of the conservative movement as a pollster, Conway ascended to the head of Donald Trump’s fledgling campaign in the homestretch of the election and helped lead him to victory.

The former informed the latter more than people probably realize.

Years of delving day after day into the opinions of the American people on just about every issue seems to have prepared Conway for a political moment that’s left the media utterly baffled, flailing for any way to explain Trump’s victory.

Speculation over the mood of a divided and unpredictable electorate has consumed the press since Trump’s campaign first started gaining steam in the summer of 2015.

But at National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit on Friday, Conway recalled hearing a persistent desire for a presidential change agent, “somebody who goes to Washington owing no one anything,” for years before the rise of Trump.

Decades spent in the business of polling helped Conway build a working knowledge of how people feel about political issues, why they feel that way, which words they respond to, and so much more. It was her business to take the political temperature of the American people.

Consequently, the 50-year-old former business owner now brings with her to the White House a robust mental archive of public opinion.

And it shows.

Conway has a habit of peppering her loquacious monologues with easy aphorisms that belie a more complex understanding of public opinion.

Call them Conwayisms.

Referencing her firm belief in October that the Access Hollywood tape would not end her boss’s campaign, Conway on Friday noted her understanding that, “There’s a difference between what offends [people] and what affects them.”

She addressed potential “Never Trump” followers in the room by calling his presidency a “victory shared by many, but a future shared by all.”

In a discussion of political messaging strategies, Conway said, “Delivery is less a style now, and more a system.”

She described fighting “right versus wrong, not right versus left.”

Tellingly, Conway also plans to sell policies that could benefit the corporate sector by “reminding people that these are employers, making sure that people look at them as who they are, which is job creators.”

In September, my colleague Gabby Morrongiello reported on Conway’s experience polling millennials, writing that she’s “developed intimate knowledge of America’s largest voting bloc.”

“She knows their likes and dislikes, which issues they find most important, and the anxiety they bear over affording college, purchasing a home or belonging to the first modern generation that is doing worse economically than their parents,” Morrongiello wrote.

Extending that comprehensive understanding of millennials to the other demographics she polled leaves you with a good idea of just how well she understands public opinion.

In that context, it’s likely no coincidence that the single most puzzling electoral outcome in modern history was achieved by a campaign with a pollster at its helm.

Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.