MILWAUKEE, Nov 7 (Reuters) - In anxious conversations across the U.S. on Wednesday, many Democrats were struggling to understand what led their neighbors to vote Republican Donald Trump back into the White House.

Some feared that Tuesday's presidential election showed that their values – left-leaning, socially liberal – were now firmly a minority among Americans in a divisive campaign. Others were frustrated with the Democratic Party's leadership, who they said had lost touch with much of the electorate who wanted help with the rising cost of living.

With few exceptions, Democrats worried about the future for themselves, family and friends after Tuesday's results revealed the electorate's pronounced shift to the political right.

In Milwaukee, William Washkuhn, a 33-year-old engineer, said he voted for U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, after canvassing for and donating $1,600 to her campaign. It stings him to think he is in the minority of Americans.

"One campaign was running on values and the future and really connecting with people," he said. "The other was running on fear and division and hatred. And it's rough to frame it like that because that means my values are also in the minority. And that's scary."

Trump, whose polarizing campaign was characterized by dark rhetoric, promised to "heal" the nation during a speech on Wednesday. "Every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future, every single day I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body," he said.

Many Democrats simply do not believe him.

Joan Arrow, a 29-year-old trans woman who canvassed for Harris in Arizona, said she wept and was discussing with her husband whether they should leave for Canada. Karla Miller, a 61-year-old reverend at the First Congregational Church in Hendersonville, North Carolina, worried that the "climate emergency is going to be even more ignored." Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric has alarmed Allen Meza, a 34-year-old social worker in Smyrna, Georgia, who as the son of an African American father and a mother who emigrated from Mexico feared being targeted because of his skin color.

But Trump was leading the popular vote by around 5 million votes late on Wednesday. Some of his largest advances were seen in and around big cities, areas that have been critical for past Democratic victories. He was up 14 percentage points with Hispanic voters compared to 2020, according to an Edison Research exit poll, and once more piled up support among Americans without college degrees.

Washkuhn is not convinced the party has figured out how to staunch its bleeding support: "It feels like the Democrats are trying to play chess, but don't know how to move all the pieces anymore," he said.

Harris, who is Black and an Asian American, would have been the first woman to become the U.S. president had she won. Some Democrats saw sexism or racism in her defeat.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, Krista Wilson, a registered Democrat, said it was a "hard day to be a woman" following the victory of Trump, who was convicted on 34 criminal counts in a hush money case, impeached twice and found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a civil trial.

"I'm afraid for the state of the country that people would vote for a convicted felon, someone who is unstable, who incited violence, and who uses fear and racism to motivate voters - that they would vote for him over a highly qualified woman," said Wilson, a 40-year-old infrastructure consultant.

Some Democrats saw less sinister motives.

"I think it was about people's pocketbooks," said Jean Thomson, a 63-year-old executive coach in Marietta, Georgia. Groceries and other expenses were cheaper under Trump, and many voters hoped, wrongly in Thomson's view, that Trump could bring prices down.

"His behavior is so egregious, but many of my Republican friends say you need to look past that," said Thomson.

Aaliyah Pilgrim, 28, who voted for Harris in Georgia, was devastated by Trump's win, but also said she was depressed by her belief that the Democratic Party has lost its way and does not see it "ever recovering, ever."

"Democrats are meant to be for the people, but people don’t see that," she said. She works in a care home and also drives for ride-share companies to help pay her bills. "Things are getting harder for the lower-class people. We need more support and people think they will get that from the Republicans. I'm scared."

A number of Democrats say they are dismayed by Biden and his party's support for Israel's deadly military campaigns in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Pro-Palestinian protesters frequently heckled Harris during her election campaign rallies, and warned she would lose votes in the battleground state of Michigan, home to the largest population of Arab Americans in the U.S., which Trump flipped on Tuesday.

Lexis Zeidan, a Palestinian American in Dearborn, Michigan, who co-founded the Uncommitted National Movement, said that Harris surely faced racism and sexism, but her party had also ignored the needs and anti-war values of many core voters.

"This administration completely ignored a lot of things that people cared about – climate justice, the working class," Zeidan said, "talking about a great economy where people can barely afford groceries and rent, and, what I care most about, Gaza policy, and bombs being dropped."

Zeidan, a Democrat who worked to get Biden elected in 2020, said she voted straight Democrat in all the races on her ballot in Tuesday's election except at the top, leaving the line for president blank.

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Reporting by Timothy Aeppel in Milwaukee; Helen Coster in Raleigh, North Carolina; Andrea Shalal in Dearborn, Michigan; Tim Reid in Atlanta, Georgia; Additional reporting by Gabriella Borter, Stephanie Kelly and Maria Svetkova; Writing by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Shri Navaratnam