Less engaged voters were key to Trump's 2024 victory, new analysis finds

CNN

20-05-2025

President Donald Trump's 2024 victory rested on support from voters who are less engaged with politics, an assessment of the election based on newly available voter file data confirms, as Democratic nominee Kamala Harris saw weakened support and lower turnout compared with 2020 from a range of typically Democratic-leaning groups, including young voters, voters of color and urban voters.
The new analysis, from the Democratic-leaning data firm Catalist, bolsters the case that consistent voters are increasingly Democratic in the Trump era. It finds that nearly half of the 2024 electorate was made up of deeply engaged voters, who cast ballots in each of the past four federal elections. This group's share of the electorate was 9 points higher than in 2020 and 7 points higher than in 2016. Harris won just under 50% of these regular voters, outperforming both 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden and 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton.
But those gains were broadly offset by significant shifts away from Democrats among those who vote less regularly. While both Clinton and Biden won 54% or more of those who voted in two or fewer of the four most recent federal elections, Harris carried only about 48% of those voters. Harris also won less than half of those who did not cast ballots in 2020 but did in 2024, while Biden and Clinton each carried roughly 55% of such new voters in their elections.
Those irregular voters are more likely to be from groups that are typically Democratic-leaning: They are younger, less White and more urban than regular voters. But they are also less likely to have college degrees, a trait increasingly tied to Republican support. All of these groups shifted away from the Democratic candidate in the 2024 election.
'No single demographic characteristic explains all the dynamics of the election; rather we find that the election is best explained as a combination of related factors,' the report's authors note.
These conclusions come from Catalist, a company that maintains a nationwide voter list and provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit advocacy groups. By using voter file information drawn from election officials and campaign data, the analysis can provide a clearer picture of turnout and voting behavior than some surveys, since it is not dependent on voters to remember whether they voted in elections over time. At the same time, partisan preferences and some demographics are derived from modeling using geographic information, survey results and other data, which can be less precise than self-reported information.
The results from the Catalist assessment largely mirror the findings of 2024 exit polls on the demographic makeup of the electorate and on how key groups voted. This analysis adds key information about turnout, and a more solid read on new and infrequent voters than surveys can provide. Election officials in many places take several months to make public final turnout records for individual voters, and this is the first major nationwide analysis from 2024 voter file data to be released.
Catalist's estimates of vote preference suggest a significant gender gap, with declining Democratic support among men across race and ethnicity, and a particularly steep drop among younger men and Latino men. The analysis also shows steeper drops in Democratic support in the most urban parts of the country compared with each of the past four presidential elections.
To make comparable comparisons across elections, the Catalist report focuses on what's called two-way vote share, the split between Democratic and Republican votes within each subgroup, ignoring those who voted for third-party or independent candidates.
By that metric, Harris lost 9 points compared with Biden among Latino voters overall, 6 points among all voters younger than 30, 5 points among men, and 5 points among those who do not vote in every election. These subsets broadly overlap, and when combined, suggest starkly lower support among groups that have often been deeply Democratic. For example, Harris' support dropped 12 points compared with Biden and 19 points compared with Clinton among Latino voters younger than 30.
Drops in support for Harris also extend beyond these key groups. While Harris generally maintained Democratic support among women, including White and Black women, she did lose support among Latina women and Asian American and Pacific Islander women. Her numbers were down slightly compared with Biden or Clinton among all voters younger than 65, even as she improved slightly on Clinton's support among seniors.
Polling conducted around Trump's 100-day mark in office, though, suggests he has not held on to newfound support among these groups. Those drop-offs and the increasing Democratic advantage with more frequent voters signal that Republican performance in battleground states and districts in upcoming gubernatorial and congressional elections could look quite different from Trump's 2024 win.