What new research tells us about how Trump won in 2024
President Donald Trump's 2024 victory over former Vice President Kamala Harris was fueled by 'a voter coalition that was more racially and ethnically diverse than in 2020 or 2016,' as well by an advantage among voters who didn't turn out for the previous election, according to a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.
Pew's analysis, which combines survey data from its in-house panel of poll-takers with information from voter records, contributes to a more clearly emerging picture of the 2024 electorate.
It finds that about three-quarters of eligible voters in the U.S. made the same decision in 2024 that they did in 2020, whether that was voting for the Republican or the Democrat, choosing a third-party candidate or sitting out the election altogether. But one-quarter made a different choice – enough to return Trump to the White House.
Trump held onto 85% of his 2020 voters, the report finds, while Harris retained a smaller 79% of former President Joe Biden's supporters. Compared to 2020, Trump won a higher share of the vote among Hispanic voters (48%, up from 36%), Asian voters (40%, up from 30%) and Black voters (15%, up from 8%).
'These shifts were largely the result of differences in which voters turned out in the 2020 and 2024 elections,' the authors of the Pew report conclude. 'As in the past, a relatively small share of voters switched which party's candidate they supported.'
Fifteen percent of 2020 Biden supporters and 11% of 2020 Trump supporters didn't vote four years later, their analysis finds. Trump also won about 5% of Biden's 2020 supporters, while Harris took about 3% of voters who supported Trump in the previous election.
And while most eligible voters who didn't cast a vote in 2020 stayed home again last year, those who did decide to vote in 2024 broke for Trump over Harris, 54% to 42%. Adding in people who were too young to vote in the last election, the margin is slightly narrower.
Pew's analysis is based on the results of a survey conducted just after November's presidential election. Like all surveys, its results offer an estimate of voter behavior rather than an attempt at pinpoint precision. That's why different post-election analyses may diverge in some findings about the electorate, even when they converge around a general consensus.
The new analysis, like a report last month from the Democratic-aligned data firm Catalist, incorporates fresh sources of data: information from commercial voters files that aggregate official state turnout records. Pew's analysis matches that voter file data with responses to their survey – and because its polls are conducted using a panel of respondents who answer multiple surveys over time, researchers there can often track specific individuals' voting patterns.
Catalist's report similarly found that voters who turn out irregularly played a key role in Trump's victory. Since non-presidential elections typically see lower turnout, that could also have potential implications as the parties begin gearing up for the upcoming midterms.
'There's definitely some evidence that this shift in Democrats doing better among more consistent voters may have some downstream impacts,' said Hannah Hartig, a senior researcher at Pew Research – although she noted that, with a long way still to go until the next election, it's too early to know how that may play out.
A few more takeaways from the Pew report:
Trump also improved his numbers among male voters, who split for Trump by a 12-point margin in 2024 after dividing closely between the candidates in 2020. There was especially sharp movement among male voters younger than 50 – while they were about evenly split last year, that marked a swing from a 10-point preference for Biden in 2020. Both Pew and Catalist show Democrats losing more ground among male voters than female voters, while exit polling and post-election data from Votecast found that erosion across gender lines.
Education remains a major fault line in American politics. College graduates who voted in 2024 broke for Harris by a 16-point margin in Pew's data, while those without degrees broke for Trump by 14 points – although both those findings represent an improvement for Trump from his 2020 numbers. That education gap persisted among both White and Hispanic voters, while Black voters didn't divide significantly along educational lines. Catalist's report found similar educational trends, but charted somewhat less of a divide among Latino voters, while exit polling and VoteCast had showed college graduates' preferences remaining more stable.
Naturalized citizens of the U.S. made up about 9% of last year's electorate, according to Pew. And in 2024, they were closely divided, with 51% backing Harris and 47% backing Trump. By contrast, in 2020, this group broke heavily for Biden.
The design of Pew's study also allowed them to check in with nonvoters: adults who were eligible to vote, but weren't a part of the 64% who actually turned out. In the past, this group typically leaned Democratic: asked whom they would have preferred if they had voted, 2020 nonvoters favored Biden over Trump by an 11-point margin. But in 2024, nonvoters were closely split, with 44% preferring Trump and 40% Harris.
'If somehow something magic had happened and everybody who's eligible to vote had actually showed up, not only would it not have helped the Democrats and Harris, it might have actually pushed Trump's margin up slightly,' said Scott Keeter, a senior survey advisor at Pew.
The Pew Research Center surveyed 8,942 US adults in November 2024, using the nationally representative American Trends Panel, including 7,100 voters who were able to be matched against a voter file. Results among the full sample of validated voters have a margin of error of +/- 1.5 percentage points. More details on the survey methodology are available here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
24 minutes ago
- New York Times
Justice Department Says the Trump Administration Plans to Re-Deport Abrego Garcia
Less than three weeks after Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was brought back from a wrongful deportation to El Salvador to face criminal charges in the United States, the Trump administration indicated on Thursday that it planned to deport him again — this time to a different country. Jonathan Guynn, a Justice Department lawyer, acknowledged to a judge that there were 'no imminent plans' to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia. Still, the assertion that the administration intends to re-deport a man who was just returned to the country after being indicted raised questions about the charges the Justice Department filed against him. It was a surprising development when Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on June 6 that officials were bringing Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States after weeks of insisting that the Trump administration was powerless to comply with a series of court orders — including one from the Supreme Court — to 'facilitate' his release from Salvadoran custody. The administration's stated reason for doing so was equally surprising: so that Mr. Abrego Garcia could stand trial, Ms. Bondi said, on serious charges of taking part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants across the United States. During a news conference in Washington, Ms. Bondi assailed Mr. Abrego Garcia as 'a smuggler of humans and children and women,' linking him to even more serious crimes like murder and drug trafficking. 'This is what American justice looks like,' Ms. Bondi said. 'Upon completion of his sentence, we anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Bloomberg
28 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Administration to Review Contracts With Consulting Firms
The Trump administration is asking consulting firms to justify their federal contracts as part of far-reaching efforts to reduce waste in federal spending, according to a letter obtained by Bloomberg News. The US General Services Administration said in a letter dated Thursday that it is soliciting information from the firms about their contracts to help 'critically evaluate which engagements deliver genuine value and demonstrable returns to the American taxpayer, and therefore merit external support, and which should be internalized to ensure we are responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars and avoid unnecessary spending.'
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
She's unelected, unknown — and has the power to veto Trump's 'big, beautiful bill.' Who is the Senate parliamentarian?
Republicans in Congress have spent months hammering out the details of the massive tax and spending plan they have named the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, making a series of changes in hopes of crafting a plan that can gain the support of the GOP's far-right fringe, moderates and everyone in between. For all of the different factions that must sign off on whatever ends up in the final bill, one of the most important people Republicans will need to win over isn't a member of their party at all. A little-known bureaucrat called the Senate parliamentarian ultimately has final say on what can and can't go into this kind of legislation, not based on her political beliefs, but on her judgment of what the Senate rules allow. Over the course of the past week, the parliamentarian has decided that a long list of key provisions that have been part of the "big, beautiful bill" cannot be included in their current forms. Here's a list of just some of the items that have been vetoed: A plan to sell off millions of acres of public lands. Defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Blocking federal grants for 'sanctuary cities.' Cuts to federal food assistance. Barring undocumented immigrants from receiving Medicaid. Rollbacks of green energy funding and emissions standards. New Medicaid tax rules that would have brought in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. Republicans will now have to either rewrite each of these sections of the bill in a way that satisfies the parliamentarian or be forced to abandon them completely so they don't prevent the entire package from becoming law. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Thursday that he was prepared for certain elements of the bill to be rejected but is hopeful that his party can adjust and put together a final plan that maintains their priorities. 'We didn't know for sure how she was going to come down on it,' he said. 'But there are things that we can do, there are other ways of getting to that same outcome.' The rules that dictate how Congress operates are extraordinarily complicated. So complicated that even the savviest of policy-minded members can't keep track of it all. The position of parliamentarian was created in the early 20th century to essentially serve as the referee to make sure that everything in the legislature is done by the book. For decades, their job was largely to serve as a nonpartisan adviser on proper legislative procedure to the two branches of Congress. The Senate parliamentarian has become a much more important figure in recent decades because of the filibuster. Officially, bills only need a simple majority to pass through the Senate, but the filibuster allows any single senator to raise that threshold to 60 votes. It's been nearly 50 years since either party has held 60 or more seats in the chamber, which means that the filibuster can effectively sink any bill that doesn't have at least some bipartisan backing. As the use of the filibuster became more and more common, Congress was finding it difficult to get even its most basic functions done, particularly its duty to pass a budget that allows the government to operate at all. So in the 1970s, they invented a process called reconciliation, which created a way to get around the filibuster and pass bills with a simple majority again. Some of the most important legislation of the past half-century — including the tax cuts passed during President Trump's first term and former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act — have only become law because of reconciliation. The catch is that reconciliation is only available for bills that primarily concern the budget. Anything else is still subject to the filibuster. There are some other rules that disqualify even some budget-centric proposals from reconciliation. Judgments on what does and doesn't qualify for reconciliation can be extraordinarily technical, and members of Congress have obvious incentives to fudge things in order to get their preferred policies through the door. That's why the ultimate say belongs to the parliamentarian. Whenever a reconciliation bill is being prepared in the Senate, the parliamentarian will comb through every detail to determine which parts can move forward with a majority vote and which ones are subject to the filibuster. Rarely do huge mega-bills like the GOP's spending plan make it through this process unscathed. It's common for members of both parties to disagree with the parliamentarian's assessments, but under current rules, their judgment is final. The current parliamentarian is named Elizabeth MacDonough. She's a 59-year-old Washington, D.C., native who has worked for the federal government in some capacity for most of the past 35 years. She was appointed as parliamentarian in 2012, becoming the first woman — and just the sixth person in history — to hold the position. At the time, she was described as 'down-to-earth,' 'diligent' and 'a pistol' by figures in Congress who knew her well. Since assuming the role, she has largely stayed out of the public eye. She purportedly only makes one public speech a year and does not speak directly to the media. During her tenure, control of the Senate has flipped three separate times — first to Republicans in 2015, then to Democrats in 2021 and back to the GOP this year. In addition to advising leaders from both parties through several reconciliation bills over the years, she also guided the Senate through two separate impeachment trials and was responsible for protecting Electoral College certificates from the mob attacking the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack. Ultimately, the GOP doesn't actually have to listen to the parliamentarian. There is a provision that's often called the 'nuclear option' that allows Senate rules to be rewritten by a majority vote. If Republicans used it, they could overrule the parliamentarian's decision, change the standards for reconciliation or even fire her with just 50 votes. Some members of the party want to do just that. Florida Rep. Greg Stuebe called on the GOP to ignore the parliamentarian in a post on social media, writing, 'It is time for our elected leaders to take back control.' Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville went a step further in his own post. 'THE SENATE PARLIAMENTARIAN SHOULD BE FIRED ASAP,' he wrote. Thune, who would have to be on board with any action taken against the parliamentarian, said the nuclear option is not on the table. 'That would not be a good option for getting a bill done,' he told reporters Thursday. Though Thune didn't elaborate on his thinking, Senate leaders from both parties have historically been hesitant to take bold steps to undermine the filibuster out of fear that it would leave them with less power to stop legislation the next time they are in the minority. Republicans have already floated a few altered proposals to get some of their policy priorities back into the bill, but it remains to be seen how drastic the changes to the final package might be and whether these new plans can survive the parliamentarian's scrutiny.
