The reasons why Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election will remain debated for months, if not years, to come. However, exit polls provide some insights.
In the data below, the 2020 numbers are estimated from four data sources, of which the 2020 exit poll is only one. Other sources include voter opinion polls that were later validated.
There is no single truth regarding how different subgroups vote in any election. We always deal with estimates.
Trump has made gains with women
In 2020, Biden won women by 12.5 points over Trump. This time Harris is set to beat them by just 10 points.
This wasn’t supposed to happen after DOBS, the landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion, which alienated voters ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
The argument goes that women will flock to the polls this year as well, handing Harris the win despite her lack of support among men.
In fact, women leaned toward Trump and men leaned toward him by 6 points. He won them by 10.
Trump made gains with white, college-educated voters
White college-educated voters were the other obvious foundation for Harris’ coalition. But Trump also made gains with them, according to exits, improving his margins compared to 2020 by 3 points.
He still lost them (by 10 points), but he improved in 2020, which is all he needed to do given his strength elsewhere.
Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
He also made gains with white, non-college-educated voters, improving his extraordinary margins among them by two points, winning them by 31 points over Harris, exit polls indicate.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump campaigning in Nevada, Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
Trump won with Hispanic men
In 2020, Trump lost Hispanic men to Biden by 23 points. He just won them over Harris by 10 points, a 33-point margin.
Hispanic men made up just 6% of the national electorate, but they accounted for nearly 10% of the vote in the swing states of Arizona and Nevada, and were a harbinger of a more general swing among nonwhite male voters.
Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
Trump performed 16 points better with Hispanic voters than in 2020: his largest improvement with any voting bloc.
One in five black men voted for Trump, according to preliminary polls, with Trump reducing the Democratic lead among black voters by 9 points.
Trump won two late decisions
Trump won narrowly among voters who decided in the last few days (by 2 points) and last week (by 8) according to exit results — a result seen as contradictory to the narrative.
Harris won narrowly among voters who had decided earlier in the campaign.
Trump barely lost among moderately pro-choice voters
Abortion was supposed to be one of Harris’ strongest issues. She led strongly among voters who were publicly pro-choice.
But Trump was, crucially, able to reassure voters who are somewhat pro-choice, believing it should be legal “in most cases.”
Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
He lost this group — which makes up a third of voters — by just 4 points, neutralizing the Harris campaign’s main line of attack.
Trump won among voters who believe democracy is ‘extremely threatened’
Harris won among voters who said they cared most about democracy. But Trump, in a result that would surprise many liberal voters, narrowly won among voters who consider democracy “extremely threatened.”
Republicans have made their own claims about the threats Democrats pose to democracy, claims that have not penetrated much into the mainstream media environment but have significant support among his base.
Trump won over one in ten voters who disliked him
Only 44 percent of voters in the 2024 elections, according to the directors, had a favorable view of Trump. 54 percent did not. There was a clear majority in the country that rejected it.
However, Trump won 9 percent of this 54 percent bloc. They didn’t like him, but they preferred him over Harris.
This, perhaps more than any other, is the number that should haunt Democrats after Trump wins re-election to the White House.
Trump won low-income voters
“It is not surprising that a Democratic Party that has abandoned its working-class people will find that the working class has abandoned them,” Bernie Sanders wrote after the election.
He was referring to one of the most striking shifts in the election: In a reversal of 2020, Trump beat the Democratic nominee among those earning less than $50,000.
Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
It’s unclear how Biden and Trump fared among those who earned more than $100,000 in 2020: estimates vary.
But Harris won it this year, according to opinion polls, confirming the transformation of the Democratic Party from a party of the working and middle classes into a distinct party for the so-called Brahmin left.
