The country has moved significantly to the right in this presidential election compared to where it was four years ago.
In 2020, President Biden won six of the seven most closely watched states, but this year they all went to President-elect Donald Trump.
Additionally, Trump is on track to win the popular vote this time around, while Biden won by 7 million in 2020.
Trump won the suburbs
Suburbs have become increasingly diverse and populated. More than half of voters in 2024 were in suburban areas, according to exit polls. They have become swing areas, home to some of the most targeted House seats, and a good barometer for who will win the presidential election.
The suburban winner has won 11 of the last 12 presidential elections, dating back to 1980. And this year, it was Trump, with 51% to 47%, according to exit polls.
Vice President Harris hoped she could recruit women in the suburbs of key states to cross the finish line. But that didn’t happen. Trump, for example, won suburban white women by 7 points, as well as suburban white men by 27. So there were kitchen tables divided, but not enough to help Harris win.
In several swing states, there were significant shifts in Trump’s leadership in the suburbs, based on near-final vote totals. That includes a net swing of nearly 60,000 votes in the four counties that make up the Philadelphia suburbs and the two main ones north of Detroit, more than 10,000 in the “WOW” counties around Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington). and in counties touching Fulton County, Georgia, where Atlanta is located.
However, in some of these metro Atlanta counties, Harris did better than Biden, and her losses were not as severe in metro Charlotte as in the former Blue Wall states. This is one reason why Democrats are more optimistic about the future of the Sun Belt than the industrial Midwest.
Rural areas are even more favorable to Trump
Trump did extremely well in rural areas, and in 2024 he won by a record margin. Since 1980, no candidate has done better. Trump won 64% of voters in rural areas this year, according to exit polls. The previous record was 61%, set by Trump in 2016.
This helped him in all swing states, but also in red states, like Texas, which increased his total in the popular vote. For example, he obtained a net of more than 900,000 votes in Texas compared to 2020; and more than a million in Florida, a long-time competitive state that has seen a dramatic change in Trump’s leadership.
His improvement in those states also reflects major shifts in his leadership among Latino voters in South Florida and South Texas.
Harris also underperformed in urban areas
Many Democratic base voters live in big cities, and these urban areas are often critical to Democratic victory in swing states. But Harris only got 59% of voters in urban areas, less than Biden, former President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
This underperformance largely explains why she lost in key states. For example, in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Phoenix is located, Harris received about 61,000 fewer votes than Biden in 2020. Trump, on the other hand, gained about 56,000, for a change of 117,000 votes in a single county.
In Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit), Harris saw a drop of more than 60,000 votes, while Trump gained about 24,000. Black voters are key in Wayne County, as are Arab Americans. About 100,000 Arab Americans, the largest Arab American population in the country, live in Dearborn, and many were unhappy with the Biden administration’s policies regarding the war in Gaza.
The story is similar in other key urban areas of the Swing States, from Las Vegas to Philadelphia.
And Harris also saw a decline in blue states, down in New York, for example, by more than 800,000 from Biden’s total four years ago.
