In post-election analysis, exit polls are usually the dominant form, both to improve understanding of what happened and to start controversies about how to interpret a result. But raw vote counts are also very informative about the strengths and weaknesses of parties and candidates. They also offer clues about what the future holds. Differences between states can identify potential problems each party faces in the long term and their potential weaknesses, even in their most loyal strongholds.
The near-final vote tally – Donald Trump with 77,266,801 (49.9%) and Kamala Harris with 74,981,313 votes (48.4%) – belies talk of a term for the president-elect.1 On the plus side, Trump won about three million more votes in 2024 than he did four years ago. Harris received 6.3 million fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020. As we will see, every state showed a shift in Trump’s favor compared to 2020. On the other hand, his 1.5% lead in the popular vote was lower than Hillary Clinton’s 2.1. % advantage over Trump when she won the popular vote while losing the electoral college in 2016. Trump was the third smallest margin for a victorious candidate since 1888.
In total, the popular vote swung six points in favor of Trump. (This swing is a measure of the shift from Biden’s margin of 4.5% to Trump’s margin of 1.5%.) The national swing is a good baseline for comparing each candidate’s performance, state by state.
Trump’s gains in each of the seven swing states fell short of the national figure, although his gains in Arizona and Nevada nearly matched his improvement nationally. The average in swing states was 3.5%. A guess at what happened: These states experienced the campaign with an intensity unmatched in any other part of the country. Their voters saw more advertising and received more visits from candidates. The fact that Harris performed better in states that received the most information and persuasion from both sides might suggest that her campaign had a positive effect – although, of course, it cannot be called “successful” since she lost all seven states. In other words, the more voters saw of the campaign, the less likely they were to move away from Democrats.
Another explanation, as my Brookings colleague William Galston has pointed out, is that many of these states are more narrowly and more enduringly divided than the nation as a whole—they are called “swing states” for good reason. Between 2016 and 2020, four of them (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Nevada) also experienced changes at lower levels than the nation. In contrast, the changes in Georgia, Michigan and Arizona from Clinton to Biden were greater than the national figure. They could be considered the most “swinging” states. Georgia is particularly striking: at 5.3%, its Democratic swing between 2016 and 2020 was about double the national figure, and Democrats have given back less than half of their 2024 gain.
The fact that Trump did particularly well in Arizona and Nevada no doubt partly explains his success in gaining ground among Latino voters. The fact that the fluctuations were small in North Carolina and Wisconsin may be an indicator of the very high level of organizing undertaken by their states’ Democratic parties. Wisconsin’s swing to Trump was the weakest of any swing state. The fact that Georgia and North Carolina experienced very slight fluctuations suggests that these two Southern states will now be among the highly competitive states for some time to come. This will also be true of Michigan and Pennsylvania, which once again posted slim margins of victory.
For Democrats, the toughest news of the election came in states firmly in their camp. The broad swings in favor of Trump in New York suggest a resurgence of Republicanism, first visible in the 2022 midterm elections, even as 2024 Democrats regain some of the House seats they had lost three years ago in the state. The big shift in New Jersey and Harris’ relatively small margin of victory at least suggest the possibility that the Garden State could move from solidly Democratic to more contested terrain. That will make the 2025 New Jersey governor’s race a particularly telling test. California, Massachusetts, and to a lesser extent Rhode Island remain solidly Democratic, but the sharp swings suggest some disillusionment with Democrats. In the case of California and New York, the Latin American shift toward Trump undoubtedly played a role. And urban and metropolitan challenges related to crime, homelessness, high rents and a shortage of affordable housing were clearly a factor.
As political writer Harold Meyerson writes, noteCalifornia saw a drop in turnout of about 10% between 2020 and 2024. “Some of the most Democratic counties saw the biggest drop in turnout,” he writes in The American Prospect, “with the mega-county of the state, Los Angeles, which is home to ten million Californians – which represents the largest decline, with a drop of 14%. Except in “the handful of swing districts in the state,” Democrats made little effort to turn out the vote in Harris’ home state, which she was certain to win. As a result, Harris received 1.834 million fewer votes than Biden. Trump was up only marginally, by about 75,000 votes in a state that has voted more than 15 million times. The drop in Democratic participation therefore largely explains the shift in favor of Trump. But California Democrats will look for reasons beyond organizational issues to justify the demobilization of their electorate. As Meyerson noted, the sweeping passage of a statewide proposal toughening criminal penalties — and the defeat of progressive prosecutors in Democratic Los Angeles and Alameda counties — were signs of dissatisfaction with crime rates. “The near-omnipresence of homelessness in California cities,” he added, “has now pushed many upper-middle-class liberals to embrace policies intended to limit urban disorder.”
A decline in turnout also hurt Harris in New York, but the state also saw a significant increase in voting for Trump. Harris received 625,691 fewer votes than Biden; Trump received 326,902 more votes in 2024 than in 2020. It can be reasonably concluded that about half of the Republican swing in New York can be explained by a drop in Democratic turnout, while the other half is due to GOP converts or new voters. In New Jersey, declining Democratic turnout was the biggest factor. Harris was down 640,185 in the Biden vote; Trump was up 84,902 from his 2020 vote.
Results in the rest of the Northeast were less dramatic, but a swing toward Trump made New Hampshire a competitive state for the future, as it has been in the past. Biden’s advantage in 2020 may have been exceptional, not a new normal. Maine will also continue to be a moderately competitive state, especially given Republican strength in its more rural congressional district. Maine and Nebraska are the only states that award electoral votes by congressional district and not just by statewide result.
Pacific Coast states outside of California showed very little change, and fluctuations were remarkably small in Oregon and Washington. Hawaii’s swing was the largest, but close to the national swing, and it remains the most Democratic state in the region.
Consistent with what happened in New York and California, the largest movement for Trump in the Midwest occurred in the region’s most staunchly Democratic state, Illinois, although the movement was clearly weaker than in the other two bastions. As in 2016, Minnesota proved to be a more competitive state than its Democratic reputation would suggest. The slight change in Kansas, which has a Democratic governor, suggests that among Republican states, it may in the long run be more open to Democratic incursions than other Republican states. Nebraska is something of an outlier state, a partial swing state, as both campaigns actively fought for the Omaha-based congressional district, which Harris, like Biden, won.
Stability was the rule in the Mountain West region, with all six states experiencing lower fluctuations than the national trend. New Mexico’s relative proximity is a wake-up call for Democrats and, again, a sign of Latino voters shifting toward Trump. The very slight change in Utah reflects its particular character in the Trump era: It is largely conservative, particularly outside the Salt Lake City area, but the state’s Mormon community has been somewhat more conservative. resistant to Trump than other conservative religious groups.
The biggest changes in the South reflect two of the major achievements of the Trump campaign and two of the most ominous omens of 2024 for Democrats. Barack Obama won Florida in 2008 and 2012, but it gradually moved closer to the Republicans, and the swing to Trump in 2024 was one of the largest in the country. Texas, a state that Democrats hoped to make competitive for many election cycles, swung almost as hard in Trump’s direction. In both states, Trump’s gains among Latino voters played a significant role in the story. If California and New York are big swing states for Democrats in the electoral college, Texas and Florida play the same role for Republicans. They show few signs of change.
Another warning for Democrats: Trump cut the Democratic margin in Virginia almost in half. Although the state remains Democratic, the state’s Republican drift began with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s victory in 2021. Virginia, like New Jersey, will elect a new governor in 2025. (Youngkin is term limited.) While 2024 has shown that midterm elections (especially in the Trump era) are far from predicting what will happen in a presidential year, this race will be a test of whether the Youngkin’s victory four years ago was part of a larger trend.
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