It’s a daunting reality for Democrats: Republican Donald Trump’s support has grown broadly since he last sought the presidency.
In his defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump won a bigger percentage of the vote in each one of the 50 states, and Washington, D.C., than he did four years ago. He won more actual votes than in 2020 in 40 states, according to an Associated Press analysis.
Certainly, Harris’ more than 7 million vote decline from President Joe Biden’s 2020 total was a factor in her loss, especially in swing-state metropolitan areas that have been the party’s winning electoral strongholds.
But, despite national turnout that was lower than in the high-enthusiasm 2020 election, Trump received 2.5 million more votes than he did four years ago. He swept the seven most competitive states to win a convincing Electoral College victory, becoming the first Republican nominee in 20 years to win a majority of the popular vote.
Trump cut into places where Harris needed to overperform to win a close election. Now Democrats are weighing how to regain traction ahead of the midterm elections in two years, when control of Congress will again be up for grabs and dozens of governors elected.
There were some notable pieces to how Trump’s victory came together:
Trump took a bite in Northern metros
Though Trump improved across the map, his gains were particularly noteworthy in urban counties home to the cities of Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, electoral engines that stalled for Harris in industrial swing states Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Harris fell more than 50,000 votes — and 5 percentage points — short of Biden’s total in Wayne County, Michigan, which makes up the lion’s share of the Detroit metro area. She was almost 36,000 votes off Biden’s mark in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and about 1,000 short in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.
It wasn’t only Harris’ shortfall that helped Trump carry the states, a trio that Democrats had collectively carried in six of the seven previous elections before Nov. 5.
Trump added to his 2020 totals in all three metro counties, netting more than 24,000 votes in Wayne County, more than 11,000 in Philadelphia County and almost 4,000 in Milwaukee County.
It’s not yet possible to determine whether Harris fell short of Biden’s performance because Biden voters stayed home or switched their vote to Trump — or how some combination of the two produced the rightward drift evident in each of these states.
Harris advertised heavily and campaigned regularly in each, and made Milwaukee County her first stop as a candidate with a rally in July. These swings alone were not the difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but her weaker performance than Biden across the three metros helped Trump, who held on to big 2020 margins in the three states’ broad rural areas and improved or held steady in populous suburbs.
Trump’s team and outside groups supporting him knew from their data that he was making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men younger than 50, more concentrated in these urban areas that have been key to Democratic victories.
When James Blair, Trump’s Political Director, saw results coming in from Philadelphia on election night, he knew Trump had cut into the more predominantly Black precincts, a gain that would echo in Wayne and Milwaukee counties.
“The data made clear there was an opportunity there,” Blair said.
AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters, found Trump won a larger share of Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020, and most notably among men under age 45.
Democrats won Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin but lost in Pennsylvania. In 2026, they will be defending governorships in all three states and a Senate seat in Michigan.
Trump gained more than Harris in battlegrounds
Despite the burst of enthusiasm Harris’ candidacy created among the Democratic base when she entered the race in July, she ended up receiving fewer votes than Biden in three of the seven states where she campaigned almost exclusively.
In Arizona, she received about 90,000 fewer votes than Biden. She received about 67,000 fewer in Michigan and 39,000 fewer in Pennsylvania.
In four others — Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin — Harris won more votes than Biden did. But Trump’s support grew by more — in some states, significantly more.
That dynamic is glaring in Georgia, where Harris received almost 73,000 more votes than Biden did when he very narrowly carried the state. But Trump added more than 200,000 to his 2020 total, en route to winning Georgia by roughly 2 percentage points.
In Wisconsin, Trump’s team reacted to slippage it saw in GOP-leaning counties in suburban Milwaukee by targeting once-Democratic-leaning, working-class areas, where Trump made notable gains.
In the three largest suburban Milwaukee counties — Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha — which have formed the backbone of GOP victories for decades, Harris performed better than Biden did in 2020. She also gained more votes than Trump gained in 2020, though he still won the counties.
That made Trump’s focus on Rock County, a blue-collar area in south central Wisconsin, critical. Trump received 3,084 more votes in Rock County, home of the former automotive manufacturing city of Janesville, than he did in 2020, while Harris underperformed Biden’s 2020 total by seven votes. That helped Trump offset Harris’ improvement in Milwaukee’s suburbs.
The focus speaks to the strength Trump has had and continued to grow with middle-income, non-college educated voters, the Trump campaign’s senior data analyst Tim Saler said.
“If you’re going to have to lean into working-class voters, they are particularly strong in Wisconsin,” Saler said. “We saw huge shifts from 2020 to 2024 in our favor.”
Trump boosted 2020 totals as Arizona turnout dipped
Of the seven most competitive states, Arizona saw the smallest increase in the number of votes cast in the presidential contest — slightly more than 4,000 votes, in a state with more than 3.3 million ballots cast.
That was despite nearly 30 campaign visits to Arizona by Trump, Harris and their running mates and more than $432 million spent on advertising by the campaigns and allied outside groups, according to the ad-monitoring firm AdImpact.
Arizona, alone of the seven swing states, saw Harris fall short of Biden across small, midsize and large counties. In the other six states, she was able to hold on in at least one of these categories.
Even more telling, it is also the only swing state where Trump improved his margin in every single county.
While turnout in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous as the home to Phoenix, dipped slightly from 2020 — by 14,199 votes, a tiny change in a county where more than 2 million people voted — Trump gained almost 56,000 more votes than four years ago.
Meanwhile, Harris fell more than 60,000 votes short of Biden’s total, contributing to a shift significant enough to swing the county and state to Trump, who lost Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020.
Rightward shift even in heavily Democratic areas
The biggest leaps to the right weren’t taking place exclusively among Republican-leaning counties, but also among the most Democratic-leaning counties in the states. Michigan’s Wayne County swung 9 points toward Trump, tying the more Republican-leaning Antrim County for the largest movement in the state.
AP VoteCast found that voters were most likely to say the economy was the most important issue facing the country in 2024, followed by immigration. Trump supporters were more motivated by economic issues and immigration than Harris’, the survey showed.
“It’s still all about the economy,” said North Carolina Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson, a senior adviser to Democrat Josh Stein, who won North Carolina’s governorship on Nov. 5 as Trump also carried the state.
“Democrats have to embrace an economic message that actually works for real people and talk about it in the kind of terms that people get, rather than giving them a dissertation of economic policy,” he said.
Governor’s elections in 2026 give Democrats a chance to test their understanding and messaging on the issue, said Democratic pollster Margie Omero, whose firm has advised Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in the past and winning Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego this year.
“So there’s an opportunity to really make sure people, who governors have a connection to, are feeling some specificity and clarity with the Democratic economic message,” Omero said.
___
Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
18 comments
Rick and JDs gay man sex emporium
November 26, 2024 at 1:42 pm
Still want to abolish the electoral college?
Adolf Biden
November 26, 2024 at 1:52 pm
They will find something else to complain about.
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Libturd is still JD's bitch
November 26, 2024 at 2:21 pm
Yes
JD is the bitch
November 26, 2024 at 4:10 pm
Tissue?
Libturd is still JD's bitch
November 26, 2024 at 4:17 pm
No. They are wet from your MAGA tears.
JD is the bitch
November 26, 2024 at 5:05 pm
You’re the one crying bitch
Libturd is still JD's bitch.
November 26, 2024 at 5:18 pm
LOL – you cannot even come up with a good retort and it’s obvious all everything you are shilling like a shit oppossum is Twitter trash.
Try reading a book instead of burning them.
Adolf Biden
November 26, 2024 at 1:50 pm
Good afternoon dook for brain lefties. The elections over. Time to grow up and move on. Trump is your president!!!!
Libturd is still JD's bitch
November 26, 2024 at 2:20 pm
So this kind of tells me that Earl Shitts and Impeach Biden may be the same person. #neverourpresident #trumpisputinspawn
JD takes it up the butt
November 26, 2024 at 4:11 pm
Cry more, my bitch!
Libturd is still JD's bitch.
November 26, 2024 at 4:16 pm
So menacing and articulate. Your mastery of literary expression is truly astounding… It’s no wonder the Gimp keeps you on a leash and parades you on all fours at his most depraved scat gatherings.
JD is the bitch
November 26, 2024 at 5:07 pm
Cry even more my bitch!
Libturd is still JD's bitch
November 26, 2024 at 5:20 pm
LMAO – don’t worry junior. They’ll find in that garage room and carry you out on the forklift one day. You know you are safe when you hear the “beep beep beep”.
Yrral
November 26, 2024 at 1:50 pm
Google Regrets Voting For Trump
Adolf Biden
November 26, 2024 at 1:56 pm
Google 54% Approval rating for Trump, 36% for Biden.
Otoh
November 26, 2024 at 7:06 pm
Regret-ers are increasing every day. You will find out too
It is what it is
November 27, 2024 at 3:58 pm
Trump clearly won and all of sudden so-called “voter fraud” has disappeared! And in all that article, the fact remains that he couldn’t actually win an absolute majority, and it is only the second time this century that the Republican candidate got more Americans to vote for them over the Democratic candidate. And yes, the Electoral College by not providing one-person, one-vote, needs to go.
Comments are closed.