What the exit polls say about the 2024 election

Nearly two weeks after President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory, Democrats and pundits alike are still trying to make sense of how Trump swept all seven swing states en route to securing more than 300 electoral votes.

The exit polls reveal the overarching reason behind Trump’s victory. Voters rejected Vice President Kamala Harris’s and Democrats’ left-leaning platform, which doubled down on progressive social issues while largely neglecting the economy.

Instead, Trump’s focus on kitchen table issues such as the economy and immigration was significantly more effective than Harris’s and Democrats’ focus on abortion rights, particularly with young, Hispanic, and Black voters — all of whom Harris needed to win.

Put another way, exit polls show that Democrats failed to correctly read the electorate, even among their core constituencies. They assumed that 2024 would resemble 2022, when the battle over abortion rights drowned out concerns over inflation, boosting Democrats across the country.

However, whereas in 2022 abortion (27 percent) was the second most important issue for national voters, just 14 percent said the same in 2024, per CNN exit polls from both years.

To that point, majority Hispanic and Black counties shifted 13 and 3 points, respectively, for Trump compared to 2020, per the New York Times, largely due to concerns over the economy, which Trump made a centerpiece of his campaign.

Harris’ and the Democrats’ failure to articulate a well-defined economic policy was particularly damaging with these two voting blocs. Indeed, 40 percent of Hispanic voters said the economy was the most important issue to their vote, 8 points more than the national electorate overall, per CNN.

Among the plurality of Hispanic voters who felt the economy was the most important issue, two-thirds (67 percent) broke for Trump compared to just 32 percent who voted for Harris.

Further, among the 20 percent of Black voters who ranked the economy as their top issue, Trump won slightly more than one-quarter (26 percent) of their vote, twice his support among Black voters overall.

Within some swing states such as Pennsylvania and Arizona — where Trump saw a 27 and 10-point improvement, respectively, in Hispanic support compared to 2020. This was likely decisive.

To that end, a closer look at Hispanic voters underscores just how misaligned Democrats’ messaging was.

Harris and the wider Democratic Party leaned heavily on Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric, yet more than 7 in 10 (71 percent) of Hispanic voters support much tougher border security policies per Unidos exit polls.

In that same vein, while abortion (28 percent) was the top issue for Hispanic voters in the 2022 midterms, less than one-half (13 percent) of Hispanic voters said the same this year, per CNN.

Similarly, younger voters, traditionally reliable Democratic voters, were also unmoved by Harris’ and Democrats’ messaging. The New York Times analysis shows that counties with “large populations of 18-34-year-olds” moved 6 points in Trump's favor.

Specifically looking at voters under 30 years old, although Harris won these voters, her 11-point margin was roughly half of Biden’s 24-point margin four years ago.

In the “Blue Wall” states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — which Democrats had hoped would carry Harris past 270 electoral votes, the shift in young voters was even more pronounced.

Compared to 2020, voters under 30 years old shifted to Trump by 24 points in Michigan, 18 points in Pennsylvania, and 15 points in Wisconsin — the biggest moves in all seven swing states, per Edison Research.

Unlike midterms, presidential elections are almost always referenda on the economy and the incumbent administration, and this is precisely where Harris struggled.

By nearly a four-to-one ratio (40 percent to 13 percent), voters under 30 years old said the economy, rather than abortion, was their top issue in this election, per Tufts polling.

As John Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard’s Kennedy School Institute of Politics noted, “from the earliest focus groups I conducted ... there was this innate sense that younger people’s finances would be better under a Trump administration.”

Interestingly, while foreign policy often takes a back seat to issues such as the economy, immigration, and abortion, Harris’ failure to articulate a coherent position on the war in the Middle East alienated both Arab voters in Michigan and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania.

Trump managed to win Dearborn, Michigan — a heavily Arab American city — with 42 percent of the vote versus Harris’s 36 percent, a staggering 33-point drop for Harris compared to President Biden in 2020. Many residents opposed what they felt was Harris’s support for Israel.

Conversely, polling from Pennsylvania shows that Harris’ snub of Gov. Josh Shapiro as a running mate, which even some Democrats like CNN’s Van Jones blamed on an effort to placate anti-Israel progressives, may have cost her the Keystone state.

Harris won the Pennsylvania Jewish vote, 48 percent to 41 percent. But the New York Post reported polling showing that, had she picked Shapiro, she likely would have won by a margin more than twice as large. In a state where Jewish voters are 3 percent of the electorate — where Trump won by less than 130,000 votes — that may have been a costly mistake.

Taken together, Harris’s struggles in Michigan and Pennsylvania are emblematic of the core problem that plagued her campaign. She never clearly outlined an agenda for her presidency, nor defined herself separate and apart from President Biden, who is deeply unpopular.

On a larger scale, national and swing state polling reveals a deeper problem for Harris and Democrats. They prioritized the wrong issues until it was too late, hoping that voters would elevate issues like abortion over whether or not they could put food on the table and the threat of an uncontrolled southern border.

Positively, the magnitude of Democrats’ defeat, along with the polls, provides a clear roadmap for how the party can rebound in 2026 and then in 2028. That said, whether the party chooses to follow this map and develop a centrist, economic-focused platform or instead doubles down on left-leaning social issues remains to be seen.

Douglas E. Schoen and Carly Cooperman are pollsters and partners with the public opinion company Schoen Cooperman Research based in New York. They are co-authors of the book, “America: Unite or Die.”