2024 Election Updated Post-Mortem: How Trump Won, Shifting Coalitions, Regional Estimates, and What Comes Next
A few days after the 2024 election, I published my initial post-mortem based on partially reported county-level data—and it was a pretty reasonable first take on what happened. Over the past three months, I’ve had time to dig much deeper, manually analyzing precinct-level election and demographic data while running a lot of ecological inference regressions to generate some hard estimates on how different groups shifted in different regions. I’ve been tweeting up a storm recently, you can see all of my short-form thoughts, plots, and maps here. Now, with all that in hand, I’m ready to write a more detailed piece: a deep dive into what really happened in 2024, how Trump won, and what it means for the future of electoral coalitions in American politics.
This will end up being a bit of a long read, but I’m tossing some plots/maps/figures in to summarize key info, so I recommend scanning through as looking at them if you want something shorter.
I’ll break this piece into sections, talking about the 6 different groups of voters and how they shifted, and then about some random stuff at the end.
1. Hispanic Voters
The biggest story of this election cycle is the mass exodus of Hispanic voters from the Democratic Party. With Hispanics as a growing voter bloc, the long-term implications are huge. In one night, they dashed a decade-long Democratic dream of flipping Texas, cemented Florida’s status as a solidly red state, and helped deliver Nevada and Arizona to the GOP. Beyond the direct electoral consequences, it’s also a bit of a rhetorical gut punch for the Democratic base. Since Summer 2020, much of the party’s evolution has focused on progressive racial messaging and the expansion of DEI initiatives. Yet, this shift has coincided with significant defections among voters of color, many of whom have moved toward Trump—ultimately prompting a reevaluation of these policies by corporations and the executive branch in the weeks after Trump’s inauguration.
We knew this was happening to some extent on election night. The question now is: what else have we learned over the last few months? For starters, we’ve got some hard estimates on the magnitude of the Hispanic shift to the right—and it’s remarkably consistent across different subgroups. Cubans, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans all moved sharply to the right by a pretty similar amount, and I’ve seen convincing anecdotal evidence that Venezuelans and Central Americans followed suit. Regionally, the trend held pretty steady across the board. Among the nine areas where I’ve generated strong estimates, urban Ohio (Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati) saw the smallest shift, but even there, Hispanics swung 18 points to the right.
Nationally, Hispanics went from D+42 in 2016 to D+26 in 2020 and my back of the napkin math based on the areas I’ve looked at has them ending up around D+5 in 2024.
We’re also starting to see the early signs of educational polarization among Hispanic voters. Historically, there’s been a U-shaped relationship between education levels and Democratic support among Hispanics in northern/western cities—Hispanics in both the least and most educated areas were the most Democratic. But that pattern is beginning to break down, with the shifts now looking pretty linear as Democratic support declines the most with the lowest education voters and vice versa.
2. Asian Voters
Asian voters also swung sharply to the right in 2024, dropping from D+34 in 2020 to around D+15 in 2024 based on my best estimates. While much of the rightward shift among Black and Hispanic voters can be attributed to growing educational polarization, Asian voters serve as an important reminder that even highly educated minority groups are increasingly leaving the Democratic Party in droves.
I’m usually one of those people who love to criticize the broad umbrella categorization of “Asians” and instead focus on the distinct ethnic subgroups for this type of demographic electoral analysis. That said, 2024 was actually a big win for the “umbrella” approach. Nearly every subgroup, aside from Vietnamese voters, showed the same general trend: a hard rightward shift towards Trump. Still, it’s both interesting and productive to break that shift down by subgroup, so I’ll do that below.
Among Asian subgroups, predominantly Muslim South Asian communities—especially Bangladeshi and Pakistani voters—registered the largest rightward shift from 2020 to 2024. It’s likely that Muslim Indian voters followed a similar trend, although I don’t have sufficient data to confirm this. Vietnamese Americans saw the smallest rightward shift, with some precincts in Vietnamese-heavy areas of Orange County, CA, even moving left. However, this shift is somewhat deceptive—Vietnamese Americans had already made a substantial rightward shift between 2016 and 2020 while other Asian groups didn’t, positioning them ahead of this broader trend. Korean, non-Muslim Indian, and Chinese American voters all swung significantly to the right, with working-class Koreans and Chinese driving the largest shifts. Precincts in Palisades Park, NJ (heavily Korean), and Sunset Park, NYC (heavily Chinese), were particularly difficult for Harris for example. Filipinos also shifted notably to the right, which is especially significant given that they are by far the largest Asian subgroup in Nevada—a key battleground state—making up about half of the state’s Asian population. While it’s pretty tight among these groups in terms of total swing, my best summary is that high-education, non-Muslim Indians shifted right more than other high-education Asians, though still less than working-class Koreans and Chinese, who experienced extreme rightward shifts.
Regionally, the shifts align with expectations. They are much larger in areas with more working-class Asians, such as NYC and Chicago, and somewhat larger in places with higher South Asian populations, like Northern Virginia, Columbus, and Raleigh. In California, where the Asian population is predominantly affluent Korean and Chinese—especially in the Southland—the shifts to the right are noticeably smaller.
A map of Asian shifts in San Francisco nicely highlights growing educational polarization among Chinese voters. Wealthy Asians in the Inner Richmond district barely shifted toward Trump for example, while middle-class Asians in the city’s southeast corner swung heavily to the right.
3. Cosmopolitan White Voters
Another major story from this election is how well Democrats performed with highly educated, cosmopolitan white voters. In particular, Democrats excelled with white city dwellers. While urban areas overall trended right, that shift was largely driven by minority voters. Among white urban voters, Harris actually performed quite well.
Certain “resist lib” enclaves somehow managed to become even more Democratic in 2024. These are the quintessential urban upper-class liberal bubble neighborhoods—places like Park Slope in Brooklyn, where moms sip $8 matcha lattes on their way to spin class, chatting about Montessori schools and how their CSA box was particularly fresh this week, or Noe Valley in San Francisco, where dads compare Tesla configurations, brag about their sourdough starters, and debate which boutique wine bar feels the most “authentic.” Despite Biden winning over 95% of the vote in some of these areas in 2020, White voters there still shifted even further to the left.
Meanwhile, Democratic success in affluent white suburbs was highly variable. In some suburbs, Democrats struggled, while in others, they exceeded expectations. Democrats saw notable challenges in two types of areas:
But in many suburbs, Democrats did exceptionally well with white voters. Take the Columbus suburbs, for example. Worthington just passed Columbus in Democratic support, and at this rate, Westerville is on track to be more Democratic-leaning than Columbus by 2032. It’s genuinely mind-blowing, even as someone who’s only followed politics closely for a decade or so. The same trend holds across much of the Midwest and beyond—suburbs around Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Raleigh, Pittsburgh and Charlotte all showed similar patterns. Worthington and Westerville are perfect examples of the type of place that Democrats are doing great in—white voters around the 80th national income percentile are trending hard to the left. Once you move above that into ultra-wealthy areas like Greenwich, CT; Alpine, NJ; Sands Point, NY; and Beverly Hills, CA, Trump actually performed quite well. But in upper-middle-class suburbs, Democrats are doing well.
4. Racial Depolarization in General
We’re reaching a point where white voters in many affluent suburbs are more pro-Democratic than Hispanic and Asian voters. In Northern Virginia’s DC suburbs, for example, white voters collectively backed Harris at higher rates than people of color in the same region. Aside from Black voters, White voters were actually the most Democratic group.
5. Less Cosmopolitan White Voters
Republicans made big gains in historically Democratic areas that have been trending GOP for years, but 2024 was the year the bottom truly fell out for Democrats in a lot of these places. The Driftless Area in northeast Iowa and southwest Wisconsin, the coalfields of West Virginia and Kentucky, and southern white rurals and small towns that had already been shifting right all swung hard to the GOP. Nationally, Trump clearly performed better with white voters in 2024 than in 2020, driven largely by these kinds of areas. Lawrence County, AL, is a perfect example—already deep red and somehow getting even a lot redder.
6. Black Voters
It’s not a great time for Democrats with Black voters, especially when thinking about support on a logit scale rather than a raw unit scale. A 4-point drop in Black voter support might not seem huge, but it matters more when you think about it on a logit scale (A logit scale transforms probabilities using ln(p / 1-p), so changes in probability appear linear, even though they reflect much bigger shifts at high or low extremes compared to the middle), which emphasizes how changes at the extremes affect the underlying odds. At high support levels—like 90%—small drops represent much bigger shifts in odds compared to the same drop at 60%. For example, moving from 90% to 86% is a much bigger shift in odds than from 60% to 56%. If support continues dropping, it could look very different depending on how you think about the trend. On a logit scale, 90% → 86% → 81% → 74% would be a rough path. But on a linear scale, you might expect something more gradual, like 90% → 86% → 82% → 78%.
Still, relative to expectations, this was actually one of the few bright spots for Democrats on election night. Pre-election polling crosstabs and media coverage made it seem like collapsing Black support would define 2024, but Black voters turned out to be far more resilient than expected. Instead, the real story of 2024 was the massive Hispanic and Asian shifts to the right.
Nationally, Democratic support among Black voters looks like it’ll drop from about 90% to 86%—an 8-point shift to the right. On a linear scale, that’s not especially alarming, considering the overall national shift was about 6 points to the right. But in logit space, it’s much worse. If I had to guess, I’d expect Black Democratic support to keep dropping for a bit and eventually stabilize around 80%, but honestly, it’s hard to know.
7. Ethnic White Voters
The Northeast was a disaster for Democrats and Harris, and she particularly struggled with White voters. While Democrats held up reasonably well with White voters in the Midwest and West and did passably in the South (outside of historically Democratic areas), the Northeast stood out for its sharp rightward trends among Portuguese, Irish, Italian, and Jewish voters. Long Island and the Lower Hudson Valley were brutal for Harris, as was South Jersey. Massachusetts was, if anything, even worse than New York relative to my expectation. What’s puzzling is that this shift with white ethnic voters in the Northeast occurred across both lower-education and higher-education areas. It feels like there’s something deeper driving it, but I don’t have a well-formed theory for why just yet.
8. Harris Over-performing in Swing States
I’ve written about this at length very recently, but it's a wacky development. Not clear why it happened or whether it will stick, but it's one of the better pieces I’ve written in the past year so obviously I gotta plug it here since it’s a notable situation.
9. Moderate Democratic House Candidates
This tweet sums up my thoughts on the issue perfectly. It highlights something pretty notable about the 2024 elections, and I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t been a bigger part of the discourse. The effect size is substantial and highly statistically significant.