By LINLEY SANDERS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump won the presidency after holding tight to his core base of voters and slightly expanding his coalition to include several groups that have traditionally been a part of the Democratic base. That finding comes from AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide that shows what issues mattered to voters in this election.
Trump picked up a small but significant share of Black and Hispanic voters, and made narrow gains with men and women. As Trump chipped away at parts of the Democratic coalition, Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t able to make enough of her own gains. Trump succeeded in locking down his traditionally older, white base of voters, and he slightly expanded his margins with other groups into a winning coalition.
A look at how five key demographic groups voted, according to AP VoteCast.
Most Trump voters were white, a trend that continued from 2020
Slightly more than 8 in 10 Trump voters in this election were white, roughly in line with 2020. About two-thirds of Harris’ voters were white, and that largely matched President Joe Biden ’s coalition in the last election. White voters make up a bulk of the voting electorate in the United States, and they did not shift their support significantly at the national level compared to 2020.
A majority of white voters cast their ballot for Trump, unchanged from the 2020 election that he narrowly lost. About 4 in 10 white voters backed Harris, which is about the same as Biden received in 2020. White voters were also more likely to support Trump over Harris and Biden in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, even though Trump lost those states in 2020.
Trump’s share of Black voters rose slightly, driven largely by younger men
Nationally, about 8 in 10 Black voters supported Harris. But, that was down from about 9 in 10 in the last presidential election who went for Biden.
Trump about doubled his share of young Black men – which helped him among key Democratic voting group. About 3 in 10 Black men under the age of 45 went for Trump, roughly double the number he got in 2020.
Slightly more Hispanic voters supported Trump in 2020
While Harris won more than half of Hispanic voters, that support was down slightly from the roughly 6 in 10 Hispanic voters that Biden won.
Hispanic voters were more open to Trump than they were in 2020. Roughly half of Latino men voted for Harris, down from about 6 in 10 who went for Biden.
Narrow gains with women benefitted Trump
Trump benefitted from narrow gains among both men and women, with Harris modestly underperforming compared with Biden in 2020.
Harris had the advantage among women, winning 53% to Trump’s 46%, but that margin was somewhat narrower than Biden’s. Biden won 55% of women, while 43% went for Trump. His support held steady among white women — slightly more than half supported him, similar to 2020.
Trump saw a modest increase with men
Trump made a similar gain among men, with a modest shift increasing his advantage.
The shifts by gender were concentrated among younger voters, as well as Black and Latino voters. White voters across genders and older voters across genders voted similarly in 2024 as they did in 2020.
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AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News, PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. The survey of more than 120,000 voters was conducted for eight days, concluding as polls closed. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters drawn from state voter files; self-identified registered voters using NORC’s probability based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population; and self-identified registered voters selected from nonprobability online panels. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated to be plus or minus 0.4 percentage points. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://ap.org/votecast.
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