By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-11-06 21:56:51 | Updated at 2024-11-07 00:31:20
2 hours ago
A majority of Latino men, big gains among Asian voters and black men — and a lot more members of Gen Z.
That’s how Donald Trump built a diverse coalition that propelled the former president to an electoral blowout on Tuesday — adding nearly 9 million more votes than he won in 2016.
Vice President Kamala Harris failed to outperform her ex-running mate Joe Biden’s triumphant margins in any US county from 2020 — and hemorrhaged long-held Democratic support from groups that have been stalwart Democratic supporters for generations, according to Edison Research exit polls.
It was a dramatic drift rightward for young and non-white voters, according to GOP pollster and strategist Patrick Ruffini.
“It is historically unprecedented in the modern era,” Ruffini told The Post, referring to the period following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“We’ve never had this big of an Hispanic electorate before, so it’s really hard to do a comparison,” he added. “Since we’ve had records, certainly it’s the strongest.”
Strikingly, Trump’s support among white voters dropped by 3 percentage point from 2016 — and Harris gained 8 points among white voters.
In total, 12% of black voters reported casting ballots for Trump in 2024, compared with just 8% eight years earlier. Twenty percent of black men said they supported the former president over Harris.
Among Latinos, 45% broke for him this cycle, whereas just 29% voted for him in 2016 — a 16 percentage point shift.
A majority (54%) of Latino men helped fuel that rise for the soon-to-be 47th president.
The share of the electorate who is Latino has also grown significantly — from less than 12% in 2016 to 14.7% this year.
Daniel Garza, president of the grassroots Latino advocacy group LIBRE Initiative, told The Post that Trump’s win was the result of “the working class rejecting the political class who don’t relate when it comes to the economy.”
“They were ignored and told to shut up and feel the ‘joy,'” he joked, referring to the Harris campaign’s initial messaging on the Democratic ticket was reshuffled.
Garza also said that the inroads Trump made in swing states like North Carolina and Georgia with the demographic prove that his message of “opportunity,” “prosperity” and “wanting a quality education for their children” was a success.
Both Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden won majorities of Latino voters — with 63% and 59%, respectively.
One in five (20%) black men also went for Trump, compared with 13% who supported him eight years ago.
With Hispanic women, Trump won a 12-percentage-point gain between 2016 and 2024.
Historically, Trump may have received the highest share of non-white voters since Republican candidate Richard Nixon’s loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960, experts said.
And even as Harris bled support from non-white voters, Trump lost no ground with a demographic that the Democratic nominee had considered key to her victory: white women.
In 2024, 52% of white female voters went with Trump — the same percentage that supported him in 2016 against the last woman presidential nominee from a major party.
During those eight years, the former president lost just three percentage points of support among white male voters, from 62% to 59%.
Trump also got help from Generation Z. About 42% of voters age 18 to 29 reported supporting Trump — a five-percentage point improvement from 2019.
Harris’ support from Gen Z dropped about 5 points from the 60% Biden enjoyed — amid massive divisions among young people over the Israel-Hamas war and Trump’s direct outreach to young men, who had already showed signs of shifting to the right.
