Election Data Dump

One of the reasons that I like politics and write about it in BeeLine is that it comes with a lot of data.

Data is the lifeblood of what I write about. It provides objective truths which should be the foundation of the analysis of any issue.

In the political area, data is very valuable in getting a better understanding of what voters are thinking about in their lives, the issues surrounding them and their feelings about those who desire to lead them.

There is a lot of data to sift through in the election from Tuesday night. It will require a deep dive and additional time to really understand the details that drove the final results.

However, here are some data nuggets I have come across so far in my research that I have found interesting.

Election Turnout

Before the election I wrote that turnout would be very important in determining the final result. I also was very clear that I did not see evidence that Democrats would be able to come anywhere close to matching their 2020 turnout numbers.

There are more votes to be counted, particularly in states in the Far West, that are slow in reporting final results. We have been told that there are 5 million more votes to count in California and 1 million in Nevada.

However, consider the vote totals in the Presidential race compared to recent years thus far.

Trump is very close to his vote total in 2024. When all votes are in he will very likely exceed the 74 million votes he received in 2020.

However, even if we are generous and say that Kamala will get to 72 million votes, she will still be  almost 10 million votes shy of what Joe Biden received in 2020.

What happened to those votes? A few undoubtedly switched to Trump but what is the explanation for the remainder when Trump's turnout clearly did not suffer?

In my pre-election forecast I predicted that overall turnout would not likely come close to the nearly 158 million who voted in 2020 due primarily to a much lower use of mail ballots.

Many states also cleaned up their registration rolls reducing registered voters. In 2022 there were 7 million fewer registered voters than in 2020---161 million vs. 168 million.

I suggested that I thought 150 million votes was a more likely target for 2024. We are currently at only 143 million votes cast in the Presidential election. 150 million looks like it might be close to the final number.

Democrats seem befuddled at what happened to their turnout compared to 2020.

Here are a couple of examples from faithful Democrats asking what is going on?

I had to chuckle when I saw this response to Deb on X.

I guess we will never know where those missing voters are that suppressed turnout this year.

Red Wave

A key reason that Trump won was that almost every county in the United States shifted toward the Republican in 2024 compared to the vote in 2020.

This map from The Financial Times graphically shows that shift.

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/392e1e79-a8c1-4473-ab51-3267c415b078

Some of the largest shifts were in and around the New York City area.

Bronx County shifted 10.51% points to the right.

Queens County shifted 10.46% to the right.

It is also interesting to see the large shift to the right along the border in Texas and all over California.

Notice as well a noticeable shift to the right in the D.C. suburbs in Virginia and Maryland.

This map has to be very concerning to those paying attention in the Democrat party.

That one lone large blue arrow in western Missouri shifting left was Jackson County at 11.63% points.

Why?

I have no idea about that one other than it has always been a strong Democrat county as the former home of Harry Truman in the suburbs of Kansas City.

Big Shifts

Big shifts in several large demographic groups were largely responsible for Trump's victory.

All of the data and graphs below are from CNN exit polls.

Trump gained an incredible 35 points between 2020 and 2024 with Latino men. There has been a 43 point shift to the right with this group since 2016.

Trump also gained 17 points with Latina women. It has shifted 22 points since 2016.

Despite all of the talk about a big shift in the votes of Black men, the NBC exit poll data does not show it.

The data only shows a 4 point shift toward Trump in 2024.

In total, Trump actually gained 7 points with women overall but only 5 points with men compared to 2020.

It seems that the abortion issue might not have been as important to the women's vote that Democrats expected.

A gender gap remains between women and men in their voting preferences for the two parties.

However, it was narrower in 2024 than in either 2016 or 2020.

One of the large groups that shifted to Trump in 2024 were younger voters.

Biden was +24 with younger voters but that shifted 13 points right in 2024.

The graphic below  provides a better perspective of how the 18-29 vote has shifted, broken down between men and women, since 2018.

Notice that most of the shift in this demographic is due to young men rather than women moving to Trump in 2024.

However, young women have still shifted 15 points right and men 32 points right since 2018.

The other important point to consider with this data is that once a person becomes more conservative politically they do not often revert to prior voting patterns.

Here is another way to look at the overall demographic data across various groups.

Trump has the most support from non-college men and women. However, that changed very little between 2020 and 2024. The same was true for white voters.

The biggest gains were among Hispanics, Asians and younger voters (18-29 and 30-44).

Trump actually lost a small amount of support of voters age 65+.

You can also see big shifts in county level data between 2020 and 2024.

There were not many counties in the United States where Trump did not gain in 2024.

It was almost the exact opposite for him between 2016 and 2020 in key demographics.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/presidential-election-2024-red-shift.html

What I find most interesting in all of this data is that Trump has gained more support among Hispanics than any other group by far between 2016 and 2020.

This is despite the fact that he has been continually denigrated by the media and Democrats for his views on illegal immigration. He has been called racist, xenophobic and a lot worse

In fact, Trump actually won the nation's county (Starr County, Texas) with the highest percentage Hispanic population  (98%) in the country. It is the first time that county has voted for a Republican since 1888. 

Source: https://apnews.com/article/texas-election-border-house-trump-7b3c5adae15344dcb54f36e25890d1e2

It seems that legal immigrants who are citizens (and vote) have the same concerns about illegal immigration as everyone else.

Who knew?

Straddling the Fence

Many politicians like to straddle the fence on difficult issues hoping they will not turn off voters on one side or the other.

Exhibit A---Kamala Harris in this election.

Kamala was trying to says things that satisfied both Jewish voters and Arab voters.

It seems that she did nothing but hurt herself with both groups.

In precincts in and around Detroit, Harris lost 20% of former Biden voters to Trump while also losing 70% of Arab/Bangladeshi voters.

That is not easy to do.

If we focus just on Dearborn, Michigan, which is reputed to be be most Arab-American city in the United States, you see how disastrous straddling the fence was for Harris.

Her support in Dearborn was not even half of what Biden received in 2020.

No one should also forget the fence straddling that Kamala did on the eve of the election when she refused to say how she voted on California Proposition 36 which would have increased penalties for certain thefts and drug crimes in the state

Kamala was a strong advocate for lowering penalties for shoplifting less than $950 when she was the California Attorney General. It has proved disastrous in the state. This ballot issue was put to the voters to reverse the insanity.

How did the vote go?

Prop 36 also got majority support in every county in the state.

Kamala Harris could not even take a position on this issue?

I guess she did not want to have to explain why she was for it before she was against it?

Compare this straddle with the clear position that Donald Trump took on illegal immigration from the first moment he ran for President.

At the Margin

This chart shows the shifts in state support for Trump in all 50 states and his plus or minus vote margin.

Vermont was the most pro-Harris state. Wyoming was the best Trump state in margin of victory.

Source: Financial Times

Trump gained support at the margin in 48 of the 50 states.

Where was the shift to Trump the greatest?

Many were blue states such as California, New York, New Jersey and Maryland.

However, he also expanded his margins in both Florida and Texas substantially.

There are a couple of interesting observations in looking at this margin data.

Trump was closer to winning New York (11.6 margin) than Harris was in Texas (13.8) or Florida (13.2)

Trump was closer to winning reliable blue states such as Illinois (8.6), New Jersey (5.1) or Minnesota (4.2) than Harris was in the former swing state of Ohio (11.2).

Voter ID

You look at this Voter ID data and wonder whether this a coincidence or there is a correlation.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz only won two states that require Photo Voter ID ---New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

Almost all of the states she won came in states where absolutely no ID is required. The exceptions are Colorado, Virginia, Delaware and Connecticut.

All of her big electoral vote wins---California, Illinois, New York--have no ID required at all.

Bellwether Counties

How did the bellwether counties do this year that have been so good at predicting the winner of the Presidential election over the years?

It looks like they are back in the groove after missing badly in 2020.

 It remains a mystery as to why the predictive value of these counties failed us to such a degree in 2020.

Welcome Home Tim Walz!

Tim Walz will return to be Minnesota's governor after the defeat of the Harris/Walz ticket.

However, it has to hurt knowing that your home county (Blue Earth) in Minnesota was one of the counties that shifted from Democrat to Republican despite the fact you were on the ticket.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/results/minnesota

Different Perspectives

I thought this summary of how the voters in different European countries would choose between Trump and Harris was interesting.

Which countries favored Harris the most?

The Scandinavian countries.

 

Which countries tended to favor Trump?

It is almost all of the countries that were previously ruled by Communists in the Eastern Bloc.

Is there a lesson here?

Are there any other lessons to be learned in any of the rest of this election data dump?