Former Vice President Kamala Harris's 2024 White House campaign failed to recapture the diverse coalition of young and new voters that propelled former President Biden to victory four years earlier, according to a new postmortem of the November election.
The "What Happened in 2024" report, from the Democratic data analytics firm Catalist, found the Democratic ticket of Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz retained some of the Biden 2020 coalition but at much lower levels, particularly among voters who were young, diverse or living outside major battleground states.
"No single demographic characteristic explains all the dynamics of the election; rather we find that the election is best explained as a combination of related factors," the analysts wrote in their report released Tuesday. "Importantly, an overarching connection among these groups is that they are less likely to have cast ballots in previous elections and are generally less engaged in the political process."
New voters fell below 50 percent support for the Democratic candidate for the first time in Catalist's nearly two decades of analyzing election outcomes, the firm noted.
The Catalist report highlighted major findings that contributed to Harris's loss to President Trump, including a growing gender gap, with male voters pivoting to the GOP; a shift among young voters; and a drop in support from voters of color. The Democratic ticket's backing among Hispanic voters fell 9 points between 2020 and 2024, 4 points among Asian and Pacific Islander groups and 3 points among Black voters.
"Putting these trends together, Harris lost in 2024 due to a combination of support and turnout drops among key groups, particularly 'rotating voters,'" the analysts concluded.
Trump bested Harris in the race with 312 electoral votes to her 226, and he captured 49.8 percent of the popular vote to Harris's 48.3 percent.
The race featured a series of extraordinary events, including a late top-of-ticket switch-up for Democrats when Biden dropped out in July and an assassination attempt against Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Harris, 60, was the first Black woman and first Asian woman to lead a major party ticket; Trump, 78, was vying to reclaim the White House after a loss four years earlier and with legal issues hanging over him.
More than 155 million Americans cast ballots for president last year, which was nearly 64 percent of the voter eligible population and slightly less than 2020's historic turnout. Catalist found turnout rates were higher in battleground states than four years earlier, but there were changes in who was voting and how.
"Shifts in turnout and shifts in voters' partisan preferences both contributed to the final election outcome and these trends relate to one another across demographic groups and subgroups," the analysts wrote.
The report also noted that Trump's third campaign for president "was different in a number of ways," and his appeal to groups who tended to favor Democrats in the past was key to his win.
"Other Republican candidates have not been able to replicate Trump’s ability to reach the less frequent voters in his coalition," the wrote. "Future candidates may not be able to do so either, but these voters are still more visible to Republican campaigns than they were before 2016."
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