This Presidential Election, Voters Across Communities Sent a Loud Message of Economic Pain
The great race to explain the 2024 presidential election is on. How did Donald Trump re-capture the White House? Was it young men? A shift in the Hispanic vote? Was it the gender divides? The culture wars?
The votes are not all tallied yet, but the American Communities Project’s 15 county types offer some possible answers and one big clue — unanimity. Across all the types there was a rightward tilt compared to 2020’s results, and that at least suggests an answer: It was the economy.
(Before going any further, this is a preliminary analysis from the results as of 12 p.m. ET on November 10. As more votes are tallied in the coming days, these figures will move to some extent.)
As we have noted in past work, the 15 types that the Project studies are complicated and often divide around issues of culture, but on economics there tends to be more common ground. And in the large-scale surveys the ACP conducted in 2023 and 2024, inflation was singled out as the top issue across the board. Even though the number of people who said inflation was their top worry declined in many places in the 2024 survey, it remained No. 1 overall on the list of concerns.
Furthermore, data from AP VoteCast, a survey of voter attitudes conducted around Election Day, offered more evidence that the economy and inflation were the crucial, deciding issues in the 2024 campaign in the ACP’s 15 community types.
Harris Changes
Let’s start by looking at how Vice President Kamala Harris performed in each of the types compared to President Joe Biden’s 2020 numbers — again using the preliminary data.
The above chart shows how Harris underperformed Biden in every type — except the LDS Enclaves — by small and, in some cases, larger amounts. The big drop in the Big Cities category, almost 4.5 percentage points, may narrow as the vote tallies rise and counties like Los Angeles come in. But her number will almost certainly be down compared to Biden’s 66.6% in 2020. She didn’t get what she needed out of those 48 counties that hold more than 80 million people.
The Hispanic Centers showed an even bigger decline for Harris, a 6.5 percentage point drop. That follows the larger story from the 2024 campaign that Trump made inroads with Hispanic voters. But keep in mind that number may move some as well once California’s tallies are final.
More troubling in the results for Harris may be the African American South, where she did about 2.2 points worse than Biden did in 2020. Most of that vote has been counted by now so those numbers aren’t likely to move too much.
Trump Changes
For Trump, the numbers showed gains in every community type.
Of course, the data are the mirror images of Harris’s numbers in many ways — big gains in the Big Cities and Hispanic Centers. But note the nearly two-point gain in the Middle Suburbs, the blue-collar counties around the Industrial Midwest. Those shifts were important to Trump winning the so-called Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
And Trump’s 3.5% gain in the Urban Suburbs, the big, dense, diverse counties in large metro areas, was also major for him. Those numbers may shift a little when the votes are fully tallied, but you can see the impacts in some states. Harris still won the Urban Suburbs, but little chips in her margin in some of those places hurt her.
In 2020, Joe Biden won Oakland County, Michigan, and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, two big Urban Suburbs, by 14 points and 26.2 points, respectively. In 2024, Harris won them but by 10.5 points and 22.4 points, a drop of more than three points in each.
Trump also did better in the College Towns in 2024 than he did in 2020. He still lost these places, but by less and margins matter.
If the election results were truly driven by cultural issues, rightward movement in those Democratic-leaning types would probably be unlikely.
Evidence for ‘The Economy’ in the Data
As noted above, the differences between the 15 community types, from Big Cities to Aging Farmlands, often become clear on issues around culture. The Project’s first survey in 2023 found big differences in attitudes around gender identity, “traditional families,” and firearms.
That same survey found surprising amounts of agreement on issues around the economy. There was, for instance, wide agreement that “the economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful” and wide disagreement with the statement “the U.S. government should cut social programs in order to lower taxes.” And unanimous agreement that inflation was the biggest issue facing their communities.
With that as background, where were voters’ minds this election? Very much on the economy according to AP VoteCast and in every one of the ACP’s 15 types.
Nationally, 39% of those surveyed said “the economy and jobs” was their top issue among the options they were given. In some communities, the number was higher (46% in the Evangelical Hubs and Working Class Country), and in some it was lower (35% in the Big Cities), but it was far and away the top issue in all 15 types.
In the mix of issues, immigration was a distant second, at 20%. Although the figure was noticeably higher in the Aging Farmlands at 34%, those places were an outlier in the data. For most of the other community types, between 15% and 25% cited immigration as a top concern.
Abortion was a distant third on the issue list, at 11% nationally. Even the Democratic strongholds — the Big Cities, Urban Suburbs, and College Towns — did not have large numbers citing abortion as the top issue. In those community types, 13% or less named abortion.
Single Most Important Factor
The AP VoteCast survey asked about the top issue in a different way, as well. The survey went through a series of topics and asked voters to identify the “single most important factor” to them.
One thing that’s evident in the responses is respondents didn’t answer the question clearly. The “single most important” factors add up to well above 100%. But even with that caveat, the results are illuminating.
“The future of democracy in this country” received the largest “single most important factor” score, with 50% choosing that answer. “Higher prices for gas, groceries and other items” was second, at 40% nationally. “Abortion policy” was much lower, at 25% nationally.
But the different answers among the types show different focuses in their respective electorates.
For instance, inflation concerns scored higher than democracy in the Evangelical Hubs, Native American Lands, and Working Class Country. The numbers were basically even in many other types, including the African American South and Middle Suburbs.
And even in the types where concerns about the future of democracy drew the biggest share of responses to “the most important factor” question, at least one third of voters in each type said inflation was the biggest factor.
Perhaps more important, supporters of Harris might read concerns about the future of democracy in this country as being inherently tied to the danger of a second Trump presidency. But both Harris and Trump supporters often framed this election as existential. Voters on both sides saw this election as being about “the future of democracy in this country.”
To be clear, this is only a first attempt at sorting through the numbers and trying to understand the messages from the 2024 election. There is much unpacking to do when all the results are tallied. Issues around “culture” may not have been decisive, but they probably moved some votes. And the gender split, particularly among younger voters, seems to be very real in the AP VoteCast and exit poll data.
An early read of the numbers through the American Communities Project typology, however, suggests an election that was ultimately quite close (a margin of 2.4 points nationally and closer in the crucial swing states), and one where inflation and economic concerns nudged voters across the 15 types toward Donald Trump — enough to carry the popular vote and the electoral college.