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Updated November 21, 2024 at 08:40 AM ET
The country largely shifted to the right in this presidential election from where it was four years ago.
In 2020, President Biden won six of the seven most closely watched states, but this year, they all shifted toward President-elect Donald Trump.
What's more, Trump is on track to win the popular vote this time, when Biden won it by 7 million in 2020.
Trump won the suburbs
The suburbs have become increasingly diverse and populous. More than half of voters in 2024 were in suburban areas, according to exit polls. They have become swing areas, home to some of the most closely targeted House seats, and a good barometer of who will win the presidential election.
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The winner in the suburbs has won 11 of the last 12 presidential elections, dating back to 1980. And this year that was Trump, 51%-47%, according to exit polls.
Vice President Harris was hoping she could turn out women in the suburbs in key swing states to get her across the finish line. But that didn't happen. Trump, for example, won white suburban women by 7 points, as well as white suburban men — by 27. So there were some split kitchen tables, but not enough to help Harris win.
In multiple swing states, there were significant shifts in Trump's direction in the suburbs, based on nearly final vote totals. That includes a net swing of almost 60,000 votes in the four counties that make up the Philadelphia suburbs and the two major ones north of Detroit, more than 10,000 in the "WOW" counties around Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington) and in the counties touching Fulton County, Ga., where Atlanta is.
In some of those Atlanta metro counties, though, Harris did better than Biden, and her losses weren't as bad in the Charlotte metro area as in the former Blue Wall states. That's one reason Democrats have been more optimistic about the future in the Sun Belt than the industrial Midwest.
Rural areas went even more for Trump
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Trump has done extremely well in rural areas, and in 2024, he won by a record margin. Since 1980, no candidate has done better. Trump won 64% of voters in rural areas this year, according to exit polls. The previous best was 61% – set by Trump in 2016.
That helped him in all of the swing states, but also in red states, like Texas, which boosted his total in the popular vote. He gained, for example, a net of more than 900,000 votes in Texas compared to 2020; and more than 1 million in Florida, a longtime competitive state that saw a dramatic swing in Trump's direction.
His improvement in those states also reflects the major shifts in his direction with Latino voters in South Florida and South Texas.
Harris also underperformed in urban areas
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A lot of Democratic base voters live in big cities, and those urban areas are often key to a Democrat winning in the swing states. But Harris got just 59% of voters in urban areas, lower than Biden, former President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
That underperformance is a large part of why she lost in key states. For example, in Maricopa County, Ariz., home to Phoenix, Harris got roughly 61,000 fewer votes than Biden in 2020. Trump, on the other hand, gained about 56,000, for a 117,000-vote shift in just one county.
In Wayne County, Mich. (Detroit), Harris saw a decline of more than 60,000 votes, while Trump gained about 24,000. Black voters are key in Wayne County, but so are Arab Americans. About 100,000 Arab Americans, the largest population of Arab Americans in the country, live in Dearborn, and many were upset over the Biden administration's policies toward the war in Gaza.
It was a similar story in other key urban areas in the swing states, from Las Vegas to Philadelphia.
Copyright 2024 NPR
