Harris, Trump and the demographics in the US election – DW – October 19, 2024

In 2024, Election Day in the United States falls on November 5th – the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Around 244 million US citizens over the age of 18 are eligible to votesays the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, although some states strip that right from people convicted of crimes.

The United States has seen an increase in voter turnout in recent years. In 2016, only about 59% of eligible voters cast their votes in the presidential election. In 2020, that number was 66% – the highest rate in a national election since 1900according to the Pew Research Center.

Race in the US election

Race is a key factor in US electoral politics. And there are big disparities between different races when it comes to how many people turn out to vote: In the 2020 election, nearly 71% of white voters cast a ballot, compared to just 58.4% of non-white voterssaid the Law and Policy Institute of the Brennan Center for Justice. In this election, 62.6% of Black American voters, 53.7% of Latino voters and 59.7% of Asian American voters cast their ballots.

The Brennan Center reports that several states over the years have made registering to vote more difficult — particularly states governed by Republicans that have seen increases in turnout among nonwhite voters in previous years.

Traditionally, Black Americans tend to vote Democratic, and 2020 was no exception: Overall, 87% of Black voters voted for the Democratic choice between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The majority of white voters in the 2020 election, 58%, voted for Republican Donald Trump and his Vice President Mike Pence, according to polls, while 65% of Latino voters and 61% of Asian American voters voted for Biden.

While it is unclear whether these groups will vote for the same party again in this presidential election, we do know that there will be more eligible Black voters in 2024 According to the Pew Research Center, their number will be an estimated 34.4 million, an increase of 7% from 2020. This also means that a larger share of the US electorate is black. In 2000, 12.1% of all eligible voters in the United States were black. The Pew Research Center predicts that 14% of eligible voters in the 2024 election will be Black.

Whether this will be an advantage for Kamala Harris, who was elected the Democratic presidential nominee after Biden dropped out of the race, remains to be seen. As noted above, turnout among black voters is lower than among white voters. And the share of black voters who cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate has declined slightly since 2012, the last time Barack Obama ran. The fact that Harris, who is Black and of South Asian American descent (her father is Jamaican American, her mother was Native American; both came to the U.S. as young adults), was on the ticket in 2020 did not reverse that trend. It is still unclear whether it will make a difference this time if she is a presidential candidate and not just vice president.

Age of US voters

From 2016 to 2020, turnout among young voters increased significantlyPeople aged 18 to 29. In 2016, an estimated 39% of them voted, while that number rose to 50% in 2020, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

And where do young voters stand on the political spectrum? Exit polls after the 2020 election showed that 60% of all young voters voted for Biden and just 36% for Trump. The majority of voters ages 30 to 44 also voted for Biden, although their majority was smaller at 52%. Trump won the majority of voters (62%) ages 65 and older.

In 2023, 66% of registered U.S. voters ages 18 to 24 said they were Democratic or Democratic leaningas did 64% of voters ages 25 to 29. Among voters in their 30s, the majority is smaller: Overall, 55% aligned themselves with Democrats, while 42% said they were Republicans or Republican supporters. Republicans have the largest majority among voters over 80: 58 percent of them voted for Republicans and just 39 percent for Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center.

Female Biden and Trump voters

Since 1980, women have increasingly voted more often than men in presidential elections. In 2020, 68.4% of women were eligible to vote, while 65% of men were eligible to vote.says the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

CAWP also states that “in every presidential election since 1996, a majority of women have preferred the Democratic candidate.”

However, there are differences between white women and women of other ethnicities. Since the 2000 election, the majority of white women have voted for the Republican candidate in U.S. presidential elections, while large majorities of Black, Latino, and Asian women have voted for the Democratic candidate throughout the period this information has been collected voted.

In the 2020 election, a total of 57% of women voted for Biden and 42% for Trump (53% of men voted for Trump and 45% of men voted for Biden). Among white women in 2020, just 44% voted for Biden versus 55% for Trump, according to CAWP. For black women the picture is completely different. 90 percent of them voted for Biden in 2020 and only 9 percent for Trump.

In a survey published in June 2024 Researchers from the US charity KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that among female voters, more Biden supporters appear to be turning away from their candidate than among Trump supporters.

Of women who voted for Biden in 2020, 83% said they would do the same in the upcoming election. Seven percent said they would vote for Trump this time and 10 percent said they would vote for someone else or not at all.

Meanwhile, among women who voted for Trump, 92% said they would vote for him again in the 2024 election, and none said they would vote for Biden instead. Seven percent said they would vote for someone else or not at all.

But of course Biden is no longer on the ballot. Whether Harris can win back the female voters whose support Biden lost is one of the big questions that will be answered on November 5th.

Edited by: Timothy Jones