Most heavily Hispanic counties
Democrats lost the most ground among Hispanics, who have surged right since 2012.
Perhaps the biggest swing in the electorate — one that many polls saw coming — was among Hispanics. According to estimates from the Associated Press, Harris won them by just a 12-point margin in 2024, 55 percent to 43 percent. That’s down from President Joe Biden’s 28-point margin among Hispanics in 2020, a 16-point swing to the right in just four years. That shift really pops out on our county maps: Counties with the highest shares of Hispanic-identifying Americans, according to the American Community Survey, shifted from voting for Biden by a 20-point margin to being dead even between Harris and Trump in 2024. And it’s not hard to find counties that moved even further to the right; Webb County in South Texas, for example, went for Biden by 23 points in 2020. Trump won it this year by 2.
But the swing among Hispanics is not a new trend. From 2012 to 2020, Democrats lost ground in almost all the same counties. In 2012, for example, former President Barack Obama beat former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by 54 points in Webb County.
According to analysis from Equis Research, a polling firm focused on Latino voters, Trump’s gains among Hispanics represent anxiety about prices as well as a sorting of these voters more along ideological lines; whereas in the past, group-based social ties mattered more to Latinos’ votes, ideology and partisan orientation matter a lot now, too. Trump also likely gained with 2020 non-voters, less engaged Hispanics and new registrants. That’s tricky for Democrats to combat, since by definition, less engaged voters are less susceptible to advertising and political news.
The chart below shows how counties with higher and lower shares of Hispanic residents voted in the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections. The black lines show you our best guess of how the average county with a given share of Hispanic residents voted in each election, with lines more to the right representing a stronger lean toward Trump and lines to the left indicating a stronger lean toward Democrats. A red shaded area between the lines indicates higher support for Republicans since 2020, whereas a blue shaded area shows higher support for Democrats. You can toggle between showing the shift from 2020 to 2024 and the shift from 2012 to 2024.
More heavily Hispanic counties shifted more to the right
A loess curve approximating the 2024 presidential election margin in each county by its Hispanic population, compared to the 2020 and 2012 presidential elections
Vote Margin
Shift from 2020
Counties with low income or college attainment
Working-class voters, especially nonwhite ones, have also moved right.
Another long-term trend that has accelerated since 2020 is the drop in support for Democrats among working-class voters. From 2012 to 2016, the party lost large swaths of voters in the traditionally working-class Upper Midwest and rural areas — a trend that helped cement some voters’ view of Democrats as a party for urban elites. For instance, Obama won voters in Elliott County, Kentucky, where 94 out of 100 residents are white and median household income is just $40,000, by 3 points in 2012; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost them by 44 points in 2016, and Biden lost them by 51 in 2020. This year, the slide continued: Harris lost Elliott County by 62 points, garnering just 18 percent to Trump’s 80 percent.
We see the same patterns in other heavily white, low-income counties too. By our math, Democrats lost the poorest majority-white counties by about 30 points in 2012, but by a staggering 50 points in 2024.
But it’s not just the white working class that has drifted to the right; working-class voters of color have, too, and especially since 2016. According to our county-level analysis, voters in majority-minority counties with a median household income between $60,000 and $70,000 shifted from voting for Clinton by an average of 1 point in 2016 to voting for Trump by 10 points in 2024. And from 2012 to 2016, they had already moved 5 points right. In fact, from 2012 to 2016, the only majority-minority counties where Democrats gained ground were in places where the median household income was above $98,000 per year — or the top 4 percent of U.S. counties. That includes places as rich and diverse as Manhattan, San Diego and Boulder, Colorado.
This all raises questions about Democrats’ messaging about the economy, or maybe suggests that the type of people they hypothesize would be helped most by their policies — such as wealth redistribution from progressive and corporate taxation and federal subsidies for companies that invest in underdeveloped areas, especially when it comes to manufacturing — are not as responsive as the party hoped to the type of so-called policy “deliverism” that the Obama and Biden administrations pursued. In a more dire framing for Democrats: If a party that tells itself it stands for working-class voters is systematically losing support with those people, something has gone terribly wrong for them.
Lower-income counties shifted right, higher-income counties shifted left
A loess curve approximating the 2024 presidential election margin in majority-white and majority-nonwhite counties by their median household income, compared with the 2012 presidential election
Vote Margin
Shift from 2012
Very dense or pro-Biden counties
Turnout fell in cities and Democratic strongholds.
Exacerbating Democrats’ vote share losses among key groups was a decline in turnout among those formerly their most fervent supporters. Cities saw a large decline in turnout in 2024. By our calculations, turnout in the most urban counties in the U.S. fell from 53 percent of the voting-age population in 2020 to just 45 percent in 2024. On the other hand, turnout was steady at 71-72 percent of the voting-age population in the most rural areas.
Turnout also seemed to drop in other counties that voted strongly for Biden in 2020, regardless of how urban they were. In Jefferson County, Mississippi, where Biden won 85 percent of the vote, turnout fell from 71 percent in 2020 to 58 percent in 2024, despite remaining high in counties that voted strongly for Trump in the last presidential election. Turnout fell by 6 points in Taos County, New Mexico — popular with both avid skiers and liberals (Biden won 76 percent of the vote there in 2020) — while rising by 7 points in Haralson County, Georgia — a rural county on the border with Alabama where Biden garnered just 13 percent in 2020. This story is repeated over and over again nationwide; turnout went up in the whitest, most rural and most Trump-friendly areas of the country, and it dropped in cities, Democratic strongholds and counties with high percentages of minorities — especially in the Southern Black Belt.
Shift from 2020
Population density
Biden vote share
Turnout was down in denser, more pro-Biden counties
A loess curve approximating voting-age population turnout in the 2024 presidential election in each county by its population density and 2020 presidential election results, compared with the 2020 presidential election
Population density
Biden vote share
Turnout
Shift from 2020
