Thousands of tiny changes in American voting patterns contributed to Donald Trump’s triumph.
85.2% of counties nationwide supported Trump. Additionally, the median vote margin in the nation moved 3.2 percentage points to the right when comparing the voting patterns of each county in the 2020 and 2024 elections. It’s important to note that while Vice President Kamala Harris struggled to match President Joe Biden’s 2020 numbers, underperforming in three out of four counties, Trump improved on his 2020 performance even in counties where he lost.
An NBC News review of U.S. Census Bureau data and election outcomes found that this caused the electoral map to shift across demographic lines.
The analysis discovered:
- Asian American communities saw significant rightward shifts in the Northeast and West, average margins shifted 6.4 and 6 points, respectively. Trump made inroads in the Northeast, growing his vote total by 7%. But the shift owes largely to Harris underperformance in both regions.
- The rightward shift of Black voters in the South also exceeded the nation as a whole and Harris broadly underperformed Biden s performance in counties with large Black populations.
- Areas with high concentrations of high school graduates saw some of the steepest Democratic declines.
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