Despite what you’ve heard, The 2024 election was pretty close. President-elect Donald Trump won a clear victory in the Electoral College, but he leads the popular vote to oust Vice President Kamala Harris by just 1.5 percentage points, 49.8 percent to 48.3 percent*, one of the narrowest margins ever in a presidential race. .
However, the size of Trump’s victory may appear much larger because the nation saw a large shift to the right from where it voted in 2020. Since President Joe Biden defeated Trump nationally by about 4.5 points four years ago, Trump’s 2024 lead is about 6. -point shift to the right, which is the biggest swing for either party since 2008. Back then, Barack Obama’s 7.3-point lead represented a nearly 10-point margin to the left of George W. Bush’s 2.5-point victory in 2004.
However, the national swing tells only part of the story. What is particularly striking this year is the shift in Trump’s direction not only in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, but also in an overwhelming majority. More than 3,000 regions or their equivalents in the united states Compared to his performance in 2020, Trump didn’t gain much ground in many places, but he won at least slightly in almost every place. We can see this by drilling down into the state-level and county-level data below.
In 2024 every state turned to the right
From one presidential election to another, more states tend to lean toward the party that wins ground than four years ago. However, it is rare in each states moving in the same direction, even in elections where a candidate wins decisively. After all, changes in the composition of party coalitions and the differing appeals of individual candidates can pull different states in opposite directions. Moreover, in at least some historical cases, a third-party candidate has won a significant share of the vote in one party’s coalition more than another.
But in 2024, all 50 states and DC swung to the right to varying degrees, by margins, compared to the 2020 race. This was the first presidential election in 1976 in which all 51 constituents of the Electoral College went in the same direction compared to how they voted four years earlier.
Unlike 1976, however, all 50 states and DC moved to the right in 2024, even though previous elections were also very competitive. It wasn’t like that Closely fought 1976 race Jimmy Carter won: his victory came four years later the result of the landslide in 1972When Richard Nixon carried 49 states and won by 23 points nationally—the largest popular vote advantage ever held by a candidate. It has won in the post-World War II era — The return of the 1976 left evolution to a highly competitive base.
Although six other elections since 1976 saw larger swings than in 2024, at least one state in those contests still went to the party that lost ground. In 1980, Vermont was the only state where Carter’s margin improved, even though he lost the election badly to Ronald Reagan. In 1984, Reagan significantly increased his 1980 margins while winning the only landslide since Nixon’s 1972 victory, but seven states and DC still voted more Democratic than four years earlier. Republicans lost 49 states while winning again in 1988, but George HW Bush’s margin over Reagan grew very slightly in Tennessee and DC in 1992. When the elder Bush lost re-election in 1992, he did worse in almost every state, but still managed to improve his margin. a little in Iowa. And in 2008 when Obama won by his largest margin in recent years, five states that are now deep red swung to the right (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia).
Although every state moved to the right in 2024, the extent of this change varied considerably. Weighted by each state’s share of the national vote, the average state moved 5.6 points to the right from the 2020 result. New York led the way, with Harris winning by only about 13 points after Biden led by 23 points, a swing of more than 10 points. Other heavily blue states like New Jersey (10 points) and California (9 points) also swung sharply to the right, as did big red states like Florida (10 points) and Texas (8 points).
In contrast, 36 states and DC moved less than the weighted average to the right. These states tended to be less populated and therefore more rural, but they also include most of them the seven major swing states In the 2024 race, the election had the most concentrated campaign attention and spending. Of these, only Arizona had a larger average rightward shift of 5.8 points, while Nevada’s 5.5 point rightward shift was the same as the weighted average. After that, Michigan moved just 4.2 points to the right, and the other four swing states — Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — moved to the right by less than 3 points.
Of all the states, Washington state had the smallest swing to the right, from Biden +19 to Harris +18. The result in Washington serves as another reminder that you should never rely on one data point as an indicator of things to come. After all, Washington’s blanket and the first two results they have often served as decent predictors for the national political climate in the following November elections. But in 2024, Democrats running for the US House of Representatives did better in the two major state primaries than in 2020 or 2022, but the November results showed Republicans doing much better than in 2020 and similar to the 2022 results. the nation’s popular vote for the House.
Most regions moved to the right to a small or moderate degree
Of course, as a party wins more than in the last election, it tends to win a larger share of the electorate in counties across the nation, and county-level data can help us understand the depth and breadth of the swing behind election results. But a simple count of the number of regions that have moved in one direction is not particularly helpful in painting this picture. After all, most counties are rural (and consistently conservative), but rocks and trees can’t vote. Carter’s 1976 victory was the last time a Democratic candidate won more counties than the Republican, but Democrats have won five of the 12 White House contests since then.
To read the direction of the regional swing, it is useful to consider share it The nation’s general vote found in counties that went one way or the other. In this way, we will better account for the large population differences between regions. By this measure, the rightward swing of Trump’s 2024 victory was wide. Compared to the 2020 election, 92 percent of voters lived in counties that swung toward Trump (or their equivalent), while only 8 percent lived in counties that swung toward Harris. The only recent election against that range was won by Obama in 2008, with 92% of voters living in counties that had turned left since the 2004 election.
Now, the depth of Trump’s swing was somewhat shallower than Obama’s 2008 victory, which isn’t necessarily surprising given that the overall swing nationally was larger in 2008 (9.7 points to the left). More than half of all votes in 2008 came from places that swung to the left by at least 10 points. By comparison, only 11 percent of the 2,024 votes came from counties that moved more than 10 points to the right, and overall 81 percent came from counties that moved between zero and 10 points to the right.
Still, compared to recent contests other than 2008, the broad scope of Trump’s gains across much of the country looks striking. After 2008 and 2024, the third largest change in the last quarter century was in 2012, when Obama won re-election but moved the country as a whole to the right by 3.4 points. However, while much of the country swung to the right that year, at least 1 in 4 votes came from counties that moved slightly to the left. In 2020, we saw a similar story: Biden moved the country about 2.4 points to the left from 2016, but slightly more than 1 in 4 votes came from counties that went toward Trump.
Another data point also suggests that the change from 2020 to 2024 was not extensive, but rather consistent in its effects across the country. Overall, the margin of each region in 2020 compared to 2024 was a -1 to 1 correlation of 0.995, a nearly perfect positive association between the two elections, and the strongest between the results of two consecutive presidential elections. until the year 2000. To be clear, this does not mean that the results in each county were the same in 2020 and 2024. Rather, it means that, in general, the more Republican a county voted in 2020, the more Republican it tended to vote in 2024.
While the results of other recent election pairs have also been highly correlated, the 2020-24 comparison is particularly striking because such an incredibly strong association occurred while the country swung 6 points to the right. This suggests that overall this broad national swing did not change much across the country. In contrast, the large 10-point swing to the left from 2008 to 2004 had a county-level correlation of .933, meaning that while the counties’ margins were fairly similar, more places still saw significant movement that didn’t match. up close And in 2016, which saw particularly large county-level changes from 2012 due to the shifting nature of Democratic and Republican coalitions at the start of the Trump era, the correlation between the two contests was .945.
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The nation’s rightward sweep may suggest some greater possibilities. Considering that 2008 was the only major national change in recent times amid the financial and global turmoil, the evolution of 2024 seems to have been broad. another point in favor of bigger reasons based on fundamentals for the rounds of this election. Dissatisfaction with the state of the economy and immigration, along with a strong distaste for the incumbent president, were clear benefits for Trump’s candidacy.
At the same time, Trump’s gains may have more resonance going forward. The relative consistency of changes at the regional level suggests that there have been no major coalition shifts this year, but even small changes can be predictive. Notably, Trump improved the most more civil and places that are more racially diverse. It is likely that the results of the 2028 election will have a strong correlation with the results of 2024, so minor coalition changes this election could have a long-term impact on party composition and voter preferences for future elections.
Footnote
* 2024 data is based on unofficial election results from ABC News as of 12:00 p.m. on December 10, 2024.
