The Trends I’m Watching During Election Week (Part 1)

Examining the factors that will tell the story of this election.

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(Photo: Getty Images)

One week from today, we could very well know who the next president of the United States will be, though the final result may not be known for a few days. In the weeks that follow, pundits, operatives, and analysts alike will be pouring over the data to discern what the “story” of the election was. More partisan types will likely be looking for ways to spin the outcome in their favor, especially those on the winning side.

To help better focus these conversations on relevant considerations, I want to share some questions I’ll be seeking to answer as the results become clearer and historical trends I’ll be comparing this year’s results against. Fair warning: there are many! So below I’ll offer the first bunch, and next Monday, before Election Day, we’ll post the second half of them. After we have results and other election data, I will come back to these questions and see if we can answer them.

The gender gap among young voters

Democrats have long held an advantage among voters aged 18–29. They have won these voters in presidential elections by at least nine points all but once since 1992¹ and by at least 20 points since 2008. What’s more: in contrast to other age groups, both young women and young men have supported Democratic candidates. In 2020, 18–29-year-old men were the only male age cohort to support Joe Biden, doing so by an 11-point margin, 52–41 (young women, meanwhile, supported Biden by a much larger 35 points, 67–32).

There are some signs that this dynamic could be changing. According New York Times/Siena College polling, Donald Trump now leads Harris among young men, and it’s not particularly close: 58–37. But Harris’s lead among young women is even wider: 67–28 (this is also wider than Biden’s advantage was four years ago). If this polling is accurate, it’s unclear how a growing divide like this might impact the final results, but suffice it to say that it’s a wild card.

However, it’s not clear that Republicans do have an advantage among young men. The latest Harvard IOP poll of young voters found that in fact Harris continues leading with this cohort by 10 points. Moreover, the younger men who support Trump also appeared to be less certain that they would vote, while Harris held a 17-point lead among likely voters.

Key questions:

• Which survey do the early exit polls suggest was more accurate: polling from the Times’ or Harvard?

• Does the data show both young men and women moving further from their 2020 baselines or only one of those groups?

• Does a potential growing gender gap extend to other age brackets as well?

Racial depolarization

A trend we at TLP have been watching for some time has been the rightward movement of nonwhite voters. For example, between 2016 and 2020, Hispanic, a Democratic-leaning group, swung toward Trump by 12 points. This cycle, Hispanics as well as black Americans appear to be moving even further rightward. The latest polling crosstab averages from both the Cook Political Report and Democratic pollster Adam Carlson show that Harris’s advantage with black voters is roughly 19–20 points below Biden’s, and with Hispanics she is 8–11 points behind. These swings could make a big difference in battleground states where the final margin is only a point or two.

Meanwhile, though, there have been signs that Harris is making up ground among white Americans, who have traditionally voted more Republican than Democratic and constitute an outsized share of the electorate (72 percent in 2020). This includes white non-college voters, who are overrepresented in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania as well as their college-educated peers. If Harris outperforms Biden with white voters, it will mark the second straight election in which the Democratic nominee has done better than their predecessor.

One thing to watch is whether the nonwhite voters moving in Trump’s direction are are among those who are slightly less likely to vote. As the Times’ Cohn has observed previously, Trump’s support with these voters may be coming from those who are less politically engaged. Extensive reporting has also indicated that Trump’s ground game and turnout operation are wanting, which means he may have trouble turning his poll support into actual votes. So it’s unclear whether the extent to which his gains with these groups will ultimately materialize—or the impact it will have if they do.

Key questions:

• Do the polls showing Trump’s substantial gains with nonwhite voters square with the final results?

• If Trump does make further gains with nonwhite voters relative to 2020, do they make the difference in any state?

• If Harris loses ground with black or Hispanic voters but improves with white voters, is that enough to offset the former losses?

The growing class divide

Another topic we have covered extensively is how the rise of educational polarization has come to reshape the two parties’ coalitions, with Democrats increasingly becoming the party of the college-educated class while the Republicans earn more votes from working-class voters. After Obama won non-college voters by four points in 2012, they swung to Trump in 2016, backing him by six. They did so again by roughly the same margin in 2020. College-educated voters have moved in the opposite direction, voting Democratic at the presidential level by margins of four (2012), 15 (2016), and 18 (2020) points. This cycle, both college- and non-college-educated voters have moved rightward relative to four years ago by roughly 2–3 points, a sign that this gap isn’t likely to shrink much, if at all.

There appear to be similar movements happening when looking at household income. Between 2012 and 2020, voters whose median earnings below $50,000 annually swung rightward by 12 points, going from backing Obama by 22 to supporting Biden by just 10. At the same time, the wealthiest Americans (those earning at least $100,000) have moved toward Democrats, going from a Romney +10 group to narrowly breaking for Democrats by two points in each of the previous two elections. The latest polling averages show Harris doing about the same as Biden among high income earners but underperforming among low-income households by 10–12 points.²

Finally, one other constituency whose performance may offer more context to the picture of class in America is union households. For decades, union voters have been strongly Democratic, but since 1992, that support (and the group’s vote share) have steadily declined. After Bill Clinton won them by around 30 points, they backed Obama by roughly 19. Hillary Clinton then carried them by only nine before Biden, who regularly touted his support for organized labor, bounced back, taking them by 15 points. The picture this cycle is a little murky, with little pre-election polling on this group. But the party’s struggles with this core constituency are undeniable.

If these trends hold on Election Day, it may be bad news for the Democrats. Working-class and union voters are overrepresented in several pivotal states, while, college-educated and higher-income voters both represent small (though reliable) shares of the electorate.

Key questions:

• Will recent class trends continue to change the makeup of the two parties’ coalitions, or will one or both claw back ground they have lost?

• Does Harris hold the line with union voters, or was the Teamsters’ internal polling a canary in the coal mine for further rightward drift?

• Is there a racial component to the class divide? (E.g., Do white working-class voters swing left but non-white ones swing right, or not?)

The impact of geography

In addition to educational attainment, the other growing fault line in American politics has been the politics of place—namely, whether you live in an urban, rural, or suburban area. These communities tend to be deeply Democratic, deeply Republican, and a mix of both, respectively. However, what’s become more interesting in the last few elections is the directions in which each one is trending.

Though urban areas across America are reliably Democratic, almost without exception, the party has seen some erosion of support in these places. As I wrote in my inaugural TLP piece last year, major cities in key swing states have experienced a decline in voter turnout as well as Democratic support. To be sure, they continue to vote blue by huge margins, but even these small losses matter. For example, in 2016, had Hillary Clinton simply matched Obama’s vote totals in Detroit and Milwaukee, she would have carried Michigan and Wisconsin. The latest polling averages indicate that Democrats may be losing further ground in urban America, with Harris underperforming Biden by nearly 12 points.

Meanwhile, much of rural America has become extremely hostile territory for Democrats over the previous decade. In 2008, John McCain only won rural counties by about eight points. By 2020, Trump carried them by 23. Democrats’ image in this part of the country is a longstanding problem. However, recent polling averages indicate that the party might be bouncing back.³ Carlson’s tracker has shown Harris over-performing Biden’s 2020 margins every month, usually by around seven or eight points. If her urban losses do materialize, gains in rural America could help her stay competitive.

Finally, suburban areas are likely where this election will be won or lost, just as they have in most elections. Since at least 2008, suburban voters have composed a whopping 55 percent of the electorate, and as they have gone, so too has the election. The latest polling averages show Harris narrowly winning them this time around by about three points. Though this might sound like good news for her, it represents a six-point decline from Biden’s 2020 performance.

Key questions:

• Are the polling crosstab averages showing Trump gaining in urban areas accurate? And if he eats into Harris’s margins in places like Detroit or Milwaukee, does she make up ground elsewhere?

• Does Harris do better than Biden in rural communities? If so, is there anything we can glean from the ones where she achieves this? (E.g., have they grown in population since the COVID pandemic?)

• If Harris carries the suburbs but by a lower margin than Biden did, is that enough to win?

1. The lone exception was the 2000 election, when Democrats only won them by two.

2. Averages for middle income earners are not readily available, though this is historically a Republican-leaning group.

3. Interestingly, this improvement began while Biden was still in the race, which may serve to counter claims that picking Tim Walz as her running mate helped Harris bounce back.