The 2024 U.S. presidential election has decisively gone in favor of Republican Donald Trump, who will be the 45th and 47th President of the United States. Trump joins Grover Cleveland (1892) as the only presidents to be elected to non-consecutive 2nd terms.
With 94% of votes reported as of Friday morning, we do not have the final numbers for everything just yet. But we do have a lot of key takeaways from where and how Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in this historic election.
Betting Odds Proved Reliable in the End
The 2024 election was very unique with Kamala Harris only replacing Joe Biden in late July, a month after the president’s disastrous debate. She had very little time to prepare a campaign and platform, but she still raised $1 billion and ran what many thought was a strong campaign given the circumstances.
For months, the 2024 election was viewed as a very close race, with the candidates often sharing the lead in the betting odds at various sportsbooks. But the odds were often of the -110 and -120 variety, and sometimes it was tied. Harris was at her best in early September after she decisively won the only debate she did with Trump.
It wasn’t until October when Trump really started getting significant leads near 65% chance of winning with heavy betting volume on him to win, especially at a platform like Polymarket, which Elon Musk promoted on X/Twitter.
According to Sports Odds History, Trump had -160 (implied chance of 61.5%) as his “final odds” going into Election Day, with +140 for Harris. Since 1872, favorites with better than -150 odds are now 26-2 at winning the presidential election in the United States.
As it turns out, those odds were correct as Trump did win, and he essentially won the electoral college rather quickly in the early hours of Wednesday morning. If you watched the coverage on CNN with John King at the Magic Wall, every time he showed a county, no matter which state, and compared the 2024 numbers to 2020, you saw Harris running behind Joe Biden’s numbers. That’s why it was quite obvious early on that Harris was in major trouble.
The sportsbooks were quickly adjusting odds to where Trump was -1000 or better to win long before midnight. This was not going to drag on like 2020 during COVID.
Polling Might Need to Be Taken with a Grain of Salt After Dismal 2024 Performances
As for polling, we might have to start taking this stuff with a grain of salt. It’s gotten so partisan that you can literally have any company putting out any numbers they want to force a narrative these days. The methods are outdated, people lie to pollsters, good questions aren’t always asked, and it’s just not producing results like it used to.
Perhaps the biggest failure in polling in the 2024 election was veteran pollster Ann Selzer. Over the weekend, she made waves with her Iowa poll that shockingly predicted a 3-point lead for Harris in a state Trump was expected to carry with ease. This had people overreacting to Harris possibly dominating the election if a Midwest state like Iowa was showing her with a small lead.
Well, it was junk data. Trump ended up winning Iowa by about 13 points. He won it in 2020 over Biden by just over 8 points. Some have speculated that the panic over the Selzer poll in Iowa just did more to jazz up the Trump base to go vote on Tuesday.
Nate Silver, formerly of FiveThirtyEight fame, has been one of the most popular pollsters in the last 15 years. After first using his model to predict a Trump win, his final updates had Harris pulling it out in the end. Of course, that was wrong, bringing his accuracy into question.
If you had to answer before this election if betting odds were better than polls, we know now that the odds are definitely more reliable to follow and use to predict these things. Polling is really going to have to look at where it went wrong as it underestimated Trump for a 3rd-straight election, something that had not happened to any other party in 3 straight elections since 1972.
Trump Sweeps the Seven Swing States
For months we talked about the 7 swing states ultimately deciding this election. There was the “Blue Wall” states with Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which were decisive in the outcomes in 2016 and 2020, and they have voted in unison since 1992. Then there was the Sun Belt with Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada.
Given the “close” races in these states, it didn’t seem likely that a candidate would sweep them all. However, Trump did exactly that. He turned the Blue Wall back to red just as he did in 2016, and he won the other 4 states as well to give him enough to get to 270 electoral votes to win the election.
The current count is Trump at 301 electoral votes and Harris at 226 with 11 outstanding votes still to be added to the final tally. But all you need is 270, and Trump had that early on with Pennsylvania being his biggest prize of them all.
As for Trump’s Blue Wall victory, here is how it compares to the margins in his 2016 sweep of the Blue Wall against Hillary Clinton (note: final margins still to be determined):
- Michigan (2016): Trump (47.5%) defeated Clinton (47.27%) by 0.23 percentage points.
- Michigan (2024): Trump (49.7%) defeated Harris (48.3%) by 1.4 percentage points.
- Pennsylvania (2016): Trump (48.18%) defeated Clinton (47.46%) by 0.72 percentage points.
- Pennsylvania (2024): Trump (50.5%) defeated Harris (48.5%) by 2.0 percentage points.
- Wisconsin (2016): Trump (47.22%) defeated Clinton (46.45%) by 0.77 percentage points.
- Wisconsin (2024): Trump (49.7%) defeated Harris (48.7%) by 1.0 percentage points.
Trump was able to improve his vote share in each Blue Wall state compared to 2016. Compared to Biden, Harris underperformed in Democratic strongholds like Detroit and Philadelphia.
In Michigan specifically, Harris did see some decline in the youth vote as there is a significant Muslim-American population in the state. This is why many believe the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Gaza conflict hurt Democrats in this election.
While the final numbers are still being processed, it is looking like Washington State is the only state out of 50 where Harris was able to improve on Biden’s 2020 numbers at the expense of Trump.
Republicans May Have Even Won the Popular Vote and Full Control of the Government
While the electoral college and presidency was the top prize, this was also a key election for control of the House and Senate. With Trump having so much success, the Republicans also picked up seats to take back control of the Senate with what should be a 53-47 split. The House has yet to be called, but the Republicans are favored to have a majority there as well.
But maybe the biggest shocker is that Trump is on track to win the popular vote, something he didn’t do in 2016 or 2020, and something the Democrats had won in 7-of-8 elections.
As of Friday morning, Trump has 73,361,410 votes (50.7%) nationally compared to 69,043,761 votes (47.7%) for Harris. There are still a few million votes to be counted, including in Democrat-heavy California, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Harris finishes around 73 million votes. But the popular vote should still go to Trump, and Harris is going to fall well short of the 81 million votes Biden received in his 2020 victory, suggesting turnout may have actually been down overall in the 2024 election.
But we’ll see what the final numbers have to say about that as some states are painfully slow at counting every ballot. But Trump should have his popular vote victory, which was not favored to happen.
Voting Demographics Show Young Men and Latinos Gravitated Towards Trump
Exit polls showing voter demographics are still coming out, but some trends are clear from the 2024 election:
- Trump won 55% of the male vote while Harris won 53% of the female vote.
- Trump won men by 13 percentage points, improving on his marks from 2020 (+8) and 2016 (+11).
- Harris actually lost ground with women, winning them by 8 points compared to 15 for Biden in 2020.
- Males aged 18-29 heavily voted towards Trump in this election.
- Latinos voted 52% for Harris, but in 2020, that number was closer to 66% for Biden.
- Biden won Latino men by 23 points in 2020, but Trump won this demographic by 12 points in 2024.
- Biden won Latino women 39 points in 2020, but Harris’ lead shrunk to 22 points.
- While initially believed to lose some support of Black men, Harris’ final numbers should be within a percentage point of Biden’s for Black male voters.
- Black women voters still voted in significant rates for Harris, the No. 1 demographic for Democrats.
- The only groups that did not shift more Republican compared to 2020 were voters over 65 years old and college-educated white women.
It’s the Economy, Always
At the end of the day, the 2024 election came down to the economy and immigration. Those were the top issues for Trump voters while Harris voters were focused on democracy. Based on the vote counts, it’s safe to say economy was truly the No. 1 issue.
People care about where things are hitting them in their wallet, including the price of groceries and gas due to inflation. We can spend time pointing out with stats how the economy has improved, inflation has gone down, but that doesn’t matter to the voters who are remembering what they used to pay and what they are paying now.
They believe Trump will get them back to where things are, and that was good enough for their vote. Harris had a difficult time differentiating herself from Biden, who we learned this week was just very unpopular with the voting blocs. Biden’s approval rating was barley 40%, and most voters felt the country was moving in the wrong direction. They didn’t see Harris as a new way forward.
Democrats also didn’t get enough of a boost from abortion as they might have in 2022 when Roe v. Wade was first overturned by the Supreme Court. While it is still an important issue for many, it was not more important to the many male voters and other Trump voters.
The Democrats will have to regroup and seriously think about their messaging after a significant defeat in this election that was more than just the presidency with the losses in the Senate and House. They are in need of new leadership, and they definitely need to work on how they are reaching young voters for 2028.