Data Watch · Democrats vs. Republicans, Part 6 of 7 · October 12, 2026, 8:00 AM CDT
Key Facts
- Pew Research Center’s analysis of 2024 voters, confirmed against voter records, found men favored Donald Trump 55% to 43%, rural voters 69% to 29%, and voters without a college degree 56% to 42%. [1]
- Kamala Harris led among urban voters (65% to 33%) and college graduates (57% to 41%). [1]
- Hispanic voters split 51% Harris to 48% Trump, down from 61% to 36% for Biden in 2020. About 15% of Black voters backed Trump, up from 8% in 2020 and 6% in 2016. [1]
- Turnout was high: about 65% of eligible voters in 2020 and an estimated 64% in 2024. [3]
Both parties talk about “the people.” But who actually shows up for each of them? Today we look at the voters, not the politicians.
This is Part 6 of 7. We have compared presidents and Congress. Now we compare the people who elected them.
- Part 1: Jobs · Oct 7
- Part 2: Prices and paychecks · Oct 8
- Part 3: Growth and recessions · Oct 9
- Part 4: Debt and deficits · Oct 10
- Part 5: Congress · Oct 11
- Part 6: Voters (this post)
- Part 7: Red and blue states · Oct 13
The question
Who voted for the Democratic and Republican candidates in 2024, and how has that changed?
The best evidence comes from surveys of voters whose turnout is checked against official records. Pew Research Center did that for 2024: its team surveyed nearly 10,000 U.S. adults in the days after the election and matched who voted to voter files.[1]
Where each candidate’s voters live
The pattern is clear but not absolute. Rural, religious, non-college and male voters leaned toward Trump. Urban, college-educated and less-frequently religious voters leaned toward Harris.[1][4] Every group contains voters for both.
The groups that moved
Compared with 2020, Trump gained among Hispanic, Asian and Black voters, and among naturalized citizens. Harris held most of the Democratic coalition but with narrower margins in several groups.[1]
The overall result
Donald Trump won the 2024 election with 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226, and led the national popular vote 49.8% to 48.3%, according to a reference work on the election.[2]
Turnout stayed high. A reference work on voter turnout puts it at about 65.3% of eligible voters in 2020, the highest since at least 1932, and an estimated 64.3% in 2024.[3]
What the data says, and what it does not
It says each party’s coalition is a mix, and that the mix shifted between 2020 and 2024. It does not say why a given voter chose a party. Surveys record what people report, not what moved them.
It also covers one election. Coalitions change from year to year, and a group’s share in a single survey has a margin of error.
- Pew weights its survey to match the voting population and checks turnout against voter files (a 94% match rate in this study). [1]
- We report the shares Pew published. We did not rerun its microdata, so we cannot compute our own confidence intervals for them.
- Race, education, age and place overlap: for example, many rural voters are white and non-college. A single bar cannot say which trait matters most.
- The popular-vote and turnout figures come from a reference work, not an official count. Treat them as accurate to the first decimal at best.
- Validated voter: someone who says they voted and has a record that confirms it
- Coalition: the mix of groups that vote for a party
- Electoral vote: a state’s share of the votes that actually decide the presidency
- Turnout: the share of eligible people who voted
Check it yourself: the sources, by tier
Primary sources are the agencies and datasets themselves. Secondary sources are research and analysis built on them. Tertiary sources are reference works. Each was read before it was cited.
- Secondary Pew Research Center, “Behind Trump’s 2024 Victory, a More Racially and Ethnically Diverse Voter Coalition,” June 26, 2025 (American Trends Panel survey, Nov 12–17, 2024, turnout validated against voter files). pewresearch.org
- Tertiary “2024 United States presidential election,” Wikipedia (final electoral votes 312–226; national popular vote 49.8% to 48.3%). wikipedia.org
- Tertiary “Voter turnout in United States presidential elections,” Wikipedia (voting-eligible population turnout: 2020, 65.28%; 2024, 64.3% estimated). wikipedia.org
- Secondary Pew Research Center, “Demographic Differences Between Harris and Trump Voters in 2024,” June 26, 2025 (shares of each candidate’s voters living in urban, suburban and rural areas). pewresearch.org
Investigative methodology: this series was written by a person from the sources cited, with every figure computed by a script from the primary data linked in each part; no language model chose or wrote a number. “Democratic” and “Republican” mean the party of the president in office. The comparison describes what happened under each party’s presidents. It does not show that a president or a party caused it.
Kemetic Minds Editorial Desk
Verified NewsroomPrimary-sourced investigative intelligence on civil rights, voting rights, federal policy, and consumer protection. Sourced from primary legal filings, government statistics, and direct field reporting.