Trump’s 2024 victory revealed voter shifts that could reshape America’s political landscape

By Eric Bradner, CNN

(CNN) — President-elect Donald Trump won across the map — improving on Republican margins nearly everywhere and delivering on his promises to win over more non-White voters on his way to defeating Vice President Kamala Harris.

Now that the dust has settled on the 2024 presidential election, a dive into CNN’s exit polls and county-by-county results compared with previous races offers an even more detailed glimpse at how Trump won.

And perhaps more important for Democrats, the results paint a daunting picture of a party whose national coalition has fractured — with suburbs where they’ve won squeezed as tight as they can be, Latinos rapidly realigning with the GOP, and Trump posting the sorts of marginal gains among both urban and rural voters that are difficult to overcome.

Here are five takeaways on the voters Trump won and what it means moving forward:

The Latino realignment

A trend with the potential to remake the American political landscape is the huge shift in Latino voters toward Trump. His gains were visible nationwide, but were particularly glaring in Florida.

Trump cruised to a nearly 12-point win in Miami-Dade County, home to a massive population of Cuban Americans and a large and growing number of Venezuelan immigrants. He was the first Republican presidential nominee to win the county in 36 years.

Perhaps more ominous for Democrats outside of the Sunshine State, though, was Trump’s strong performance in the Orlando area, where the Latino population is largely Puerto Rican — and therefore the results more reflective of what’s happening outside Florida as well. Harris’ campaign had hoped the pro-Trump comedian referring to the island as “garbage” at a Madison Square Garden rally would pay off with those voters. But the results showed they had moved hard in Trump’s favor.

Trump’s 1.5-point win in Osceola County flipped a location that President Joe Biden won by 14 points four years earlier. Trump’s performance similarly improved in Orange County, home of Orlando, where Biden won by 23 points in 2020 but Harris won by just 5.6 points this year.

CNN’s exit poll showed the dramatic swing in Latino voters over just a four-year period.

In 2020, Biden won Latino voters nationally, 65% to Trump’s 32%. For Harris, the advantage was just 52% to Trump’s 46% — a huge slippage among a demographic that makes up 12% of the overall electorate.

With Latino men, the numbers were even more stark. Trump won Latino men by 12 points — a 35-point swing from 2020. If the dramatic shift continues in future elections, it could remake the American political map, with consequences ranging from presidential races to state legislative battles and more.

GOP’s big border gains

Latino voters’ shift was also on display on the border — particularly in the Rio Grande Valley in southeast Texas.

Starr County, which is 97% Hispanic, hadn’t backed a Republican presidential nominee since 1892 — and it hadn’t really been close: Hillary Clinton won there by 60 points in 2016. But Trump broke that streak this year, winning Starr County by 16 points. It was a vivid example of the valley’s rapid political evolution.

The tough-on-border-security message Trump hammered nationally hit home in the Texas borderland, where residents — many of whom have been in the United States for generations — feel the effects of border crossings acutely. Republicans’ cultural appeals and organizing efforts have also paid dividends.

There is reason for Democrats to believe they can stop, or at least slow, this shift. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz made gains but did not rack up the same huge border wins that Trump did. A Democratic incumbent, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, narrowly held on to his Rio Grande Valley seat — though it was a much closer race than he’d faced against the same opponent in 2022. So did Rep. Henry Cuellar, the most conservative Democrat in the House.

The good news for Republicans: It wasn’t just Texas. In the swing state of Arizona, Yuma County — a border county in the state’s southwestern corner — went to Trump by 6 points in 2020. He won the county by 29 points this year.

Trump’s urban improvement

Trump criticized Detroit while he was in Detroit. He accused Harris of ruining San Francisco, where she’d been district attorney. He held a rally in deep-blue New York City, despite the state not being in play.

While the effectiveness of his campaign tactics is debatable, what’s undeniable is that the former president tapped into a simmering discontent in urban areas, where local governments are led almost exclusively by Democrats.

Trump’s percentage of the vote in Wayne County, home of Detroit, ticked upward by 3.4 percentage points compared with 2020. Harris’ percentage dropped by 5.7 points. And the Democratic ticket won the state’s most populous county — one where racking up huge margins is critical to the party’s hopes statewide — by 85,000 fewer votes than it had in 2020. Trump’s gains are explained in part by his appeals to Black men, and his efforts to reach out to Arab American voters.

The urban swings toward Trump were evident across the political map. He gained significant ground in New York City and the surrounding counties. But even small gains, like the 2 to 3 points he appears to have improved in Philadelphia compared to 2020, is significant: It chopped the Democratic raw vote edge there down by about 55,000 votes.

Trump’s improvement was fueled in part by Black men. CNN’s exit polls showed just a 2-point shift among Black men toward Trump nationally. But the shift was much bigger in some key states, like Pennsylvania, where Biden’s 89% to 10% edge turned into a 72% to 26% win for Harris, and North Carolina, where Biden’s 91% to 8% advantage was just 78% to 21% for Harris.

Harris’ suburban flatline

Headed into Election Day, two potentially outcome-deciding questions loomed: Would Trump’s yearslong efforts to appeal to men, particularly young and non-White men, show up at the polls? And would Harris be able to outpace him by further building on recent Democratic wins in the suburbs?

The answers: Yes. And no.

The only group with whom Harris improved on Biden’s margins was college-educated women. Her campaign had hoped for big gains with those voters — people who helped drive Democratic midterm wins in 2018 and 2022, and who might have backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. It’s why she campaigned alongside former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who lost her House seat in a 2022 primary after vehemently opposing Trump, in the race’s closing days. But they were nowhere near enough to stop her overall slide.

One window into Harris’ failure is the counties surrounding Detroit. Oakland County, sprawling suburban territory that both campaigns had visited in the race’s closing days. Harris won by 10 points and 85,000 votes — short of the 14-point, 114,000-vote win Biden had notched there in 2020. Macomb County, where Trump had won by 8 points and 40,000 votes four years ago, went to the former president by 14 points and 70,000 votes.

Those marginal gains for Trump add up very quickly in a state where he defeated Harris by 78,000 votes.

Trump also showed improvement in the Western battlegrounds, including Nevada — where different mail-in ballot counting rules means the vote is being tallied more slowly, but early indications are that Trump made significant gains, particularly among newly registered independent voters in and around Las Vegas. Independents made up a bigger share of Nevada’s overall electorate than they did in 2020, and they swung 8 points in Trump’s favor.

Where Democratic presidential nominees can’t win

The deep challenge the national Democratic Party faces with rural voters was on vivid display in two states the party hasn’t won on the presidential level in a generation: Missouri and Kentucky.

In Missouri, policies broadly backed by Democrats won popular support. Voters this year approved statewide ballot measures guaranteeing abortion rights, raising the minimum wage and mandating paid sick leave.

Harris, though? Blown out by 15 points.

In Kentucky — the same state that reelected a Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, last year in a campaign that focused largely on cultural battles like abortion rights and transgender rights — voters resoundingly rejected a proposed school voucher program.

They also rejected Harris, handing Trump a 30-point victory.

Virtually across the board, Trump picked up even more votes in the largely White, working-class, rural regions where Republicans have long dominated. Those marginal gains made the challenge for Harris of putting together a winning coalition even more daunting — and, ultimately, impossible.

What Democrats will have to grapple with as the party enters a period of soul-searching is why the national party’s brand is so toxic with voters who have sided with the party on policy, and at times handed the party local victories.

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