With this presidential election, the country has shifted significantly to the right compared to four years ago.
In 2020, President Biden won six of the seven most closely watched states, but this year all states have shifted to President-elect Donald Trump.
Furthermore, in 2020, Mr. Biden won the popular vote by a margin of 7 million votes, but Mr. Trump is likely to win this time.
Trump wins in the suburbs
Suburbs are becoming increasingly diverse and populated. More than half of voters in 2024 lived in suburban areas, according to exit polls. These are battleground districts, home to the most targeted House seats and a good barometer of who will win the presidential election.
Suburban winners have won 11 of the past 12 presidential elections since 1980, with Trump winning this year 51% to 47%, according to exit polls.
Vice President Harris had hoped to cross the finish line by finding women in the suburbs of key battleground states. But that didn’t happen. For example, Trump won suburban white women by 7 points and won suburban white men by 27 points. That split up some kitchen tables, but not enough to help Harris win.
In several battleground states, there were significant shifts in Mr. Trump’s direction in the suburbs, based mostly on final vote totals. This includes a net change of almost 60,000 votes in the four counties that make up the Philadelphia suburbs and two major counties north of Detroit, as well as the “great” counties around Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington). That includes more than 10,000 votes within that county. It approaches Fulton County, Georgia, where Atlanta is located.
But Ms. Harris did better than Mr. Biden in some counties in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and Ms. Harris’ losses were not as great in the Charlotte metropolitan area as they were in the former Blue Wall states. That’s one reason Democrats are more optimistic about the future of the Sunbelt than the industrial Midwest.
Rural areas were even more advantageous for Trump.
Trump did very well in rural areas, winning by a record margin in 2024. No candidate has done better since 1980. Trump won 64% of rural voters this year, according to exit polls. The previous high was 61%, set by President Trump in 2016.
This not only helped him in all of the battleground states, but also boosted his popular vote totals in red states like Texas. For example, he received over 900,000 votes in Texas compared to 2020. More than 1 million people live in Florida, a longtime competitive state that has seen a dramatic shift in President Trump’s direction.
His improvements in those states also reflect a major shift in his orientation toward Latino voters in South Florida and South Texas.
Harris also performed poorly in urban areas.
Many Democratic voters live in large cities, and these urban areas are often key to Democratic victories in battleground states. But Harris won only 59% of urban voters, lower than Biden and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
This poor performance was a major reason for their defeat in key states. For example, in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Phoenix is located, Harris received about 61,000 fewer votes than Biden in 2020. Trump, on the other hand, received about 56,000 votes, a swing of 117,000 votes in just one county.
In Michigan’s Wayne County (Detroit), Harris lost more than 60,000 votes and Trump gained about 24,000 votes. Black voters are key in Wayne County, but so are Arab Americans. Dearborn is home to about 100,000 Arab Americans, the largest Arab-American population in the country, and many resent the Biden administration’s Gaza war policies.
The situation was similar in other major metropolitan areas in battleground states, from Las Vegas to Philadelphia.
And Ms. Harris has also seen declines in blue states, such as New York, which is down more than 800,000 people from its total population four years ago under Mr. Biden.
