As the 2024 election results settle, an unexpected victory for President-elect Trump has stirred both parties to analyze exit poll data, seeking insights into Trump’s success and Vice President Harris’s loss, along with implications for future races.
Even as some exit polls are still adjusting with recent data, there are two major surveys providing insights: one exit poll by Edison Research for a consortium of major networks and a separate voter analysis by NORC for The Associated Press and Fox News. While these surveys often yield comparable results, differences occasionally arise.
CNN and AP/Fox exit polls highlight shifts in Latino support and women’s voting patterns
One takeaway from CNN’s exit poll was the outstanding swing in Latino male voters toward Trump. In 2020, this group favored President Biden over Trump by a 23-point margin, but in this election, they flipped, choosing Trump over Harris by a 12-point margin.
Latina women showed a smaller shift, with their support for the Democratic candidate dropping from 69 percent for Biden to 60 percent for Harris. Some suggest Trump’s economic messaging resonated with Latino men, while others speculate that Democratic stances on social issues may have alienated them.
Harris did not experience the anticipated boost in female voter support on the issue of abortion rights. Although Democrats hoped that the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade would galvanize a wave of female voters, neither the CNN nor the AP/Fox exit polls showed a remarkable increase in female support for Harris over Biden’s margins in 2020.
In fact, both polls reflected a smaller advantage for Harris among women compared to Biden’s support four years ago. Despite wins on several state ballot measures favoring abortion rights, this momentum did not translate into a decisive gender-driven surge for Harris.
Younger voters, who traditionally lean Democratic, showed a marked shift toward Trump this election cycle. While Harris maintained a slim 5-point edge among voters under 30 in the AP/Fox poll, this was lower than Biden’s 25-point advantage in 2020.
Similarly, male voters under 45 shifted from a 7-point margin for Biden to a 6-point margin for Trump, and Harris’s support among young women under 45 dropped to a 12-point margin.
Black male voters were a contentious topic throughout Harris’s campaign. Interestingly, the two exit polls showed differing results: CNN’s poll indicated a minor 2-point increase for Trump among Black men, while the AP/Fox poll reflected a doubling of Trump’s support from 12 to 24 percent. This discrepancy underscores the challenges and inconsistencies in interpreting postelection data.
Meanwhile, the Democratic support among Jewish voters remained largely steady. Although there were suggestions that Jewish voters might lean rightward due to Republican arguments around Democratic responses to antisemitism, the AP/Fox survey recorded only a small decline from 69 percent for Biden to 66 percent for Harris. Given the small sample size for Jewish voters, this slight change could be within the margin of error.
