What A Day - What the 2024 Voter Breakdown Reveals About America

Episode Date: November 9, 2024

Trump won over America by securing electoral votes in all seven swing states and gaining ground in historically blue areas. On this week's "How We Got Here," Max and Erin cope with post-election grief by going through the election data bit-by-bit. They discuss what we can learn about America, its political trajectory, and where we go from here. 

So, Erin, how are you feeling? Max, I'm feeling like I found out that my cat died because half of the country voted to kill it. Well, you know what I do when I'm stressed about my country electing a far-right authoritarian? Ketamine. Not at work. When I am anxious about something, I read up on it. Everything I can find. Understanding it just makes it less scary to me. It works for root canals, medical scares, and yeah, you know, whatever just happened to our country. That works for root canals for you? That would make it so much worse. Okay, Max,

I kind of do the same thing, except before I get to the find out everything I can phase, I kind of Marie Kondo my wardrobe. And related, is there any chance you want some circa 2012 infinity scarves? Well, this week, listeners, we are putting our neuroses to work and doing the late-night exit poll doom scroll so you don't have to. We are absorbing every data point we can find to try to get some wisdom on what just happened. Yes, we are absorbing data, not ketamine. Speak for yourself, Max. I'm Max Fisher.

I'm Erin Ryan. And this is How We Got Here, a series where we explore a big question behind the week's headlines and tell a story that answers that question. Our question this week, what can we learn about America, its political trajectory, and why it voted for Trump from the election data. One caveat before we get into it, we're going to be citing numbers from a few different sources. One of those is exit polls, which can be notoriously unreliable. They are polls after all. You may remember, for example, the 2016 exit poll claiming to show that 52% of white women voted for Trump compared to just 43% for Hillary Clinton. Oh sure, for years, every protest had at least one person waving a sign saying white women elected Trump. Yeah, except it might not be true. Later studies put the number closer to 47 for Trump and 45 for Clinton, which is still a plurality, but a much smaller one than exit polls had claimed.

Right. So don't hang everything on one or two exit polls. Don't take them as super precise, especially if they seem like outliers. Yeah, and especially if they confirm something that you want to believe is true. Yes. Definitely give a second look to things that reinforce preconceived notions. Okay, you're also going to hear us citing county-level data. This is different from an exit poll.

It's an actual count of the vote total. So these are much more reliable for drawing conclusions. Let's get started. We're going to go bit by bit through the data and talk about what we think it means. But first, Aaron, let's do some top line numbers on this election. So nationally, the country shifted six points toward Trump. He expanded his vote share from 2020 in every state and in 90% of counties. His vote margin grew by an average of three points in counties he'd heavily won in 2020 and by four points in counties that Biden had heavily won. His vote share grew in cities and suburbs, rural areas. It grew in predominantly white counties, racially diverse counties, older counties, and younger counties. So everywhere.

He gained heavily in red states like Florida, where he improved by 10 points, and in blue states, reducing the Democrats' margins in, for example, Connecticut from 20 to just 8, and New Jersey from 16 to 4. And this was all with record turnout in a lot of states. It was, in other words, a blowout across the board. So Erin, before we get into the nitty gritty, what's your kind of top level theory for what happened here? I don't want to sound glib here, Max, but sexism and racism. I got to say that. And I don't mean that sexism and racism explain all critiques of Harris as a candidate and explain every possible reason that a person wouldn't have supported Harris as a candidate. But I do think that sexism and racism are intensifiers when people have smaller reasons to not support a candidate, or there is something that they don't like about a candidate's position, or something they don't like about a candidate's party. Kamala Harris was clearly a qualified candidate with ideas that were

pretty supported across the board by voters. Things like protecting reproductive freedom. We saw in a lot of states, voters opted to protect reproductive freedom. In Florida, though their reproductive freedom amendment did not pass by Floridian standards, 57.6% of voters still supported an amendment to the state constitution supporting abortion access right but harris lost florida bigly which it seems very very odd to me that uh voters would support a candidate at the federal level who has the power to undermine an issue they support at the state level maybe it's because they don't understand the supremacy clause. Maybe it's because their reticence to support a female candidate is that strong.

So I think there are kind of three prevailing categories of theories out there for what happened. And I think the first two are mutually inclusive, and there's probably truth to both, but sorting them out and separating them is going to be the big challenge. And I think the third is just false, but I'll say what they are before I explain what I mean. The first is that some proportion of voters actively chose Trump because they like what he's selling. He's been around for 10 years now. very clear on his message. And there's some proportion of the electorate that wants a far-right authoritarian. I think this really speaks to your racism and sexism theory, for sure, and just a lot of what he is selling. We are seeing being popular across democracies. Theory number two is that it was less specifically about Trump or maybe even specifically about Kamala Harris's agenda and just a generalized, and'm going to talk more about this, anti-incumbent,

throw out whoever is in power feeling across the board. That is also something that we're seeing play out globally. And I think that that would help to explain why you see an absolutely huge plus six shift towards the Republicans across every region, every demographic, every state. The third explanation you hear is that Kamala Harris's campaign in some way failed or her message failed to resonate with voters. And the reason that I feel very comfortable ruling that out and saying that that is not true is that if you look at the data nationwide, plus six shift towards Trump, again, across groups, across states, regions, old, young, whatever, except in places where both Trump and Kamala Harris heavily campaigned. Kamala improved on those numbers by four or five points, which is huge. So when people

got more exposed to the specific candidates, both her and him and their messages, they shifted much more towards her. But the problem is that there was this larger force moving the entire country. There was one exit poll by CNN asking people their feelings about the way things are going in the United States. Only 7% said they were enthusiastic. 19% said they were satisfied, so very small numbers happy. And then about half, 43% said they were dissatisfied, and about a third, 29% said they were angry. They were angry about the state of the country. And it just, when you have those numbers, it's very hard to imagine any incumbent party, regardless of their platform or message, winning a race.

So, okay, let's get into that more granular data and let's start with attitudes toward the economy, which was really, really important in this race. About a third of voters called it the most important issue to them in the election. Another third said democracy, and the rest were split among other issues like immigration and abortion. Almost half of voters in the country said their family's financial situation was worse than it was four years ago. Trump carried that group by 81 points to 17, so overwhelmingly. And Trump also won voters who said the economy was bad by 70 to 27. There's been a lot of talk that inflation determined this election and inflation is back down to normal levels right now, but it was quite severe in the first half of Biden's term.

The Wall Street Journal found that there was an overall price rise of 17% and that the cost of a typical basket of groceries went up by a third versus before Biden was in office. So that is a lot. But at the same time, the job market is booming. Incomes are rising, especially among the bottom half of earners, among low-income and working-class people. And the stock market is soaring. So, Erin, what do you think? Why was the economy so central in this election? And did inflation decide it? I think that this is something that populists on the left, like Bernie Sanders and AOC, to a lesser extent, have been bringing up for years, which is that economic markers, economic indicators that are used as macro gauges of the health of the economy overall, have fully decoupled from the lived experiences of most everyday Americans.

Less than half of Americans own stocks, even in mutual funds, and even fewer of those people own stocks outright because they don't really have the cash or the risk tolerance to absorb a single stock's risk. And the lived experience of people engaging with the economy is most frequently in the grocery store at the gas pump. And so even though it might seem like, oh, yeah, all of the other economic indicators are showing that the economy is improving, the ways in which people interact with the economy are reminding them over and over again that there are actually some red flags here. The cost of groceries is a big one, right? Yeah. And I think that the Biden administration's messaging around the health of the economy,

like, no, guys, it's actually good, was sort of read by a lot of people as a slap in the face and insulting because they were experiencing the economy as a rise in prices of things that they pay for every single day. I think that another piece of this is what people expect to be able to access in their lives. I think that a rise in inflation coincided with a shift in Silicon Valley that for the last 10 to 15 years had given a lot of people access to really low cost luxuries like grocery delivery, cheap Ubers. A private taxi for my burrito. Exactly. And, you know, food delivery, things that 20 years ago nobody really would have expected to be part of their budget, were accessible. And they were accessible because of the way that Silicon Valley rolls out disruptive technologies, which is to undercut the cost of all competitors and then jack prices up. So the cost of these daily luxuries were suddenly becoming really unaffordable to a lot of people at the same time that inflation was making things that we would have needed 20,

30, 40, 50 years ago, like eggs, more unaffordable for people. So I think that it was kind of a double whammy. And that's kind of my top line thought of the economy. Yeah, it has been true for a very, very long time that inflation is absolutely anathema to voters and that when inflation reaches above normal levels, voters really, really push to throw out whoever happens to be in office. And we're seeing that right now globally. Globally, in every democracy on earth, there was a massive shift in voting against incumbent governments, left-wing governments, right-wing governments, governments that have handled the economy well, have handled it poorly, because they've all experienced inflation across the board. Voters are just really revolting

against incumbent governments. And it's hard to draw policy conclusions from this because one reason that inflation was as high as it was in the United States is because the Biden administration responded to the pandemic with very, very heavy fiscal stimulus. And this was overall good for people. It's why we have the strongest recovery of any developed economy on earth. It's why our job market is booming. It's why wages are up so much, especially for working and low-income people. But the side effect of that is prices have gone way up. And it is just the way that people psychologically experience the economy is that if you have held onto your job because of Biden administration fiscal stimulus, you don't credit

Biden with that. You're the one showing up to work every day. You're the one who earned that job. If you got a promotion at work because labor is more expensive. Now, again, you're doing the work. So in your mind, that's not something that you're saying, well, thank you to the FTC for giving me that. But if you go to the store and all of a sudden eggs are 30% more expensive, it is very easy to put that on the president. One final thought here. I think a lot of this is the story of what stories people are consuming. And by that, I mean that people who were watching a lot of Fox News or right-wing media were being told the story of the economy that focused on negativity, right? They were being told every day that things are bad,

things are expensive, and you're being lied to. And people who were watching CNN, MSNBC, were being told, actually, the stats are good. So people who are watching Fox News or consuming right-wing media, right-wing podcasts, are more likely to notice things in their lived daily lives that reinforce the stories that they're being told in the media they consume. Well, let's move on to the gender breakdown. Trump, remember, was widely expected to lose huge ground with women over the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, but the opposite happened. NBC exit polls found that his margin with men grew from plus eight to plus 10, while his deficit among women shrank from minus 15 to minus 10. And there are a lot of explanations out there for Trump improving among men. You know, he's campaigned heavily with Manosphere podcasters like Joe Rogan. He presents as this bully tough guy. He's selling basically misogyny, but he improved by twice as much among women, the group that was supposed to be fatal to him. Erin, why do you think that is? I don't think this is as

surprising as some observers would say, because the Dobbs decision is still reverberating across the country, but it's reverberating when the question is posed directly to voters, not when the candidates that represent the answer to the question are being posed directly to voters as much, if that makes any sense. So, you know, up until this election, direct abortion referendums had been undefeated in the polls. And on Tuesday, it lost in Florida, South Dakota, and I think Nebraska were the three places that I, as of Thursday, know where it actually lost. So when voters are being questioned directly about whether or not they want to enshrine abortion rights into their state constitution, they are still saying yes, overwhelmingly so. They are not necessarily making the connection between Trump and Dobbs. I believe that that is partly because Donald Trump lies a lot and said a lot of things on the campaign trail about not enacting a national abortion ban and on that campaign trail promise and that kind of odd rebranding of abortion bans as quote-unquote national minimum standards, which don't be

fooled, a national minimum standard is a ban. I think that that succeeded in kind of soothing voters into believing that he wasn't going to make things worse for them. And whether or not that's actually going to be the case is TBD. Something I will also say about abortion not winning as many female votes for Democrats as certainly I expect a lot of people expected is that one CNN exit poll found that when they asked people's views electorate who said abortion should be illegal in all cases, captured almost all of it. But he grew even more among people who said abortion should be illegal in most cases. He doubled his share of those people. And the really fascinating one, people who said that abortion should be legal in most cases. In 2020, they went overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, plus 38 percent. This election, those people tied. They tied between

Trump and Kamala Harris, which is, it's very hard for me to understand. A point that you made to me off mic that I thought was really smart is that the number of state level abortion referenda might have actually served to inoculate women against voting for a Democrat because it made it easier if you were on the fence. If there were some things you liked about Donald Trump but you didn't like the abortion bans, you could tell yourself, well, I'm voting for or will eventually vote in a state referendum to enshrine abortion. So I can do that, carve out that piece of it, and then go and vote for Donald Trump, which is, of course, not how it works because a federal ban will absolutely supersede those. Yeah, Max, some children were left behind, so to speak, when it came to civics class and the supremacy clause.

Yeah. Well, let's move on to race and ethnicity. This is the really big one. This is the one that is getting all the attention by now. You've probably heard that despite fears of black voters drifting toward Trump, they remained overwhelmingly Democratic in line with 2020 numbers. NBC exit polls suggest Trump actually slightly lost ground among white voters. His share of white men and women each shrank by a couple of points, though he still won both groups. But among Latino women, he cut the Democrats' lead from 39 points to just 24, huge. But the big earthquake is that Trump flipped Latino men who have voted Democratic in every election since the advent of exit polling. In 2020, Latino men voted for Biden, 59 to 44.

But this time around, they voted Trump, 54 to 44, which is a net shift of 25 points. And this showed up in every state. In Texas, the most heavily Hispanic counties flipped 20 points. In Pennsylvania, Latinos shifted 25 points to the right, according to NBC exit polls. And more concrete county data showed, for example, the predominantly Hispanic county of Hazleton shifting from voting plus 5 for Hillary Clinton in 2016 to plus 25 for Trump this year. Erin, what is your read of this? It's a really loaded and important question. And I don't want to overstep my expertise here. But I will say this, a lot of sociologists who work primarily with and in Latino spaces, Latin American spaces, would be quick to point out that misogyny

is something that features in the lives of a lot of Latino men. And I believe that some of it has to do with a misogyny kind of blowing up legitimate concerns that they might have about Kamala Harris and her policies. I honestly think that the root of it is there are, in more traditional cultures, there's a threat of misogyny that cannot be teased out of their voting patterns. I will say it has been true for a long time, and this is not a new observation, that Latino voters, which is a very large block,

so we're just talking about averages, tend to be much more socially conservative than the Democratic Party and have been voting for the Democratic Party despite that. Trump has really spoken to social conservatism. But I think your point is well taken that it is very difficult at this moment to put your finger on what the precise trigger is. We're going to hear a lot of quick pat answers. And in 2016, the big question was, why did white working class voters shift so hard to the right? And the first answer that we got from that was economic anxiety and economic disruption. And it turned out that the white working class voters that shifted for Trump were actually doing well economically. Now we understand that a lot of that was social backlash. We've gained a much more nuanced understanding of it. I would just keep that in mind as investigations into why Latino men especially, but Latino women as well, shifted as far right as they did. If that is a permanent shift, that changes the electoral math

forever. Yeah. And there's, there is also sort of a phenomenon in some Latino communities when it comes to immigration, where Democrats, it's an important issue to them because so many of them have, you know, themselves or had family members that have been impacted by our immigration system. And in some cases it's because they's because maybe they're antsy for immigration reform that Democrats have been promising but never delivered. That was, by the way, sabotaged by Republicans this year. But, you know. So I will say there was very good research by John Sides, who is a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, finding that among not all, but a very large subset of Latino voters, those people's views on immigration and on race are becoming much more conservative.

Yeah. And there's a tendency, I think, to kind of assume that, and this doesn't come from nowhere, I see where it comes from, that because a lot of Latinos are first-generation immigrants, that means that therefore all Latinos will have left-wing views on immigration, but that is absolutely not the case. And those views are growing more conservative and also views on race are growing more conservative among Latinos, and Trump is speaking to that. Right. And there is an element among any group that's marginalized that experiences access to the mainstream, right? We saw it with like Italian Americans, Irish Americans, when they were first in this

country in large numbers and pushed to the margins. And when they first were gaining mainstream acceptance, there was a sort of ladder pulling element to what people go through in order to break through to the mainstream of the US. And I see it also in women too. Women of a couple generations older than me sometimes are less likely to be helpful to young female colleagues because it's like, I had to go through this and so do you. So I mean, there's a lot going on here and we obviously have to wait for more research because I'm sure what people find will be fascinating. But those are just my top line theories. Okay, last big demographic feature to look at, which is age. Trump's best age group is still Gen X, which he won by one point last

round, but eight points this time. He held static among millennials, losing them by five again. And Kamala actually flipped boomers, according to some exit polls, who went plus seven for Trump this time, but plus one for her this time. So, Erin, truly, Gen X, what is going on there? Just imagine if Beavis and Butthead could vote. That's what's happening. I'm halfway joking. My husband's Gen X, and I'm a millennial, so I'm just being mean. But I think that what we're seeing is that Gen X is a generation of people who, throughout their lives, has had their needs kind of pushed to the side and marginalized.

They were the forgotten generation. They were the latchkey generation. They were not necessarily cared for by institutions. I think a lot of what especially middle and lower class Gen Xers might feel is that they've always been overlooked and always been left behind. And Donald Trump is a candidate who speaks to people who perceive themselves to have been overlooked and left behind. I also think a lot of Gen X women, 45 to 65, we're talking, they may care about abortion rights, but it's not as personal to them anymore because they're past reproductive age. And the likelihood of them falling pregnant unexpectedly and needing

abortion care to save their lives is not non-existent, but it's pretty low. For most of them, it is pretty low. And so whatever threat Trump poses to female bodily autonomy is something that they're not necessarily directly impacted by unless they're talking about their daughters. So pardon my French, fuck them. The other big story is under 30 voters, Gen Z, who Biden won by 24, but Harris only won by 13. So for Trump. So I'm not sure what to believe. CNN's number also suggests that Gen Z's rightward tilt came exclusively from Latino Gen Z voters, with white Zoomers actually tilting left. But grain of salt on all of that. Erin, Zoomers are taking some heat for this election. Is that fair, do you think? Not at this point. I don't think it's fair at this point until we know things that are much more concrete. Because 0.13 for Trump versus

0.2 for Harris is a wild difference. CNN's exit poll estimating Gen Z men doing one thing, and then we have another one saying something totally different. So I kind of want to wait to draw conclusions until we have more concrete numbers. How about you, Max? I mean, they do all consistently find a rightward drift among Gen Z men, or at least becoming much less left-wing. And there's a lot of gender polars. The gender polarization we expect to see in the entire electorate didn't show up, but it did for Gen Z and it did for people under 30. Now, maybe that's because abortion is more salient. If you were a woman under 30, then if you're over, but I think there is not nothing to the under 30 media environment factor here, especially for men and especially for men who lived through the pandemic, who lived through a couple of years of social isolation and therefore less emotionally

resilient. You don't have the same social network. you don't have the same ability to cope with, let's say, economic turbulence, the changes in the way the social strata around you work, the way your economy works, and that makes you more prone to lash out. But I don't think we should blame Gen Z yet, but I think the trend lines are at least real enough that we do have to think about what especially these young men are going to be looking at and what their politics are going to be. Right. And the structures that gave their fathers the lives that their fathers had that a lot of Gen Z men might look up to are structures that are going away. And as a woman, that's great. That's great that we are not like legally entrapped into depending on men.

But I think that right now there is, I mean, there's always a crisis of masculinity. I don't think there's ever been an era in American history where masculinity has a state of crisis. But especially right now, I think younger men do not understand the ways in which they're needed. We're not in a big war where they are going over physically and like coming back being either hailed as heroes or, you know, whatever. In many cases, women are out earning them. They're going to college in greater numbers than they are. Women don't even need them to have children. Women don't need them to raise children. And women are asking for and needing more from men as emotional contributors to their home, as social contributors

to the home if they're going to enter a household with men. And men are sort of being blocked off from being the economic breadwinners that maybe their fathers were, for better or for worse. And I think that there's a crisis of meaning for a lot of these people. Yeah. And they're finding meaning in places that are feeding them bullshit for who they need to blame for this crisis of meaning. These men are blaming women for their crisis of meaning rather than blaming capitalism for their crisis of meaning. There's a reason that you cannot support a family of four on a single income earned by a guy who works in a factory anymore. And it's not women going to college in bigger numbers. It is not that. Okay, so let's sum it all up. Trump significantly outperformed 2020 in every state with men and women, historic blowout among Latinos that could maybe alter American politics forever,

boosted with Gen X and Gen Z, but not millennials and boomers, and rode discontent with Biden and with the economy. Erin, having taken this all in, do you get the sense that this election reflects a permanent shift and we are living in MAGA America now, or more that it was driven by forces specific to this particular moment in this election? That's a huge question. I think that we are living in a phase of the backlash cycle that will always cycle back. I think everything kind of comes in cycles and, you know, Trump is going to be in power. There's going to be a Republican

Senate. And I believe in two years, there will be a backlash to the incumbent party as there is every two years, unless Donald Trump somehow becomes good at governing, which we know that he is not. Seems unlikely. Seems unlikely because he was real bad at it last time. And at no point in his life has he been good at running anything. He's bankrupted casinos and it's not going to be good. I don't believe that giving them a second chance is a good idea. I also want to point out that, you know, Max, you and I, and everyone at Crooked, we're not trying to sugarcoat things here by just going through these numbers and sounding easy breezy. Like, what just happened is really fucking bad.

If it's a permanent shift, that's really fucking bad. If it's a temporary shift, that is going to impact things for a generation to come or more, right? But the first step to understanding how to fix it, or at the very least, move on from here in a direction that minimizes harm, we have to understand what happened, right? And then we move on to the why it happened. And then we move on to the how and how to fix it. So I can't give you an answer there. I know that regardless of whether this is a temporary or a permanent shift, the repercussions of it will be years or generations long. And I am feeling pretty dark about that. Yeah. I think my good news, bad news, I think the good news is that I think the thing that won this race, the thing that drove that nationwide R plus six that was impossible to overcome is just thermostatic backlash.

Is people don't like where the state of the country is. Maybe that's because of inflation, the economy. Maybe they don't like social change. They're unhappy. They're voting out the incumbent party in huge numbers. And if that is the case, which it really seems like the data points in that direction, that does make this a one-off. However, I think within that trend, there are a lot of shifts that are more durable,

especially among Latino voters and especially among Latino men and Gen X and Gen Z that did not determine the election, but I think are going to be incredibly important for the next 10 elections. Well, getting through all of it, whatever it looks like, is going to also mean finding ways to cope. And Aaron, there's no medicine like laughter. So let's go out on a personal favorite SNL skit

from 2012 on our favorite folks, undecided voters. How long is a president's term of office? One year? Two years? Three years? 2012 on our favorite folks, undecided voters. Has anyone thought about who would replace him? What's your plan, gentlemen? Can women vote? Because if not, as a woman, I've got a big problem with that. And by the way, if men can't vote, in my opinion, that's just as wrong. We hear a lot about our dependence on foreign oil. But just what is oil? And what is it used for? Can a woman have a baby just from French kissing?

If you burp, fart, and sneeze at the same time, will you die? Where's my power cord? We are America's undecided voters. There's still a lot we don't know. And we want answers. Oh, so good. Love it. How We Got Here is written and hosted by me, Max Fisher, and Erin Ryan.

Our producer is Emma Illig-Frank. Evan Sutton mixes and masters the show. Jordan Cantor sound engineers the show. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vasilis Fotopoulos. Production support from Leo Duran, Raven Yamamoto, Natalie Bettendorf, and Adrian Hill. And a special thanks to Weta Day's wonderful hosts, Travelle Anderson, Priyanka Arabindi, Josie Duffy Rice, and Juanita Tolliver for welcoming us to the family. សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់� 다음 시간에 만나요.