by Caroline Soler and Brian Schaffner
In 2024, Donald Trump ran for president as the Republican nominee for the third consecutive cycle. However, this time something new happened: Trump won the popular vote. This result wasn’t the result of winning over any single demographic; instead, it represented a broad-based shift in how Americans across racial, religious, and generational lines cast their ballots.
We authored a new report on the election using data from the Cooperative Election Study (CES) which interviewed 60,000 Americans, including over 36,000 validated voters and more than 23,000 non-voters. Crucially, the survey validates whether respondents actually voted by matching them to comprehensive voter files through TargetSmart, eliminating the common problem of people claiming to vote when they didn’t.
The report demonstrates that the shifts toward Trump in 2024 were widespread and sometimes quite dramatic. Black voters have been moving away from Democrats since Obama’s presidency and Hispanic voters also shifted rightward, continuing movement that has been ongoing since Trump’s first term. Religious voters across denominations — Catholics, Jewish voters, Protestants, and those with no particular faith — moved toward the GOP. Millennials, long considered reliably Democratic, voted more Republican than they had in any previous election. And perhaps most striking is this: for the first time in decades, non-voters preferred the Republican candidate over the Democratic. if every American had voted, Kamala Harris would have lost by an even greater margin.
In this post, we highlight three of the most striking shifts documented in our report: the movement across racial lines, the religious realignment, and the generational upheaval.
Racial shifts
Trump’s victory wasn’t just built on mobilizing his traditional base — indeed, some of the biggest shifts occurred among racial and ethnic groups that tend to vote strongly Democratic. The most striking changes occurred among Black and Hispanic voters, two racial groups that had been reliably Democratic for years.
While Obama won 97% of the vote among Black voters in 2008, Harris’s share of the Black vote dropped to just 84% in 2024. This erosion has been happening steadily since Obama’s first term, and continued into 2024. The Black electorate has fractured across various demographic cleavages. A massive gap has emerged between born-again and non-born-again Black voters. In 2008 and 2012, both groups voted Democratic at similar rates, but by 2024, a 13-point gap emerged (with born-again Black voters at 77% Democratic support compared to 90% for non-born-again Black voters). The gender divide is even more dramatic, with Black women supporting Harris at 90% while support among Black men dropped to 75% (in 2008, both groups were above 95%).
Hispanic voters experienced an even more concentrated shift toward Republicans. Their 10-point decline since 2016 accelerated dramatically between 2020 and 2024, falling from 66% to just 58% Democratic support in a single cycle. This rightward movement was driven primarily by urban Hispanic communities, whose Democratic support plummeted from 77% in 2016 to just 60% in 2024, while rural and suburban Hispanic voters remained relatively stable.
What makes these shifts particularly consequential is that they’ve happened as America has become more diverse. The electorate has grown less white — from 77% in 2016 to 73% in 2024 — with Hispanic voters now matching Black voters at a 10% share of the electorate each. This demographic change was supposed to benefit Democrats, but Trump’s inroads with these groups has nullified any such advantage.
Religious realignment
Trump’s gains weren’t limited to racial groups — he also made inroads across America’s religious landscape. From Catholics to Jewish voters to Protestants, and even those with no particular religious affiliation, nearly every religious community shifted toward Republicans. Only atheists and agnostics remained consistently Democratic.
Jewish voters, historically one of the most reliable Democratic constituencies, declined from 75% Democratic support in 2016 to 63% in 2024. This shift was driven primarily by non-Reform denominations, with Conservative Jewish voters (who made up almost 1/4 of all Jewish voters in 2024) dropping 17 points since 2008 and Orthodox Jews experiencing a dramatic 37-point plunge from 53% in 2016 to just 16% Democratic support in 2024. Catholics experienced a sharp acceleration away from Democrats, falling from 47% in 2020 to 40% in 2024 after remaining relatively stable for over a decade. Protestants continued their slow but steady decline, moving from 60% Republican in 2008 to 69% in 2024.
Born-again support dropped from 36% in 2008 to just 24% in 2024, with the decline happening across all racial groups. Hispanic born-again voters plummeted from 48% Democratic support in 2020 to 33% in 2024, while Black born-again Christians experienced a 20-point decline since 2008, and white born-again voters became 9% more Republican. Meanwhile, non-born-again voters remained stable around 61-62%, creating an ever-widening gap between these groups.
Those identifying as having “nothing in particular” for their religion were the second-largest religious group for the first time in 2024, making up 18% of the electorate. Combined with the doubling of the size of the atheist/agnostic voting bloc since 2008, this secularization could have benefited Democrats. Instead, the “nothing in particular” group shifted 3 points right since 2020, meaning that America’s growing secular population didn’t translate into Democratic gains.
The Millennial surprise
In 2024, Millennials finally reached parity with Gen X in terms of their share of the electorate, with each group representing about 24% of voters. Many thought that as Millennials became a larger share of voters, their reliably Democratic preferences would give the party an advantage.
Instead, Millennials voted more Republican than they had in any previous election, dropping from 65% Democratic support in 2020 to just 56% in 2024. The decline was driven primarily by Hispanic Millennials, who experienced one of the steepest drops of any demographic group, falling from 76% Democratic support in 2020 to 55% in 2024. But the rightward movement wasn’t limited to one racial group — Millennial voters across all racial lines shifted toward Republicans.
Gen Z emerged as the lone generational group that moved leftward. But at just 10% of the electorate, their growing Democratic loyalty couldn’t offset the broader trends among other generational groups.
What if there had been universal turnout?
The scale of Trump’s coalition-building becomes even more apparent when examining what would have happened if every American had voted. The actual two-party vote share in 2024 was 50.8% Trump to 49.2% Harris. But if everyone had voted, Trump’s margin would have increased to 51.1% to 48.9%.
This is because, for the first time since 2008, non-voters preferred the Republican candidate over the Democrat. Among those who stayed home and expressed an interest in one of the two major party candidates, Trump led Harris 52% to 48% — a historic shift given that non-voters had consistently favored the Democrat from 2008 through 2020. The pattern held across most swing states, with non-voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and North Carolina all preferring Trump. Democrats do not have modest turnout to blame for Trump’s victory.
The parallel shifts among both voters and non-voters reveal an uncomfortable truth for Democrats. Trump’s victory wasn’t a fluke, it was the culmination of a broad-based shift that was evident across most demographic groups across America.