A Deeper Look Behind 2024 Voter Demographics and Motivations

New data from Navigator Research on actual voters shows how the bottom fell out for Kamala Harris.

Welcome to this free version of Straight from the Hut. In this edition of the newsletter, you’ll get an early look at some of the data frequently used by top Democratic campaigns, including the DCCC, which shows changes from 2020 to 2024 in attitudes among actual voters.

I got an early look at some of the post-election numbers from Navigator Research, and most of it isn’t too surprising compared to exit polls.

However, this data among people who did indeed vote in 2024 has several notable highlights, and it also helps fill in some gaps in our understanding of why Kamala Harris lost.

Economic sentiment is at the heart of everything in these numbers, which show how the Harris campaign lost ground compared to how Joe Biden performed in 2020. Simply put, the electorate was pissed off, and while Harris did an impressive job clawing back ground against Trump on the economy, it wasn’t enough in either the electoral college or popular vote (Trump will end up below 50 percent of the overall vote with less than a two point lead over Harris).

The result was Trump effectively getting a pass on COVID. It wasn’t necessarily that voters memory-holed the pandemic.

They just didn’t blame Trump for it, at least not in large enough numbers to help the Democrats make up for erosion around other parts of their coalition.

There were two questions in particular that stood out to Bryan Bennett, the lead pollster for Navigator Research.

“When we were asking some of these questions, we also wanted to look at some of the personal characteristics of the candidates,” Bennett told Straight from the Hut. “And I think that there were two that were considered to be the most important qualities in a candidate. One was being a strong and decisive leader, which was 45 percent said that was the most important quality for them, and 41% said the same thing about having a positive vision for the future.”

Harris ended up tying Donald Trump on those metrics.

However, among the swing voters who decided the election, Trump did better than her by some 30 points for each.

“Where she trails 10 points overall in the national electorate on ‘strong and decisive leader,’ she trailed by 33 points among the swing group and 37 points on has the experience to get things done.”

That gap might just help explain why Harris wasn’t able to overcome the economic headwinds facing incumbents globally, but also how voters didn't seem to have as clear of a perception of her personal traits compared to Trump..

“I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of what I think that means exactly. I would just be speculating,” Bennett said," “but it is at least an interesting finding to me that basically on that metric, she was tied. And on the other most important one, Trump had a 10 point lead on being a strong and decisive leader.”

The Navigator data shows Kamala was able to close the gap with Trump on a variety of economic messaging. Generally, the trend was that she did better on microeconomic issues such as which candidate would fight better for middle class families.

However, the combination of Trump being perceived as a better steward of the economy and voters giving him a pass on COVID had undeniable upside for his campaign.

“We've seen kind of consistently in our data that when people go back and rate Trump on his handling of the economy throughout the course of this year, when they ask them to remember, it's clear that they kind of give Trump a pass on the economic consequences of COVID,” Bennett said.

In other words, when swing voters thought of the Trump economy, they were largely thinking of 2017 through 2019.

Another issue for Harris was simply how much of the Biden administration’s status quo baggage she inherited.

Trump’s two strongest issues in Navigator’s polling were the economy and immigration, but Harris was hurt more by being associated with Biden than perceptions that she was too far to the left, according to the poll.

The economic indicators and the demographic fallout for Harris — particularly along the fault lines of gender and education — were perhaps too drastic to overcome, especially with the short runway Biden left for her.

“If you just think of it as an anti-incumbent election… atmospherically, that’s a big part of it,” Bennett said.