Key to Trump’s Win: Heavy Losses for Harris Across the Map

It may seem like a clear story: Donald Trump won the election by winning the most votes. He improved on his totals, adding about 2.5 million more votes than four years ago. But just as consequential to the outcome were Kamala Harris’s losses: She earned about 7 million fewer votes compared with Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s performance in 2020.

Ms. Harris failed to find new voters in three of the seven swing states and in 80 percent of counties across the country, a New York Times analysis shows. In the places where she matched or exceeded Mr. Biden’s vote totals, she failed to match Mr. Trump’s gains.

We can’t yet know how many Biden voters backed Mr. Trump or did not vote at all this cycle. But the decline in support for Ms. Harris in some of the country’s most liberal areas is particularly notable. Compared with Mr. Biden, she lost hundreds of thousands of votes in major cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, and overall earned about 10 percent fewer votes in counties Mr. Biden won four years ago.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, found new voters in most counties, with significant gains in red states like Texas and Florida and also in blue states like New Jersey and New York.

Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, acknowledged that Biden voters who swung toward Mr. Trump played a part in Ms. Harris’s loss, but pointed to low Democratic turnout as the larger factor.

“They just weren’t excited,” Mr. Sabato said of Democratic voters. “They were probably disillusioned by inflation, maybe the border. And they didn’t have the motivation to get up and go out to vote.”

The national rightward shift is a continuation of voting patterns seen in the last two elections. Even in his 2020 defeat, Mr. Trump found new voters across the country. (Both parties earned more votes in 2020 than in 2016.) And although Democrats outperformed expectations in 2022, when some had predicted a “red wave,” they lost many voters who were dissatisfied with rising prices, pandemic-era restrictions and immigration policy.

At the local level, three distinct patterns help illustrate the overall outcome in 2024:

1. Where both candidates gained votes, but Trump gained more.

In hard-fought Georgia, both parties found new voters, but Mr. Trump outperformed Ms. Harris. For example, in Fulton County, which contains most of Atlanta, Ms. Harris gained about 4,500 votes, but Mr. Trump gained more than 7,400.

How vote totals changed in Atlanta precincts

Where each candidate got
more votes
or
fewer votes in 2024, compared with 2020

Trump

Harris

By Eli Murray, Elena Shao, Charlie Smart and Christine Zhang

In addition to his gains in the Atlanta area, Mr. Trump won new voters in every other part of Georgia. He flipped the state back to Republicans after Mr. Biden’s win there in 2020. He similarly outran Ms. Harris where she made gains in Wake County, N.C., Lancaster County, Pa., and Montgomery County, Texas.

2. Where Trump gained a little and Harris lost a little.

In Milwaukee County in swing-state Wisconsin, Ms. Harris lost 1,200 voters compared with Mr. Biden’s total in 2020, while Mr. Trump gained more than 3,500.

How vote totals changed in Milwaukee precincts

Where each candidate got
more votes
or
fewer votes in 2024, compared with 2020

Trump

Harris

By Eli Murray, Elena Shao, Charlie Smart and Christine Zhang

Ms. Harris still won the county at large, but her margins there and in other liberal enclaves of Wisconsin were not enough to hold off Mr. Trump’s victories in rural, blue-collar counties that voted Republican in 2016 and 2020.

Democrats’ inability to maintain their vote totals in battleground states was also apparent in the crucial areas around Charlotte, N.C., Flint, Mich., and Scranton, Pa.

3. Where Trump gained a little and Harris lost a lot.

Mr. Trump won Florida’s Miami-Dade County, becoming the first Republican to do so since 1988. But again, Ms. Harris’s loss was just as much of the story as his gain: Mr. Trump won about 70,000 new votes in the county, while she lost nearly 140,000.

How vote totals changed in Miami precincts

Where each candidate got
more votes
or
fewer votes in 2024, compared with 2020

Trump

Harris

By Eli Murray, Elena Shao, Charlie Smart and Christine Zhang

Other counties that Mr. Trump flipped had similar vote disparities. In 21 of these 77 counties, Mr. Trump received fewer votes in this election than in 2020, but the Democratic vote drop-off was much steeper. This happened from coast to coast, from Fresno County, Calif., to Pinellas County, Fla.

Joel Benenson, the chief pollster for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, said he thought Democratic turnout was hurt by the party’s lack of a presidential primary. (Mr. Biden dropped out of the race in July.) That process, he said, helps energize core voters who get involved with volunteering, making phone calls and knocking on doors early in the year.

“That was a real challenge for Vice President Harris, who had a short runway and would have benefited from a real primary season,” Mr. Benenson said. “Republicans had a contested primary — even with a former president, they didn’t just hand it to him.”

Mr. Trump was clearly able to harness enthusiasm beyond his base. He made gains across almost all groups ranging in demographics, education and income, including those that traditionally made up the Democratic coalition. Ms. Harris failed to match Mr. Biden among the same groups.

Pre-election polls showed minority voters swinging toward Mr. Trump, and he appeared to make gains with those groups. He picked up votes in majority-Hispanic counties and in Black neighborhoods of major cities, a preliminary analysis of precinct data shows. But he lost votes, as did Ms. Harris, in majority-Black counties, especially those in the South where turnout dropped overall.

Mr. Trump found new voters in more than 30 states, including in the battleground states that were the sites of robust campaigning. His gains were modest in most other places. Ms. Harris was able to improve on Mr. Biden’s performance in only four of the seven battlegrounds and just five states overall.

John McLaughlin, Mr. Trump’s campaign pollster, said the campaign was focused on finding supporters who were not reliable voters and making sure they turned out to the polls. He said that internal polling showed that voters who cast a ballot in 2024 after not voting in 2022 or 2020 supported Mr. Trump, 52 percent to 46 percent.

“The strategy was very much like 2016, to bring out casual voters who thought the country was on the wrong track,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “These voters blamed Biden and Harris and generally had positive approval for Trump.”