If the polls are to be believed, this presidential election is expected to be tight. But beneath the closeness of the head-to-head numbers, there have been some important shifts happening in American politics.
Below is a guide to the groups to pay closest attention to on election night that could tell the story of how — and why — former President Donald Trump or Vice President Harris wins.
1. Watch the number of white voters who go for Harris.
The largest single voting group is white voters. Republicans have been dominant with them in the last 20 years, but with the growing Latino and Asian American populations, white voters have been on a sharp decline as a share of the electorate since the 1990s.
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Because of that demographic change, former President Barack Obama was the first candidate to win a presidential election with less than 40% of the white vote in 2012. Democrat Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 when she got 2 points lower (37%). Biden won four years later and was above 40%.
The October NPR/PBS News/Marist poll showed Harris winning 45% of white voters. If that were to hold, it would be the highest share for a Democrat since 1976. But Harris still only had a 2-point lead over Trump in the survey because of Trump cutting into margins with Black and Latino voters.
2. The split among white voters by education has been the story of the Trump era and only growing.
Almost nothing now is a better predictor of how white voters will vote than whether or not they have a college degree. White voters with college degrees had long been reliable Republican voters. But that changed between 2016 and 2020, when Biden won them narrowly.
Polling suggests Democrats’ advantage with them could balloon in this election.
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In 2016, Trump won the group in five of the seven swing states, but in 2020, President Biden won them in six of seven.
The opposite has been true with white voters who don’t have college degrees. They have been trending heavily toward Republicans, and the Trump team believes it can turn out even more of them this year, even though they are generally less likely to vote at all.
White voters without degrees, many of whom live in rural areas, are declining as a share of eligible voters in the country. But in key states, they still make up a larger percentage of eligible voters than whites with degrees. That’s true, for example, in the Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. In every one of the seven swing states, white non-college voters made up a higher share of the electorate than in 2016.
Trump, though, won them by less in six of the seven swing states, except North Carolina. It will be a tall task for Harris to replicate Biden’s inroads, but she has made that a critical piece of her strategy — losing by less.
3. Mind the gender gap.
Women have made up a majority of the electorate in every presidential election in the last 40 years. Democrats won their largest share of women in 2020 — 57%, according to exit polls.
Democrats hope that number goes even higher this year, given the party’s intense focus on women’s reproductive rights, and the fact that this is the first general election since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
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Pair that with Trump’s apparent depth of support with men this year, the gender gap could be the widest in any presidential election ever. The last two elections showed very wide gaps — 24 points in 2016, and 23 in 2020. The latest NPR poll showed it was a whopping 34 points.
But this isn’t strictly a men-women divide. There are nuances within the groups by education and race.
The education divide is very prominent here. The gap is widest with women who have a college degree and men who don’t. Biden won college-graduate white women by 9 points, while Trump won white women without degrees by 27. Trump won college-graduate white men by 3 points, but won white, non-college men 70% to 28%.
By race, white women voted 11 points in favor of Trump in 2020. Black women, though, voted for Biden by 81 points (that’s not a misprint). Latinas also broke overwhelmingly for Biden, too, 69% to 30%.
4. Does Trump cut the margins with Black voters?
There has been a lot made in this election of Trump trying to siphon off young, Black men from the Democratic Party. It’s tough to tell how real that is from pre-election polling because of how large the margins of error are with subgroups in national polls.
Post-election exit polls in heavily African American counties will give a better understanding of Trump’s level of success with this group. In 2020, 87% of Black voters sided with Biden. That was down marginally from Obama-era levels, but on par with past Democrats and high enough to win.
But pre-election polling suggests Harris, who would be the first Black woman to be president, could win them by the smallest margin of any Democrat ever. The latest NPR poll had her winning just 78% of Black voters.
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That’s an outcome Democratic pollsters and strategists are skeptical of, but concerned about, and certainly something important to keep an eye on.
Black voters may be only 13% of the vote nationally, but they are crucial to Democrats’ chances in the swing states, particularly in Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan, which all have Black eligible-voter populations that are higher than the national average.
5. Despite his rhetoric, can Trump peel off Latinos, or do they ultimately side in big numbers for Harris?
Latinos are the largest-growing group in the country. They have increased as a share of the electorate in each of the last seven presidential elections and have increased substantially as a share of the electorate in each of the seven swing states.
They could be particularly influential in Arizona and Nevada, where they made up about 1 in 5 voters in 2020. They are also notable portions of the voting populations in the other swing states. In North Carolina, for example, they are nearly 8% of the eligible-voter population, up four-fold since 2008. In Georgia, they are just over 7%, having doubled since 2008.
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Latinos have voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in each of the last four presidential elections by at least a 2-to-1 margin. Republicans came closest in 2004 when President George W. Bush was running for reelection.
The former Texas governor embraced comprehensive immigration overhauls, but was blocked by members of Congress in his own party. It’s been a similar story with every immigration push since.
After receiving just 27% of the Latino vote in 2012, the Republican National Committee called for changing the party’s approach on immigration.
“[W]e must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform,” the RNC’s “Growth & Opportunity Project” stated in 2013. “If we do not, our Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only.”
Trump went the opposite way. He demonized immigrants and juiced his base with a nativist and nationalistic message — similar to what has been successful for right-wing strongmen in other countries in recent years.
Despite that approach, Trump actually gained among Latinos in 2020. Biden won them in the seven most closely watched swing states, but by less than Clinton did in 2016.
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Polls have shown Trump doing better with the group in 2024, too, largely because of concerns about the economy, particularly prices and housing. So, while immigration may be a threshold issue for many, pocketbook issues matter, too. Trump has taken note of that, and he’s also leaned into the idea that Latinos who are here legally and eligible to vote came to the U.S. the “right” way.
But incendiary comments by a comedian at a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” threaten to hurt Trump in places like Pennsylvania. The Harris campaign has been quick to point to this and other racist rhetoric as part of their argument for Latinos to vote Democratic.
Biden won Latinos in Pennsylvania by the widest margin of any of the swing states — and half of Latinos in the state are of Puerto Rican descent, according to demographer William Frey at the Brookings Institution. Latinos were 5% of the electorate in the state in 2020. That’s not as high as some other key states, but in a very close election, the margins could matter.
6. Watch AAPI margins in Nevada, Georgia and elsewhere.
If Latinos are the largest-growing demographic group, Asian Americans are the fastest. And since 2008, they have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. They could have the biggest impact in Nevada, where they are more than 9% of the eligible-voter population. They were 5% of the electorate in the state in 2020 and went for Biden by a 64%-35% margin.
They could also be crucial in places like Georgia. The AAPI population in the state has grown by more than 50% since 2010. While only about 3% of eligible voters in Georgia, there were more than 45,000 first-time AAPI voters in the state in 2020. They voted about 58% for Democrats, a margin of more than 7,000 votes in Democrats’ favor — just from first-time AAPI voters, almost the margin that decided the state.
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7. Do young voters turn out — and vote for Harris at rates they have for past Democrats?
When Democrats win, young voters turn out. In 2008, 2012 and 2020, Democrats won 60% or more of voters 18 to 29 years old and won. In 2016, just 55% of them voted for Clinton.
Harris has also been lagging with the group in pre-election polling. This is a group that turns out at lower rates than others, and polls have indicated that they are among the least likely to say they are definitely voting in this election.
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Drilling down into the states, one place to spotlight is North Carolina. If Harris is going to win there, she will need a big margin with young voters. Consider the shift in Democratic support over time for young voters vs. Black voters, for example.
In 2008, Obama won 95% of Black voters, and they were 23% of the electorate. In 2020, Biden won 92% and they were the same share of the electorate, according to exit polls. That’s not a huge difference.
But voters 18-29 years old broke for Obama by almost 50 points compared to just 17 for Biden. They also turned out at a 3 percentage-point-higher share of the electorate in 2008 compared to 2020.
8. Will Harris be the first Democrat in 20 years to win seniors?
Harris could be the first Democrat since former Vice President Al Gore’s bid in 2000 to win voters 65 and older. That’s important, especially in a potentially close election, because seniors and white voters with degrees are among the highest-propensity voters.
She will need them to turn out at high rates to offset Trump’s strength with white, non-college voters.
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9. Union voters could make a difference in Blue Wall states and Nevada.
Democrats have dominated with union voters over the years. That helped insulate them in the Blue Wall states of Wisconsin and Michigan, which have high concentrations of white, working-class voters.
But union voters are also important in Nevada, where the culinary union is important, and it has a high concentration of working-class Latinos.
Roughly 1 in 5 voters have said they live in a union household over the last two election cycles in those three states, and Biden significantly improved over Clinton’s margins. Clinton lost all three Blue Wall states to Trump in 2016. Trump is threatening to cut into those margins again because of his strength with white voters without degrees.
Something else to keep an eye on, though: Union voters are changing. They’re becoming younger and more white-collar — and not entirely the stereotype of white, male working-class voters of the 1960s.
10. Does Trump turn out rural voters again, and does Harris overperform in the suburbs?
The suburbs have shifted toward Democrats, and Trump has increased Republicans’ advantage in rural areas. Biden won the suburbs narrowly in 2020, and he won the election, as did Obama in 2008.
Obama was close enough in 2012 to win a second term. Clinton, though, fell off in those areas in 2016, and Trump won the election. This time around, pre-election polling has shown Harris doing even better than Biden in the suburbs. That’s likely going to have to hold for her to have a chance of winning.
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Despite rural voters making up a larger share of the electorate in 2020 than 2016, Biden also cut into Trump’s margins with rural voters, something Harris wants to do again. But if Trump blows out those margins, that could be a major reason why he becomes the 47th president.
Graphics reporter Connie Hanzhang Jin contributed to this report.
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