WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump tapped into deep concerns about an economy that appeared unable to meet the needs of the middle class despite recent growth, according to AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of more than 120,000 voters throughout the country.
Concerns about day-to-day spending led Trump to return to the White House. In key states, Trump voters saw illegal immigration imposing new costs on their communities. Many felt their own financial well-being was at risk following the burst of post-pandemic inflation. This year, more voters said they were falling behind than in 2020.
Trump impressed among lower-income voters, middle-income voters and voters without a college degree, AP VoteCast found. All of these groups appeared to place as high a priority — if not more — on their family budgets than the concerns about the future of democracy that motivated much of Vice President Kamala Harris’ coalition.
And Harris’ bet on rallying voters around abortion rights didn’t go as planned. She had relative strengths among college students and higher-income voters, but Trump retained his base and also made marginal gains among some of the Democrats’ key constituencies.
Voters who felt economically vulnerable were more likely to support Trump
Voters who were more concerned about their economic circumstances supported Trump. The group of voters who felt more comfortable about their circumstances largely went with Harris.
Trump won decisively among voters who said their family finances were “falling behind” — a group that grew from about 2 in 10 voters in 2020 to about 3 in 10 this year. He also carried more than half of voters who were “very concerned” about the cost of food, the cost of housing and their own health care costs.
Voters focused on the economy ultimately broke hard for Trump. Those who said inflation was the most important factor in their vote were almost twice as likely to support Trump than Harris, and about six in 10 voters who said the economy and jobs were the most important issue facing the country were in his camp.
The political divide between higher-income and lower-income Americans was wide, with Trump making slight gains among voters whose household income is less than $100,000 a year, while Harris held steady among voters who earn more than that.
Trump’s tough policy on illegal immigration has left its mark
Voter interest in a crackdown on illegal immigration was higher this year, with more than four in ten saying immigrants in the country illegally should be deported back to their home countries, up from about three in ten in 2020.
That trend was visible even among groups that are generally more supportive of more expansive immigration policies. About six in ten voters under the age of 45 believe immigrants in the country illegally should be given the opportunity to apply for legal status, up from about three-quarters in 2020.
Voters who said they had personally immigrated to the U.S. were more likely to support Harris than Trump — but even among this group, about 4 in 10 said undocumented immigrants in the country should be deported.
And concern about the impact of illegal immigration on individual communities was palpable. In Ohio, a state where Trump ramped up the threat of immigrants by falsely accusing immigrants of eating pets, about three-quarters of voters said immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally do more to harm than help their state. The vast majority of Trump voters agreed with this view — about nine in 10 — but so did more than half of Harris voters.
Trump deepened his support among voters without a college degree
More than half of voters indicated that they did not have a university degree. Harris and Biden both spoke at union halls and pledged to eliminate degree requirements that could keep people without degrees from getting government jobs.
That message did not land as Democrats had hoped.
Trump was slightly ahead of Biden among non-college voters in 2020. The Republican made modest gains, taking a clear majority from this group, while only about 4 in 10 supported Harris.
Ultimately, voters chose to trust him with the economy, even though half said he didn’t look out for people like them.
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AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News, PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. The survey of more than 120,000 voters lasted eight days and ended when the polling stations closed. The interviews took place in English and Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters from state voter files; self-identified registered voters using NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population; and self-identified registered voters selected from online panels who are not likely to vote. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated at plus or minus 0.4 percentage points. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://ap.org/votecast.
