President-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 victory was made possible by an overall voter shift in most places and in most demographics compared to 2020 — with a new analysis of precinct data in crucial Pennsylvania providing additional details on how Trump won.
The NBC News Decision Desk collected and monitored precinct-level voting results in 50 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, representing more than 8,300 of the state’s approximately 9,000 counties. This detailed data provides detailed insight into what happened neighborhood by neighborhood and block by block in the nation’s largest battleground state.
On average, Pennsylvania’s district shifted 1.6 percentage points toward Republicans and 1.6 points away from Democrats — a total swing of 3.2 points that took Pennsylvania from a 1-point Democratic win in 2020 to a Republican win of about 2 points in 2024 turned things around.
The chart below shows the difference between Trump’s 2020 vote percentage and his 2024 percentage in Pennsylvania counties. Dots above the dotted line are areas where Trump outperformed his vote share four years ago. The red line shows the average shift in support for Trump from 2020 to 2024.
On average, Trump improved his 2020 voting percentage in almost all Pennsylvania counties except those where he had already received more than 80% of support in 2020. Trump’s strongest improvements occurred in places where he received 20% to 30% of the vote. in 2020 — which is to say, he managed to lose significantly less in what had been highly Democratic parts of the state.
Trump’s overperformance in Democratic areas was evident when looking at precinct results in the Philadelphia metro area — a key region for Biden’s 2020 victory. In 2024, voters in Philadelphia and the four suburban counties made up slightly less than 33% of all voters in the state.
The map shows that nearly all of the region’s 3,100 counties shifted their vote in Trump’s favor. While there are a few districts that swung in Harris’ favor (in blue on the map), Trump improved his 2020 voting percentage in 82% of the region’s districts.
Although Harris and Biden both won this region comfortably, Harris’s vote margin was nearly 120,000 votes smaller than Biden’s. That’s a significant drop: Biden won the state by 82,000 votes in 2020.
The regional map also shows that the areas where Trump improved the most were heavily concentrated in the city of Philadelphia.
The map of Philadelphia on the left shows that Harris comfortably captured the vast majority of the city’s 1,700 precincts. But the right side shows that Harris underperformed Biden’s margins and nearly 84% of the city’s area shifted toward Trump.
On average, Trump performed 2 percentage points better in Philadelphia’s precincts — overall similar to his improvement in the rest of the state. But there are important differences between different types of neighborhoods.
The largest of these shifts occurred in the North and Northeast Philadelphia neighborhoods, which have high concentrations of Spanish-speaking residents. This is further evidence of a recurring pattern in pre-election polling and the NBC News Exit Poll, which showed Trump significantly improving his vote share among Latino voters across the country, including in Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, the blue areas that shifted to Harris in northwest and central/south Philadelphia (including the very dense downtown of Center City) are neighborhoods with the highest concentration of college-educated residents. The NBC Exit Poll results showed that Trump’s support among this group in Pennsylvania fell 3 percentage points from its 2020 level.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
