WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump tapped into deep anxieties about an economy that seemed unable despite its recent growth to meet the needs of the middle class, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide.
Worries about everyday expenses helped Trump return to the White House. In key states, Trump’s voters saw illegal immigration as imposing new costs on their communities. Many believed that their own financial well-being was at risk after the burst of post-pandemic inflation. More voters said they were falling behind this year than they did in 2020.
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Trump made inroads among lower-income voters, middle-income voters and voters without college degrees, AP VoteCast found. All those groups appeared to put as high a priority — if not somewhat more so — on their family budgets than the worries 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 pan out as planned. She had relative strengths with college graduates and higher-income voters, but Trump held onto his base and also made marginal gains with some of Democrats' core constituencies.
Voters who felt economically vulnerable were more likely to back Trump
Voters who felt more anxious about their economic circumstances supported Trump. The sliver of voters who felt more comfortable about their circumstances largely went with Harris.
Trump decisively won 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 who were focused on the economy ended up breaking hard for Trump. Those who said inflation was the most important factor for their vote were almost twice as likely to support Trump over Harris, and about 6 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 stark, with Trump gaining slightly among voters whose household income is less than $100,000 per year, while Harris held steady with voters who make more than that.
Trump’s hardline policies on illegal immigration found their mark
Voters’ appetite for tough approaches to illegal immigration was higher this year – more than 4 in 10 said immigrants who are in the country illegally should be deported back to their home countries, up from around 3 in 10 in 2020.
That trend was visible even among groups that are generally more supportive of more expansive immigration policies. About 6 in 10 voters under the age of 45 said immigrants in the country illegally should be allowed to apply for legal status, down from about three-quarters in 2020.
Voters who said they personally immigrated to the U.S. were more likely to support Harris over Trump – but even among this group, about 4 in 10 said that immigrants in the country without documentation should be deported.
And concern about the impact of illegal immigration on individual communities was palpable. In Ohio, a state where Trump elevated the threat of immigrants by falsely accusing immigrants of eating pets, about three-quarters of voters said that immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally do more to hurt their state than help. The vast majority of Trump voters agreed with this view – about 9 in 10 – but so did more than half of Harris voters.
Trump deepened his support among voters without college degrees
Over half of voters reported not having a college degree. Harris and Biden both spoke at union halls and promised to remove the degree requirements that could block people without degrees from getting government jobs.
That messaging didn't land as Democrats had hoped.
Trump ran just slightly ahead of Biden with non-college voters in 2020. The Republican made modest gains, earning a clear majority of this group, while only about 4 in 10 supported Harris.
In the end, voters chose to entrust 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 was conducted for eight days, concluding as polls closed. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters drawn 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 nonprobability online panels. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated to be plus or minus 0.4 percentage point. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://ap.org/votecast.