Latino voters, young Americans, and first-time voters all played an outsized role in President-elect Donald Trump’s Nov. 5 victory.
On Election Day, the National Election Pool exit poll conducted by Edison Research surveyed more than 22,800 voters across Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin as they left the polls.
Voters check in before casting their ballots at a polling place inside a residential garage next to Ocean Beach in San Francisco on Nov. 5, 2024. Loren Elliott/Getty Images
The exit polls indicate Latino voters, who make up as much as 13 percent of the electorate, moved to the right in 2024. Although Trump lost the Latino vote overall to Vice President Kamala Harris, he took 45 percent of those votes. That was a big 13 percentage point improvement in his performance with the racial group between 2020 and 2024.
Trump won with Latino men, taking 54 percent of that vote, according to the exit poll.
Speaking of gender, Harris and Trump held down the vote of their respective genders. According to the exit poll results, both the Republican and the Democrat carried the male and female vote by a 10 percentage point margin.
Trump did not win the youth vote, but he saw a sizable improvement in his performance in 2020. Harris got 49 percent of the vote from men between the ages of 18 and 29, but Trump shrank the Democrat’s advantage by six percentage points in 2024.
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Trump also did better with women aged 18 to 29 and 45 to 64 than he did in 2020. He saw a 5 percentage-point and 4 percentage-point improvement with those groups, respectively.
Surprisingly, Trump won 54 percent of the vote from voters who said they were casting their first-ever presidential ballot. That was a 22 percentage point improvement over his performance with that group in 2020.
On policy issues, Americans who voted for Harris overwhelmingly told exit pollsters the future of democracy was the most influential issue for them in 2024. Those who backed Trump said the economy was most important.
Overall, 45 percent of respondents said they are worse off financially now than they were four years ago. Trump carried 80 percent of those voters’ ballots.
—Austin Alonzo
WHAT TRUMP 2.0 MEANS FOR FOREIGN POLICY
President Elect Donald Trump’s second term is anticipated to bring great change to America’s foreign policy establishment.
Trump has vowed to make sweeping changes to the way the United States approaches international statecraft, from wars in Europe and the Middle East to an adversarial relationship with communist China.
That has some in the foreign policy establishment in Washington on edge, but others are confident that there will be a winding down of armed conflicts throughout the world as the United States embraces a more assertive tone with allies and adversaries alike.
The nation’s Indo-Pacific partners may welcome the clarity that a second Trump administration could bring to U.S. foreign policy, according to John Mills, who previously served as cybersecurity chief in the office of the secretary of defense.
“These countries love the authenticity and clarity of Trump,” Mills told The Epoch Times.
“The likelihood of conflict in the western Pacific decreases significantly under Trump,” He added. “Why? Because he’s showing clarity and resolve at all times. Clarity and resolve helps prevent war. Lack of clarity and resolve creates war.”
Trump will also have to contend with the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and an expanding regional conflict in the Middle East between Israel and myriad Iranian proxy groups.
The president-elect created a prickly reputation with the nation’s allies in Europe during his first administration, threatening to dismantle NATO if its European members didn’t contribute more to defense spending.
Many NATO nations have significantly upped their defense spending since then, both in reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and out of a concern that a Trump administration would not come to their aid if they were perceived as piggybacking on the United States.
To that end, while Trump has said he’d focus on bringing both Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table, it may be more difficult for the second Trump administration to wind down the conflict in Ukraine than previously anticipated.
Paul Davis, an adjunct professor at the Institute for World Politics in Washington, said that he didn’t expect a dramatic drop-off in U.S. support for Ukraine anytime soon.
“I don’t think Trump is going to change a lot,” Davis said. “He did have a meeting with [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy] back in September, and I think he understands the need to maintain support.”
Mills also added that a second Trump administration was unlikely to pull back support for allies in Europe so long as those nations were seen to be carrying their own weight in defense spending.
“All that is being asked is at least two percent of GDP spent on defense and, in reality, four to five percent is the new two percent,” Mills said.
“That is the primary metric Trump looks at [with] partners, and I think that’s extremely reasonable.”
On the issue of the Middle East, Trump has expressed a desire to end hostilities in the region but also condemned the Biden administration’s persistent demands for a ceasefire.
Israeli leadership appears supportive of the second Trump administration and is wasting no time working with the incoming president-elect to carve out a pathway forward in the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to call President-elect Trump following the election results. Netanyahu congratulated Trump on his victory and the two discussed the Iranian threat, according to an Israeli readout of the call.
—Andrew Thornebrooke
VOTERS DECIDE KEY ISSUES AT BALLOT BOX
Abortion featured heavily on general election ballots this year, continuing a trend sparked by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning the federal right to abortion.
Most of the 10 states that weighed abortion-related ballot initiatives voted in favor of a constitutional right to abortion, but there were three that bucked that trend.
A majority of Florida voters supported an amendment that would have codified a right to abortion through fetal viability and up until birth to protect the mother’s health. But that majority fell short of the 60 percent needed to adopt the measure.
The amendment’s failure handed the pro-life movement its first ballot box victory in the post-Dobbs era.
In South Dakota, voters followed suit, soundly rejecting a similar measure. And in Nebraska, voters likewise rebuffed an attempt to codify abortion as a right, adding protections for the unborn to their constitution instead.
States that voted in favor of abortion as a right included Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New York, and Nevada.
Another popular ballot issue this year was the legalization of marijuana and other substances.
In Nebraska, measures to legalize medical marijuana and create a commission to regulate the industry both passed with overwhelming support. But initiatives in Florida and Massachusetts to decriminalize the recreational use of marijuana and other psychedelic substances, respectively, failed.
Proponents of ranked choice voting also suffered a string of defeats.
As Alaskans appeared poised to repeal the state’s use of the complicated voting method, statewide measures to implement it failed across the board except in the District of Columbia. A constitutional amendment in Missouri also banned the practice outright.
Other noteworthy results included the passage of a California measure to increase penalties for fentanyl dealers and repeat shoplifters and an Arizona law allowing state law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants.
—Samantha Flom
BOOKMARKS
Vice President Kamala Harris officially conceded the presidential election to President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday while delivering a speech in Washington. Her remarks came less than 12 hours after Trump clinched several swing states to secure the victory.
Trump is on pace to lock up the popular vote and surpass his 2016 victory, pollsters say. With more votes still to come in, some are already calling the win historic.
Republicans are poised to hit the trifecta of power in Washington if they can hang on to their House majority. With the White House and Senate already in their grasp, Republicans need only secure a handful of seats to achieve their goal.
The new Republican Senate majority is expected to zero in on judicial, tax, and spending reforms next year. It remains to be seen who will lead those efforts with current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) soon to step down.
Top U.S. business leaders responded to Trump’s presidential victory by congratulating him on his “decisive” win. Among those commending the president-elect were Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.
