Americans were united in their “economic pain” this Election Day, a big reason Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris to return to the White House, wrote Dante Chinni, the founder and director of the American Communities Project based at Michigan State University.
Chinni and his colleagues at the American Communities Project study the patchwork of society, using demographic and socioeconomic measures to break the nation’s 3,100 counties into 15 different types of communities.
Everyone knows that small-town life is different from big-city living. But the American Communities Project found a way to group places based on fundamental differences, such as jobs, education, racial and ethnic diversity, and, of course, political perspectives.
Chinni dove into voter survey data from The Associated Press and found the same story in community after community: People were concerned about the economy.
His project’s 15 defined community types, from “rural middle America” to “big cities,” are often divided around issues of culture, he wrote. But voters across all 15 community types, from “evangelical hubs” to “college towns,” said in AP surveys that the economy and jobs were their top concerns. Immigration was clearly No. 2, and abortion was uniformly No. 3.
Meanwhile, Trump outperformed his 2020 numbers in all 15 community types, and Harris underperformed President Joe Biden’s 2020 results in all but one community type.
Americans were on the same page this election, and it wasn’t good news for Harris.
“The whole country moved to the right in the voting booth,” said Peter Loge, the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.
AP survey data shows 39% of voters overall said the economy and jobs were the top issues facing the country. More than 60% of people gave the economy bad marks.
Todd Belt, the political management program director at George Washington, said last week that inflation, particularly the higher costs of groceries and housing, was a problem for voters.
Even though inflation has largely been curbed and wages are growing at a faster pace than prices now, Belt said politicians “can’t outrun a person’s feelings.”
Harris entered the race with just 107 days to go and was never able to put together an economic message that resonated with voters, he said.
Oklahoma State University politics professor Seth McKee said Harris was anchored by bad short-term conditions, and her messaging wasn’t able to overcome that.
“I do think that the problem that Democrats have had for some time is that they’re not connecting with downscale, non-college-educated voters, who used to be a key component of the Democratic Party,” McKee said.
Trump captured half the vote from households making under $50,000, a five-point improvement for him over four years ago. And the “diploma divide” grew, as 56% of those without a college degree sided with Trump. That’s up from 51% in 2020.
More Hispanic voters, 43%, supported Trump — an eight-point increase from 2020. Chinni wrote that Trump’s inroads with Hispanic voters were noteworthy. He also noted Harris’ big drop compared to Biden’s 2020 performance within the “big cities” community type, as well as her underperformance compared to Biden in the “African American South” community type.
Meanwhile, Trump performed about two points better than he did last time in the American Communities Project’s “middle suburbs” community type, which Chinni said was important to Trump winning the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
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