Early Post-Election Data Reveals Key Voter Demographic Shifts Behind Trump Defeat Of Harris: HarrisX CEO Dritan Nesho

On “Forbes Newsroom,” HarrisX CEO Dritan Nesho broke down the early conclusions he has made gauging demographic voting shifts that spelled a comfortable Electoral College and popular vote victory for President-elect Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

The first key to Trump’s defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris was his ability to reassemble his support from 2020. “Trump, by and large, was able to pull his coalition forward and get it out to come and vote. Last time around, he won about 75 million votes, and this time around he's at about 72 million and counting. So he didn't really lose a lot of votes from his coalition.”

Harris, conversely, fatally underperformed her Democratic nominee predecessor, President Joe Biden. “Biden won over 80 million votes in 2020. And where the count stands right now, Harris has had less than 13 million less votes than Biden had last time around. She's at around 67 million votes. So what that means is that several key voter groups didn't show up and vote for the Democrats.”

Trump’s strength in overperforming among regions and groups he’d won before was coupled by inroads with traditionally largely Democratic-voting groups, particularly Hispanic voters. “Trump performed very well with Hispanics in the mid-40s, and the count is still growing. So when it's all said and done, he might actually have overperformed George Bush's 45% with Hispanics from 2004, which is widely credited to pushing him through to reelection in 2004,” Nesho said. “Trump might actually get higher than 45% of the Hispanic vote, and certainly Hispanic men or Latino men broke for Trump this time around. So they were plus-12 for Trump this time around, whereas last time around they were plus-23 for Biden. That is a huge swing.”

Nesho also pointed to ealy data about the gender breakdown, some of which shows Trump winning men easily and Harris actually underperforming Biden with women. “There's two exit polls that are conducted in the United States by different media consortiums. Trump won men by ten and Harris won women by ten on the low end. But really, the one that's most interesting is one that says Harris won women by eight points. And that was a decline from Biden's win over women by 15 points last time around, whereas Trump actually won men by 13 points in 2024, and that was an increase from last time around in 2020 when he won men by about eight points. So it also seems like in the battle of the genders, men came out to vote for Trump, at least in one of the exit polls, more convincingly. And that mattered, especially when it comes to younger male voters.”

Watch the full interview above.