By STEVE PEOPLES and BILL BARROW, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) – Even with Tuesday night’s uncertain outcome, the 2024 presidential election has already exposed the depths of a fractured nation as candidates navigated political shifts based on class, race and age under the near-constant threat of misinformation and violence.
Early data suggest that Republican Donald Trump could benefit from some of the changes more than Democrat Kamala Harris.
But since the 1968 election, when the nation was torn apart by racial strife and the Vietnam War, the divisions didn’t seem so glaring.
The biggest conclusions, however, may so far be the most obvious.
The United States is on the verge of electing its first woman president in Harris or its first president with a felony conviction in the former president. Trumpwhose enduring political strength through chaos-largely of his own making-has had few political costs so far.
With votes still being counted across the country, here are some early conclusions:
There is a new map of battlegrounds and contested coalitions
Black voters – men and women – have been the base of the Democratic Party, and Democrats have had a strong pull among Latino voters. The same has been true for young voters.
But preliminary data from AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 115,000 voters nationwide, suggests that the groups shifted in Trump’s direction.
Voters under 30 represent a fraction of the total electorate, but about half of them supported Harris. That compares with about 6 in 10 who supported Biden in 2020.
Slightly more than 4 in 10 young voters went for Trump, compared with about a third in 2020.
Another shift that occurred was among black and Latino voters, who appeared slightly less likely to support Harris than Biden four years ago, according to AP VoteCast.
About 8 in 10 black voters supported Harris, compared with about 9 in 10 who backed Biden. More than half of Hispanic voters supported Harris, but that number was slightly lower than the roughly 6 in 10 who backed Biden in 2020. Support for Trump among those groups appeared to be up slightly compared to 2020.
Trump boasted throughout the fall that he would get more support from black and Latino men than before.
Harris, meanwhile, went after more educated voters – including moderate Republicans – repelled by Trump.
It may turn out that the Trump era will not entail a permanent realignment of the major party coalitions. But it is clear that the old coalitions and the old ideas about how to win the White House simply don’t apply with Trump in the way.
A new president will take over a nation with deep fissures
Whether Harris or Trump ends up behind the Resolute Desk, the 47th president will lead a nation with deep political and cultural fissures and a troubled electorate.
AP VoteCast found that about 4 in 10 voters felt that the economy and jobs the most important issue facing the country. Roughly 2 in 10 voters said the top issue is immigration, an anchor of Trump’s argument, and about 1 in 10 picked abortiona pillar of the Harris campaign.
In a reminder of how unusual this election has been, about 1 in 4 Trump voters said assassination attempts against him were the most important factor in their vote.
But when asked what most influenced their vote, about half of the voters cited the future of democracy. This figure is higher than the proportion who responded the same on inflation, immigration or abortion policy. And it affects both major parties: About two-thirds of Harris voters and about one-third of Trump voters said the future of democracy was the most important factor in their votes.
Not surprising, given the realities of the Trump era and the rhetoric of the campaign.
Trump refused to concede defeat in 2020 and watched as his supporters ransacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress convened to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Trump even mused two days before Election Day that he would “shouldn’t have left.” the White House after repeatedly promising retaliation to his political enemies.
Harris, late in the campaign, joined other critics – including some of Trump’s former White House chiefs of staff – in describing the former president as a “fascist.” Trump, for his part, branded Harris a “fascist” and a “communist.”
He then told voters that the multiple criminal prosecutions against him prove that Democrats are the real “threat to democracy,” and in the final days of the campaign he stepped up his discredited claims that U.S. elections are rigged against him.
Doubts about “election integrity” persist thanks to disinformation
Trump spent the last days of the election aggressively promoting unfounded claims about the integrity of the election, insisting that they would only lose if Democrats cheated. Not long after, he claimed on social media, without evidence, that there was “a lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia.”
There is no credible information pointing to significant fraud in this election – or the last election, despite Trump’s claims to the contrary. A broad coalition of senior government and industry officials, many of them Republicans, found that the 2020 election was the “safest” in U.S. history.”
At the same time, a disinformation campaign promoting false cases of electoral fraud is spreading on the Internet.
On Tuesday, the FBI issued a statement highlighting two examples of misuse of its name and insignia in election-related videos. One featured a fabricated press release alleging that the management of five prisons in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona had rigged inmate voting and colluded with a political party.
“This video is also not authentic and its content is false,” the FBI stated.
Mars and Venus: Abortion and “bro” politics highlight voting differences between men and women.
It was the first presidential election after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended a woman’s national right to terminate a pregnancy. It was also the first time a Republican presidential candidate overly courted men with a hyper-masculine approach.
And it seems to have mattered. Both Harris and Trump advisors expected a historic “gender gap” between the two candidates, with women making up a clear majority of Harris supporters and men contributing the clear majority of Trump’s total.
AP VoteCast, meanwhile, found that about 1 in 10 voters said abortion is the top issue facing the country, reinforcing the newfound relevance of an issue that barely registered with voters four years ago.
About a quarter of voters said abortion policy was the most important factor in their vote, while about half said it was an important factor, but not the most important.
To be sure, women have tended to be more Democratic in national politics for years, while men have tended to be more Republican. But the widening gap underscores how fractured the American electorate has become.
Year of the billionaires underscores the power of money in politics
Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, became Trump’s favorite campaign running mate in recent weeks. Musk enjoyed the spotlight, as he has done since he bought Twitter, changed his name to X and molded the social media platform’s political identity into his own.
Musk invested tens of millions of dollars – a fraction of his fortune – in an election operation aimed at helping Trump. The former president promised to make Musk a key player in his future second administration, potentially giving him broad control over federal regulations and bureaucracy.
On the Democratic side, Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg each donated $50 million to a pro-Harris super PAC, according to the New York Times.
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