So What Happened In The 2024 Election?

In a first of a Truth and Consequences series I look at the election results in a trio of states. Also, today's Musical Interlude serves.

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

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The Headwinds Were Strong

I’ve made the point a few times that Kamala Harris was dealing with near-impossible headwinds in the 2024 election (ones that I wish I had realized were there before I passed along my hunch that she would emerge victorious on Election Day). I’m not sure a better chart makes this point than this one.

When you lose the top three issues to your opponent — and two of those are pocketbook concerns — that’s a tall political hill to climb. The presence of immigration in the top three is (credit where credit is due) a tribute to how effectively the GOP has trumpeted this issue over the past 4 years. Republicans turned a lot of Americans into single-issue voters on immigration.

It’s also worth noting that the single most effective issue for Harris was abortion; perhaps that’s the reason why she overperformed in the swing states, where so many ads about the issue ran.

For MSNBC, I did a quick piece on why the outcome of the 2024 election is not quite as bad for Democrats as it seems … even though it’s still pretty bad.

But one thing that this campaign has taught me is that perhaps my skills are better used analyzing election results rather than trying to predict what’s going to happen … so I’m going to do a series of posts looking at some of the election returns in key states and trying to draw some lessons from the analysis.

Let’s start in the Midwest!

Michigan

Harris won nine counties in Michigan — in six, she received more votes than Biden did in 2020 (Kalamazoo, Kent, Washtenaw, Ingham, Marquette, and Leelanau). It should be noted that in each of these counties, Trump also got more votes, but not nearly enough to erase his 2020 margin of defeat.

In three counties, however, Harris underperformed. In Wayne County, which is largely Detroit and its close suburbs, there was an 84,000 vote Democratic decline from 2020. That is larger than Trump’s 2024 margin of victory in the state.

Of that 84,000 vote difference, Harris lost approximately 19,000 votes in Detroit, while Trump picked up just under 7,000 votes. Detroit makes up 28.8 percent of the vote totals in Wayne County, and 30.8 percent of the shift in votes from 2020 came in Detroit, so it stands to reason that Harris did slightly worse in Detroit versus the rest of the country — but not dramatically worse.

In Oakland County, a wealthy Democratic-leaning Detroit suburb, Harris had a 27,000-vote deficit vis-a-vis 2020 Biden’s 2020 numbers. In Genesee County, north of Oakland, she had a deficit of around 12,000 votes. (In Macomb County, a Republican suburban Detroit stronghold, there was a 30,000-vote drop).

Even more interesting is that Harris matched or topped Biden’s 2020 numbers in several solid red counties. To be clear, Trump did far better in Michigan in 2024. He received nearly 167,000 more votes than in 2020. And Harris received 68,000 fewer votes than Biden. But she would have won the state if she had matched Biden’s 2020 numbers in Wayne, Genesee, and Oakland — a feat she accomplished in many counties in Michigan, both blue and red.

Why she underperformed in those three countries — all of which are different demographically and economically — is a question I can’t quite answer. I suspect some but not all of the answer lies in her dropoff among Arab-American voters. Some people I’ve spoken to suggested that she might have lost votes from Jewish voters in Oakland because of her outreach to pro-Palestinian activists. Or maybe she lost some votes among those in the auto industry who liked Trump’s criticism of electric vehicles. We probably need more granular information to get a clearer picture of what happened in Michigan.

Wisconsin

The Badger State was Trump’s narrowest win — 49.6 to 48.8. This is almost a carbon copy reversal of Biden’s win in 2020 — 49.4 to 48.8. However, unlike Michigan, Harris got more votes than Biden (38,000), while Trump won around 67,000 more votes than in 2020.

Harris’s biggest drop-off in Michigan was in Wayne County, home to Detroit, which is predominately Black. So, one might expect a similar result in Milwaukee, which also has a large Black population … but that wasn’t really the case. She did 1.3 points worse than Biden in Milwaukee but only received 1,232 fewer votes, while Trump got 3,540 more votes than in 2020 - a negligible difference that doesn’t explain why Harris lost.

In the biggest blue county in the state, Dane, which is home to Madison, Harris got 13,000 more raw votes than Biden, though her percentage margin of victory was less than his because Trump also picked up 6,600 more votes.

We saw a similar pattern across most of the blue counties in Wisconsin — Harris was within a few thousand votes of Biden in nearly all of them (both more and less), but Trump picked up votes that he didn’t get in 2020, which was decisive.

Take Rock County, which is south of Dane County. Harris received 16 fewer votes than Biden! But Trump got around 3,000 more in 2024 than he did in 2020. Multiply that growth by all Wisconsin counties, and you have a pretty good explanation of why he won the state.

The Wisconsin results suggest that Harris didn’t necessarily have a turnout problem but that either occasionally, Trump voters were decisive or just enough Biden 2020 voters switched sides.

Illinois

Illinois is not a swing state, but there are some interesting numbers to look at here.

In 2020, Biden easily won the state over Trump.

Biden - 3,471,915 - 57.54%

Trump - 2,446,891 - 40.55%

Here are the 2024 numbers.

Harris - 3,056,201 - 54.76%

Trump - 2,444,517 - 43.80%

So, we have an approximately 6-point shift against Harris and toward Trump, which is consistent with the national shift in the presidential vote.

But look at the raw numbers - Trump actually got fewer votes in Illinois than he did in 2020 — one of only a handful of states where that happened. Unfortunately, for Harris, she received 415,714 fewer votes than Biden.

Oof. That’s a 12 percent drop.

Harris’s worst performing district vis-a-vis Biden was Cook County, home to Chicago. She received 278,000 fewer votes, or 16.2 percent worse than Biden. Trump picked up a modest 25,000 votes in Cook County for a 4.3 increase. Here are the blue counties where Harris did worse than Biden.

The first number is the percent dropoff from Biden to Harris.

• Cook -16.2 (59.5%)

• Will -11.5 (40%)

• DuPage -10.7 (37.6%)

• Lake - 9.6 (43%)

• Kane -7.8 (45%)

• St. Clair -7.3 (35.5%)

• Winnebago -6.5 (36%)

The numbers in parenthesis are the percentage of the non-white population in these counties (based on the 2020 census), which is perhaps one explanation for Harris’s underperformance in these counties.

Nate Cohn has done a nice job of demolishing the argument that Harris lost because of lower turnout. In four of the five swing states, she received more votes than Biden in 2020 (in only one other state did that happen — oddly, ruby-red Utah).

However, there’s no question that Democratic turnout dropped in non-competitive blue states. There was a huge dropoff in Democratic voting in New York and California and other blue stalwarts like Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Illinois. (Harris also saw a significant drop-off in Florida, which is quickly becoming a solid red state). Conversely, Trump gained votes in most of these states. The increases weren’t huge, but it does suggest that Republican voters were more motivated than Democrats.

There are many possible explanations for the decline in Democratic turnout. In solid blue states, Democratic voters might have felt that their votes didn’t matter (though they didn’t matter in 2020 either, and that didn’t stop them from voting). If that’s the explanation, the 2024 vote is concerning but not necessarily fatal. It’s not as if CA, NY, MA, NJ, or IL will likely go blue in 2028.

Perhaps it signals a lack of confidence/faith/interest in Harris coupled with a disinclination to vote for Trump. (FWIW, Cohn makes a persuasive argument that a healthy number of 2020 Biden voters who stayed home would have voted for Trump, which should concern Democrats).

Democrats can take some solace in the fact that Harris’s campaign motivated voters in the place where she campaigned (swing states) to turn out … but if millions of Dems stayed home, how confident can the party be they will head to the polls in 2026 and 2028?

Coming Soon …

For the next installment, I will look at North Carolina, Nevada, and either New York or Pennsylvania (the latter is confusing!). But if there’s a state you’d like me to do a deep dive into, let me know.

Musical Interlude