BURSTA new exit poll of battleground state voters found that President-elect Trump’s economic message broke through demographic barriers, building a national coalition that Vice President Harris was unable to match.
The poll, commissioned by Way to Win, a pro-Democratic electoral strategy group, oversampled Black, Latino and Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“I don't know if it's surprising, but I think that it's strong, is just how much concerns about the economy really transcended racial, educational and demographic lines in this election to really become the decisive factor, that there was a real strength in how Trump voters named the economy and immigration as driving their choice, whereas on Harris’s side there were a lot of different kind of answers, and it wasn't as clear cut,” said Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, vice president of Way to Win.
And the poll showed Trump — and his rhetoric — were central to most voters’ decision process, whether they voted for him or not.
According to the survey, Trump was the primary reason that Harris-voting respondents named as the decisive factor in their choice. That answer was the same both among all Harris voters and among persuadable voters who eventually picked her.
The top deciding issue for Trump voters generally was the economy, but persuadable voters were swayed by Trump’s portrayals of Harris.
One voter polled, a 67-year-old Black man from Wisconsin registered as a Democrat, said he voted for Trump because “Kamala is an empty candidate,” according to the poll memo.
While Trump’s economic message generally transcended demographic barriers, gaps in education, socioeconomic status and media consumption marked voting trends in battleground states.
Trump won over a majority of non-college graduates: 56 percent of respondents in that group chose the Republican nominee, while 43 percent went for the Democrat. Among college graduates, the situation was reversed, with 55 percent picking Harris and 43 percent picking Trump.
The poll showed a clear distinction between college graduation rates and income gaps — Trump, though favored by non-college graduates, only got the support of 43 percent of respondents with yearly incomes of less than $50,000, while Harris won 56 percent of that group.
That income distinction was consistent through different demographic groups. Harris edged Trump among Latinos with under-$50,000 income by 11 net percentage points, and the two candidates were essentially tied among white voters in that income bracket, with a two percentage net advantage for Trump.
That tie, with a minuscule advantage for Trump, held among Latinos both in the $50,000-$100,000 bracket, and Latinos with a $100,000-plus yearly income.
The poll found a flat tie among Latinos who did not graduate college, 49 percent each, and a seven-point advantage for Harris among college educated Latinos, regardless of income.
“I think it goes to the nuance of the working class, right? So not all working class can be just correlated with education. That is a very crude way of thinking about working class. And I think we have too often made that assumption that that non-college kind of means working class. Of course, there's a lot of overlap there, but the working class is diverse and different and interesting and complicated,” said Fernandez Ancona.
One of the biggest gaps in voter preferences was related to media consumption.
A whopping 77 percent of people who primarily get their news from podcasts voted for Trump, while 22 percent voted for Harris, a mirror image of respondents who primarily get their news from newspapers, 77 percent of whom voted for Harris while 21 percent voted for Trump.
TV viewers were more or less evenly split, with 51 percent favoring Harris and 48 percent favoring Trump.
The two candidates also split social media channels: Trump had a net positive of 31 percentage points over Harris among people who get their news primarily from Facebook and a plus-seven net with YouTube viewers.
Harris won over TikTok users with a net positive of 26 percentage points over Trump, and Instagram viewers with a net 12 percentage point advantage.
According to Fernandez Ancona, the poll found that TV is still the top source of news for 43 percent of respondents, followed by podcasts, a medium relied upon by 15 percent of respondents. Newspaper readers accounted for 9 percent of respondents, and TikTok was the primary source of information for 8 percent of respondents.
“Obviously the vast majority [are] getting their news from TV. But podcasts are a growing medium … and why the voters who are listening to podcasts tend to be more working class, or that's one of the issues, is that people who have certain kind of jobs, whether it's like driving or working in a factory or working in a stock room, you can listen to audio for a long time. You have more time while you're actually at your job, being able to listen to audio, whereas with newspapers, you know you can't, right? You have to read them. You have to have time to set aside and read them,” said Fernandez Ancona.
The poll was conducted among 2,100 voters in battleground states, oversampling 150 Latino voters, 100 Black voters and 100 AAPI voters, reporting an overall 2 percentage point margin of error for the full sample, 5.3 percent for Latinos, 5 percent for Black respondents, and 7.5 percent for AAPI respondents.