When compared with the last two elections, in 2024 percentage wise, Trump's support from this group did not change much. This time around, whatever new gains Trump made, these came from different ethnic and social groups. Trump significantly strengthened his position with all three major ethnic minorities in the United States: Latinos, Blacks, and Asians. While in 2016 and 2020, Trump scored 29 and 33 % of the Latino vote, respectively, 46% of Latinos voted for him in 2024. Among Asian voters, a very diverse group comprising Americans of Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Korean, and other ancestries, a similar trend can be observed, even though Trump's gains in these groups are less pronounced. Between 2016 and 2024, Trump increased his percentage of the Asian vote from 29 to 40%. Black Americans remain one of the most reliable Democratic electoral blocs, but even there, we can observe unignorable shifts , especially among Black male voters. One-quarter of Black males voted for Donald Trump, doubling the percentage of four years ago. This phenomenon, of Donald Trump doing significantly better among males than females, is observable within all ethnic groups. Even more remarkable is the fact that Donald Trump won the majority of votes from Latino males. That gender gap widens even further in the 18-29 age bracket, where Trump increased his share of votes the most when compared to 2020.
Trump is especially successful among young male voters, having secured 63 % of the young white male vote and a third of that of young black males.
Even young women of all ethnicities favored Donald Trump more than they did four years ago, often by significant margins. This shift in Trump's favor among young male voters is so significant that it widened the gender voting gap to such an extent it became the largest in recent history. Young women preferred Harris to Trump by a 17-point margin (58% to 41%), while young men preferred Trump by a 14-point margin (56% to 42%). Among non-white young voters, the gender voting gap is even wider than among young whites. Support for Trump however tends to decrease as the level of educational background rises. The only education-related demographic where Harris outperformed Biden was among those with postgraduate degrees. Among white educated groups, Trump only lost the majority of white, college-educated women to Harris.
But what conclusions can we draw from this? The racial divide in American politics lessened this election, especially among young voters. The euphoria as experienced by many pro-Democratic analysts, who dreamed of the inevitable dominance of U.S. politics by the Democratic party due to the changing ethnic makeup of the country (assuming minorities would forever back the Democrats), is now a thing of the past.
Latino voters, already the largest minority group in the United States whose numbers are only going to swell, have proven to be far from a reliable voting block for Democrats. Hard-working, upwardly mobile, conservative-minded, and not keen on welcoming competition from Latin America on the job market, they might in fact, turn out to be model Republican voters.
Increasingly, education becomes the best predictor of U.S. citizens’ voting behaviour, far more so than income levels. In addition, a college education is not only a condition for entry to many well-paid jobs, but brings with it a worldview in line with the interests of progressive bureaucratic elites.
The most striking political gap as revealed in this election, however, is that of gender. It appears it is the age of a deepening crisis in how young American men and women relate to each other; this complex social issue, which affects almost all walks of life, has now waded into the political arena.
Among the youngest white voters, the gender gap is more decisive than the educational gap. These two gaps however reinforce each other since the majority of college graduates are women. Young men, or so could be inferred, increasingly are realising that continued adherence to a progressive ideology yields little rewards. They, or so they have come to realise, are neither heroes, nor winners in the Left’s political narrative, which is more interested in uplifting their female counterparts. It is then no wonder that their energy would go to the seeking and establishing of one of their own.
