Trump won about 2.5 million more votes than in 2020, some in unexpected places

This is a discouraging reality for Democrats: Republicans Donald Trump support has increased significantly since he last ran for president.

IN his failure Democrat Kamala HarrisTrump won a higher percentage of the vote in each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. than he did four years ago. He won more actual votes than he did in 2020 in 40 states, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Certainly, Harris is down more than 7 million votes from the president Joe Biden The 2020 totals contributed to her loss, especially in metro areas in swing states that were winning electoral strongholds for the party.

But despite national turnout which is less than in the highly enthusiastic 2020 election. Trump received 2.5 million more votes than four years ago. He defeated seven of the most competitive states in a convincing Electoral College victory, becoming the first Republican Party candidate in 20 years to win a majority of the popular vote.

Trump moved into areas where Harris needed to outperform to win the close election. Now Democrats are wondering how to regain traction before the midterm elections in two years, when control of Congress will be up for grabs again and dozens of governors will be elected.

There were several notable elements that contributed to Trump’s victory:

Trump bit on the northern subway

While Trump improved across the board, his gains were particularly notable in the urban counties home to the cities of Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, an election machine that retained Harris in the industrial swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Harris was more than 50,000 votes — and 5 percentage points — behind Biden’s vote total in Wayne County, Michigan, which makes up the lion’s share of the Detroit metropolitan area. She was nearly 36,000 votes behind Biden in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and about 1,000 votes in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

It wasn’t just Harris’ shortfalls that helped Trump carry states, a trio that Democrats collectively carried in six of the seven previous elections before Nov. 5.

Trump added to his 2020 tally in all three metro counties, gaining more than 24,000 votes in Wayne County, more than 11,000 in Philadelphia County and nearly 4,000 in Milwaukee County.

It is not yet possible to determine whether Harris fell short of Biden because his voters stayed home, whether they voted for Trump, or how the combination of these two factors caused the apparent rightward drift in each of these states.

Harris advertised heavily and campaigned regularly in each, and created Milwaukee County her first stop as a candidate with a rally in July. Those swings alone didn’t make a difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but her underperformance compared to Biden in the three metros helped Trump, who maintained strong 2020 margins in the three states’ vast rural areas and improved or held steady in populated suburbs.

Trump’s team and outside groups supporting him knew from the data that he was targeting black voters, especially black men under the age of 50, who were more concentrated in urban areas that were key to Democratic victories.

When James Blair, Trump’s political director, saw the results coming in from Philadelphia on election night, he knew Trump had made inroads into predominantly black districts, and that gain was reverberating throughout Wayne and Milwaukee counties.

“The data has clearly shown that there is an opportunity here,” Blair said.

A nationwide AP VoteCast poll of more than 120,000 voters found Trump gained a larger share Black and Latino voters than in 2020, and especially among men under 45.

Democrats won Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin, but lost in Pennsylvania. In 2026, they will defend governorships in all three states and a Senate seat in Michigan.

Trump gained more on the battlefields than Harris

Despite the burst of enthusiasm Harris’ candidacy generated among Democratic supporters when she entered the race in July, she ultimately received fewer votes than Biden in three of the seven states where she campaigned almost exclusively.

In Arizona, she received 90,000 fewer votes than Biden. She received about 67,000 less in Michigan and 39,000 less in Pennsylvania.

In four others – Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin – Harris won more votes than Biden. But Trump’s support has grown even higher – significantly more in some states.

This dynamic is on display in Georgia, where Harris received nearly 73,000 more votes than Biden in a narrow victory over the state. However, Trump added more than 200,000 to his 2020 vote total on his way to winning Georgia by about 2 percentage points.

In Wisconsin, Trump’s team responded to the slippage it saw in GOP-leaning Milwaukee suburban counties by targeting formerly Democratic, working-class areas where Trump made significant gains.

In Milwaukee’s three largest suburban counties – Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha – that have been the bedrock of GOP victories for decades, Harris outperformed Biden in 2020. She also won more votes than Trump in 2020, though he still won the county election.

That made Trump’s focus on Rock County, a working-class area in south-central Wisconsin, critical. Trump received 3,084 more votes in Rock County, home to Janesville, a former auto manufacturing town, than in 2020, while Harris finished seven votes behind Biden’s total in 2020. That helped Trump offset Harris’ improvement in the Milwaukee suburbs.

The focus is on the strength Trump had and continues to grow among middle-income and non-college-educated voters, said Tim Saler, senior data analyst for the Trump campaign.

“If you have to rely on working-class voters, they are particularly strong in Wisconsin,” Saler said. “We have seen huge changes from 2020 to 2024 in our favor.”

Trump increased his 2020 vote total as turnout in Arizona dropped

Among the seven most competitive states, Arizona saw the smallest increase in votes cast in the presidential election, with just over 4,000 votes in a state where more than 3.3 million ballots were cast.

That was despite nearly 30 campaign visits by Trump, Harris and their colleagues to Arizona and more than $432 million spent on advertising by campaigns and related outside groups, according to the monitoring firm AdImpact.

In Arizona, the only one of seven swing states, Harris fell short of Biden in small, medium and large counties. In the remaining six states, it managed to stay in at least one of these categories.

What’s more, it’s also the only swing state where Trump improved his margin in every county.

While turnout in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county and home to Phoenix, was down slightly from 2020 – by 14,199 votes, a slight change from a county where more than 2 million people voted – Trump gained nearly 56,000 votes more than four years ago.

Meanwhile, Harris fell more than 60,000 votes short of Biden’s total, contributing to a shift significant enough to shift the county and state to Trump, who lost Arizona in 2020 by less than 11,000 votes.

A shift to the right even in strongly democratic areas

The largest shifts to the right occurred not only in Republican-leaning counties, but also among counties in states with majority Democrats. Wayne County, Michigan, went 9 points toward Trump, tying the more Republican Antrim County for the state’s biggest mover.

Voting for AP found that voters were most likely to say the most important issue facing the country in 2024 was the economy, followed by immigration. The study found that Trump supporters were more motivated by economic issues and immigration than Harris.

“It’s still all about the economy,” said Morgan Jackson, a North Carolina Democratic strategist and senior adviser to Democrat Josh Stein, who won the North Carolina governorship on Nov. 5 under Trump.

“Democrats need to take an economic message that actually works for real people and talk about it in a way people understand, rather than giving them a treatise on economic policy,” he said.

The 2026 gubernatorial election offers Democrats a chance to test their understanding and messaging on the issue, said Democratic pollster Margie Omero, whose firm has advised Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers in the past and this year’s winning Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego.

“So there is an opportunity to really make sure that the people that the governors have connections with feel some specificity and clarity about the Democrats’ economic message,” Omero said.

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