Demographics shaping the 2024 presidential election
WASHINGTON (Gray DC) -As the race for president heats up, Donald Trump is making the case for minority voters to choose Republicans.
“Any African-American or Hispanic, and you know how well I’m doing there, that votes for Kamala, you’ve gotta have your head examined,” Trump said at an event Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is using Barack Obama as a resource. The former president had unprecedented success turning out the Black vote.
“We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and our communities that we saw when I was running,” Obama said at an event last week.
George Washington University Political Science Director Todd Belt said poling data shows Harris is underperforming president Joe Biden’s metrics when it comes to minorities, mostly because of male voters.
But Harris is polling better with women voters than Biden did in 2020.
Belt says his data shows gender voting gap between Democrats and Republicans is at about 17 percent, up from about five percent in recent elections. He believes female voters will be key in determining which party takes the White House
“Particularly suburban women, and that’s why we’ve seen Donald Trump come out and do kind of a women only type of question and answer that he did,” Belt said. “There’s a lot of women for whom the issue of abortion is a primary driving issue for them.”
Belt says the youth vote is another X factor, and data shows the war in the Middle East is not their biggest motivator.
“It’s really not. It’s the economy. And just like any other voters, voters 18-29, the only voting demographic that Biden won, they’re still really concerned about the economy.”
Harris is also looking to make inroads with moderate Republicans. She has hit the campaign trail with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and appeared on FOX News.
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