Until Democrats Admit Kamala Was A Uniquely Terrible Candidate, Statistics Won't Really Explain Much

Lots of people are looking at “What Happen In 2024,” the new 2024 election data released this week by Catalist. Kamala’s numbers went down so widely and in so many demographics and subgroups that it’s nearly impossible to come to any conclusions other than the obvious one: she shouldn’t be the party’s nominee again. Her tragically over-priced consultant-and-donor-driven campaign turned off the base so profoundly that this may have been the biggest single reason Trump beat her, especially since she didn’t even manage to make headway with the centrists she decided to aim for instead.

Amy Walter and Cari Dann kicked off the analysis on Mondy night. Short version: Kamala’s “loss was due to two key factors: She lost roughly two points of support among those who turned out in 2020, and new and infrequent voters failed to materialize for Democrats as they had in previous elections… [B]oth infrequent and new voters— groups that tend to be younger and more diverse than the electorate at large— fell below 50% support for a Democratic presidential candidate…The electorate last fall was three points less white than it was 12 years ago. What’s more, the youngest cohort of voters by generational breakdown made up 36% of the electorate (compared to 18% in 2012), while the oldest cohort was just 39% (down from 57% in 2012). And, yet, that coalition was much friendlier to Donald Trump than to any other GOP nominee. So what happened? Men— especially men of color— shifted towards Republicans.”

Overall, Harris performed six points worse among men than Biden did. But that falloff was significantly more pronounced among Latino men (-12) and Black men (-7). Among white men without a college degree— a group that is traditionally the least friendly to Democrats— the slippage was least dramatic (-3).

Despite the historic nature of her candidacy as the first woman of color to be nominated for president, women greeted that fact with more of a shrug. Harris’ vote share among women was basically the same as the share Biden got in 2020, except for a noticeable decline in support from Latinas. She also slightly underperformed Biden among Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women (-4) and failed to do any better with Black women than Biden did.

Even as many in the TikTok generation embraced Harris’ “coconut tree” meme, she failed to capture the imagination or support from young voters that Biden enjoyed in 2020. Among all young voters, Harris underperformed Biden by six points, but the gap was much larger among younger Latino (-12) and AAPI (-9) voters. Among Black and white younger voters, the drop-off in support from 2020 was less severe (-4).

How it happened

For much of the 2024 election, the Harris campaign was convinced that they could win if the electorate looked similar to 2020, while the Trump campaign was eager to expand the electorate. In other words, Harris wanted an electorate heavily populated with frequent voters, while the Trump team wanted an electorate filled with voters who have not participated as much in major elections.

According to Catalist, the electorate was indeed more populated with frequent voters than at any point in the last three presidential elections. The share of the electorate that were so-called “super voters”— those who voted in all of the last four major elections— was 47%, compared to just 38% of the electorate in 2020. More importantly, Harris did better among these voters than any previous Democratic nominee since 2016, capturing 50% of the vote, compared to Biden’s 49% and Hillary Clinton’s 47%.

The least frequent voters also made up less of the electorate overall in 2024 (11%) than in 2020 (16%) and 2016 (15%).

Both of those data points— the large share of “super voters” and the smaller share of less frequent voters— suggest that Harris should have been successful in 2024.

So why wasn’t she? Because Harris not only underperformed Biden among those who were brand new to voting, but also among people who had voted in anywhere from one to three of the last four elections. 

So why did Harris underperform with all types of infrequent voters, not just those who hadn’t voted in any previous election? The Catalist data shows that less frequent voters are more likely to be younger, live in an urban area, be a person of color, and not hold a college degree. In other words, there is a direct correlation between Harris’ underperformance with younger, urban and voters of color and the fact that they make up a disproportionate share of infrequent voters.

For example, in 2024, 78% of the voters who voted in the last four elections were white, compared to 67% of those who voted in two of the last four elections and just 62% who voted in none of the last four elections.  

A Lot of Biden Voters Stayed Home, and New Voters Were the Least Democratic Ever

For the last 12 years, Catalist analysis has found dropoff voters (those who voted in the previous presidential election but don’t show up in the current one) have been disproportionately Democratic-leaning. [Maybe Democrats should think about why they disappoint voters.] But in the last three presidential elections, Democrats made up for that loss by replacing them with brand new voters, who also leaned heavily Democratic. This is how Democrats were able to win the popular vote in every one of those elections.

In 2024, however, that “churn” in the electorate didn’t benefit Harris. According to Catalist, 30 million 2020 voters didn’t cast a ballot in 2024. That 30 million was also a very Democratic-leaning group, giving Biden an estimated 55.7% of the vote in 2020. Harris was unable to make up for those lost votes with new voters because 1) there were only 26 million new voters; four million fewer than those who dropped out and 2) the new voters gave Harris just 48.5% of the vote, falling below 50% for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in Catalist’s dataset.

It’s these “churn” voters that Catalist concludes both parties should be focused on in 2026 and beyond.

“The Republican playbook has historically counted less on refreshing these rotating marginal voters,” writes Catalist, “but these data suggest that may become a more important part of their electoral coalition.”

And, while they suggest that “future Republican candidates may not be able to replicate Trump’s performance,” future Republican campaigns now have a roadmap to victory— something they didn’t have before Trump re-imagined the GOP coalition.  

Sarah Longwell, looking at the same data, found a silver lining, namely that “Republicans were not able to boost their margins in the swing states in 2024 as much as they did nationally— meaning that in the states that actually matter, where all the ad spending and stumping happens, Democrats are in a stronger position than they are in the rest of the country. But of course, Trump still won those swing states. And he did so by scrambling the electoral landscape for both parties. It used to be an article of faith that Dems reliably won young people and minority groups by extreme margins, while Republicans cleaned up with more established and white voters. The 2024 election was the starkest demonstration we’ve had yet that that’s not necessarily the case anymore. As we’ve already begun to see in recent election cycles, including the special elections so far in 2025, Dems are more likely to thrive in off-year, low-turnout contests— previously favorable turf for Republicans.”

She found “one axiom of politics remains true: In the end, it comes down to how people feel about their futures and well-being. Biden won in 2020 because COVID was destroying the economy (and the rest of our lives). Trump won in 2024 because voters were upset about the persistent inflation resulting from COVID and were nostalgic for Trump’s pre-COVID economy and suckered by his ‘businessman’ mythology. Trump was further helped by Biden being too compromised by age to be an effective communicator for his own policies. Which leaves both Democrats and Republicans in a tenuous position when it comes to winning future majorities in general elections. Democrats must understand that their destiny will be determined by economics, not demographics. Having a clear economic message that voters believe will improve their lives is at the core of the work they need to do to return from the political wilderness. Republicans have a bigger problem. Since Trump hijacked their political party, they’ve been shedding reliable college-educated suburban voters— along with most traditional Republican values and policies. And while Trump is able to offset this loss with Saddam Hussein–level margins among working-class voters, especially in rural areas, there’s no evidence a Republican who isn’t Trump can conjure similar appeal with voters otherwise uninterested in politics. There’s a reason Republicans shrug helplessly at the notion that Trump could run for a third term. It’s because they no longer have any better ideas.”

I picked up these charts from Philip Bump who used the Catalist data to come up with them.