'She was going against headwinds': Shifting voter demographics in Harris vs. Trump race

Vice President Kamala Harris at a presidential campaign rally on July 30, 2024 at the Georgia State University Convocation Center. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)

As the dust settles after an unprecedented election night, political analysts are attributing major demographic voting shifts, especially among Latino men, to Donald Trump’s presidential victory.

The Associated Press called the race for Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris early Wednesday morning.

Nationally, fewer than half of Latino men voted for Harris, and this election marked a pronounced and historic gender gap between the votes of Latino men and women, according to the NBC News Exit Poll. Preliminary AP Vote Cast findings also hint that younger Black and Hispanic voters shifted right and voted for Trump.



Emory University political science professor Andra Gillespie also tells WABE’s “Morning Edition” that underlying misogyny and racism impacted Harris’ loss.

“I think the major takeaway last night was that for whatever reason, and I think we’re going to be interrogating for months using academic survey data, the extent to which underlying racism and sexism might have hampered Kamala Harris’ ability to attract votes,” Gillespie said.

“I think Kamala Harris had a heavy hand that was dealt to her when she was cast as the Democratic nominee in this case. She put an impressive campaign together in 100 days.”

Gillespie also says in Georgia, racial polarization was still very prevalent in this election, with Black voters overwhelmingly Democratic, and white voters still voting strongly Republican. Harris lost Georgia by roughly 2 percentage points, but kept most of metro Atlanta blue.

Gillespie joined “Morning Edition” live just hours after the Associated Press called the race.

Lily Oppenheimer contributed to this report.