What the polls told us about the 2024 election

Election polls cannot predict who will win the presidential elections. They are inherently imprecise. They carry the potential for error.

All that being the case, this year’s polls have revealed much that is significant about how voters think about politics in 2024 — from Americans’ broad pessimism about the political landscape to the deep divide in values ​​among supporters Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

As a rule, polls provide a snapshot of opinions, rather than a prediction of how people might act in the future – whether that’s how they’ll ultimately vote or what other decisions they might make. That’s especially true in this election, with polls showing no clear front-runner in the presidential race, either nationally or in the seven swing states that could prove decisive in the outcome. And while most polls suggest a close race, a more decisive victory for either candidate remains within the realm of possibility.

“Shifts of a single point can have consequences for the outcome, but they are beyond the ability of most polls to capture with any precision,” Patrick Murray, poll director at Monmouth University, wrote the last one week.

But throughout the year, polling data has helped sketch the contours of the 2024 race, with several findings falling well outside the margin of error. Elections play against a fundamental gloomy background: Share of voters who they say things are going wrong in the USA is higher than in any pre-election poll since 2008 and President Joe Biden’s approval rating remained constantly and significantly under water. At the same time, to an unusual extent, it was the early days of the race largely a referendum on trump cardrather than the holder. That dynamic changed somewhat when Biden was replaced on the ticket by Harris, firing immediately increasing democratic motivation.

While the results of issue surveys can sometimes vary by framing, some results have been remarkably robust. Americans continue to widely oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to reject Roe vs. Wade, opposition consistently above 60% in the CNN polls in the last two years. Other issues show deep political divisions: In CNN poll this fallTrump supporters were 46 percentage points more likely than Harris supporters to say growing diversity is a threat to American culture, which coincided with the Trump campaign’s growing reliance on anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Here are more poll findings about this year’s election:

Which issues matter to which voters?

Economic issues are more salient to voters than in any presidential election since the Great Recession, a The Gallup poll was released in October it found, with concerns about democracy also scoring high this year.

Thinking an issue is important, of course, doesn’t necessarily imply a vote on that basis alone, but the top polls give a sense of the concerns and campaign themes that resonate most with different parts of the electorate. The Gallup poll, in particular, found a strong partisan divide, with no overlap between the top five issues for Republican and Republican and Democratic and Democratic voters. Among GOP-aligned voters, the top issues are the economy, immigration, terrorism and national security, crime and taxes; among Democratic-aligned voters, they are democracy in the US, Supreme Court justices, abortion, health care, and education.

How Trump and Harris supporters differ in their visions for America

Partisan divisions on issues go further than priorities.

A Pew Research Center report released this summer cataloged the differences between each candidate’s supporters “on issues that have divided Americans for decades, such as the role of guns in society, race and the legacy of slavery.” Harris supporters were more than 50 points more likely than Trump supporters to say that the legacy of slavery continues to have a significant impact on people of color in America today and that “opening America to people around the world is central to what it is us as a nation.”

Trump supporters were more than 40 points more likely than Harris supporters to say that gun ownership makes it safer and that the nation’s criminal justice system is not tough enough.

What campaign news is coming out?

For much of the general election, a survey project called The Breakthroughasked Americans a simple question – what have they seen, heard or read lately about each of the candidates?

In the last weeks of the campaign, Harris’s media appearances and Trump’s rallies have drawn a lot of attention. And while no topic has proven as dominant throughout the election as the 2020 pandemic, the words “liar” and “lies” they consistently featured prominently in the public conversation surrounding Trump.

Breakthrough discoveries also helped the chart the tumultuous final days of Biden’s campaign, the battle to frame Harris as a candidate and how Trump’s September debate performance contributed to the surge fringe false statements about migrants on the national stage.

Polling data is only an imperfect indicator of people’s opinions – which may not always be morally or even factually correct. But U.S. polls, ultimately, are a means of talking to Americans from a wide range of demographics, life experiences, and opinions about topics that stretch far beyond elections or even politics. In a deeply fragmented society and with social media often reflecting an unrepresentative sample of the loudest voices, they are still a valuable tool for understanding the country as a whole.

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