Some Democrats believe that Kamala Harris would have secured the presidency if it had not been for low voter turnout. Others, like Nancy Pelosi, have blamed Joe Biden for not stepping down sooner. Harris’s running mate Tim Waltz complained that millions of Biden voters stayed home. However, a new study by Pew Research aligns with the findings of a New York Times poll—Harris would have lost either way.
In 2020, 89% of Trump supporters voted compared to 85% of Biden supporters. The following presidential election saw the second-highest voter turnout since 1960 at 64%. However, 26% of eligible voters did not bother to vote in the past three presidential elections. A portion of the people who skipped the 2020 election felt the need to participate in 2024, with 54% of new voters casting a vote for Trump compared to 42% for Harris.
Over that four-year period, Trump retained 85% of his supporters. Harris, on the other hand, only secured 79% of Biden’s voter base from the previous election, and around 15% of those who voted for Biden in 2020 did not bother participating in the next presidential election.
Pew Research asked those who declined to participate in the election how they would have voted, and around 44% said they would have supported Donald Trump compared to 40% who would have backed Kamala Harris. When the same question was posed in 2020, 46% said they would have voted for Biden compared to 35% for Trump. Therefore, if all eligible American voters turned up to the polls, Trump likely would have secured more votes.
Interestingly, immigrants did not immediately back Kamala Harris. Biden beat Trump for the naturalized citizen vote in 2020 by 21 percentage points or 59% to 38%. Naturalized citizens composed 9% of the overall voters in 2024, with 51% backing Harris compared to 47% for Trump.
Record-high inflation under Biden was likely a key reason that Democrats lost a portion of their voter base. Open border policies, rising crime, a fixation on woke ideology, and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic likely also contributed to Trump’s victory. The American public was not happy with the Build Back Better agenda that Biden and Harris were promoting. Bidenomics failed and the majority is in a worse place financially after four years of Democratic leadership. So no, a higher voter turnout would not have helped Kamala enter the Oval Office.
