One of the most robust studies of the 2024 election shows that President Trump’s return to the White House was powered more heavily by his ability to turn out past supporters than by winning over Democratic voters, even as he built one of the most diverse coalitions in Republican Party history.
The new report, released on Thursday from Pew Research Center, offers some of the most detailed analysis yet of what actually happened last fall, in particular how infrequent voters broke for Mr. Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the end, the math was simple and significant: A larger share of voters who supported Mr. Trump in the 2020 election — 85 percent — showed up to vote for him again in 2024. Ms. Harris earned the support of just 79 percent of former President Joseph R. Biden’s 2020 voters.
The analysis showed that 5 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters flipped to Mr. Trump, while only 3 percent of Mr. Trump’s 2020 voters flipped to Ms. Harris.
But the bigger factor was turnout: 15 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters did not vote at all in 2024, Pew found.
Tony Fabrizio, who was the lead pollster for the Trump campaign, said the new report validated the campaign’s strategic successes.
“We talked about getting Blacks and getting Hispanics and low-propensity voters,” Mr. Fabrizio said in an interview. “Everyone looked at us like we had three heads and we were crazy.”
“This Pew report basically says, ‘Yeah, we did it,’” he added.
Eight months after the presidential election, political observers continue to seek answers about the voting patterns that propelled Mr. Trump to victory in November. The Pew report, along with a similar one released in the spring from the Democratic data firm Catalist, are particularly valuable because they use state voting records to verify who actually voted, ensuring a more accurate understanding of the electorate than exit polling can provide.
Even as the Pew report found how crucial turnout was to Mr. Trump’s victory, it also solidified what pre-election surveys had suggested, that Mr. Trump was able to build a far more diverse Republican coalition than ever before.
The 2024 election accelerated a decline in Hispanic support for Democrats that had signaled warnings for the party for years. The Pew report found that Mr. Trump ran nearly even with Ms. Harris among Hispanic voters. In 2016 and 2020, Democrats held double-digit advantages with the group.
The shift was especially pronounced among Hispanic men. In 2020, Mr. Biden won Hispanic men with 57 percent of the vote; in 2024, Mr. Trump flipped the group, winning with 50 percent of that vote, according to the Pew report.
The result is that roughly 20 percent of the Republican coalition is now nonwhite — nearly twice as much as in 2016. The share of Mr. Trump’s voters who are white dropped to 78 percent in 2024, from 88 percent in 2016.
Republican gains among Black voters, while small, were notable given the group’s historical association with the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump expanded his share with Black voters to 15 percent, up from 8 percent in 2020.
The decline in support from the Asian community for Ms. Harris was sharp, too. She won only 57 percent of Asian voters, down from the 70 percent that Mr. Biden won in 2020.
Mr. Trump, whose campaign was peppered with harsh rhetoric against immigrants, erased Democrats’ advantage with voters who were not born in the United States — across all racial and ethnic backgrounds. In 2020, Democrats had a 21-percentage-point advantage with immigrants who hold U.S. citizenship; in 2024, the group was essentially split.
One of the most persistent narratives during the 2024 election was that young voters were moving toward Mr. Trump. The Pew report reveals that Mr. Trump made gains with the youngest cohort of voters — those born in the 1990s and 2000s, roughly what researchers define as Gen Z — primarily through turnout. Republican young voters showed up for Mr. Trump, while more Democratic young voters stayed home.
Mr. Trump also made gains with voters born in the 1980s — millennials, approximately — although that support came more from vote-switching, according to Pew. Roughly 8 percent of these voters flipped from supporting Mr. Biden in 2020 to supporting Mr. Trump in 2024, giving Mr. Trump a narrow victory with a group that had supported Democratic candidates by 13 percentage points or more.
Men under 50, Pew found, were a particular area of growth for Mr. Trump, whose campaign devoted significant energy to reaching them through podcasts and other nontraditional media. Mr. Biden enjoyed a 10-point advantage with the group in 2020. Mr. Trump narrowly won them in 2024.
Mr. Trump’s edge among noncollege voters widened, too. His 14-point margin was twice what it was in 2016. He similarly grew his support with key corners of the Republican coalition, including rural voters and religious voters.
The Pew report presents a contradiction that highlights the challenging path to victory that Ms. Harris faced.
It found that the former vice president lost, in part, because of decreased Democratic participation. But the report also found that if more people had voted, Mr. Trump still would have won.
That finding shatters a longstanding Democratic truism: that the path to victory is through increased turnout.
Ruth Igielnik is a Times polling editor who conducts polls and analyzes and reports on the results.
Shane Goldmacher is a Times national political correspondent.
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