5 takeaways on the demographic shifts that powered the Democrats’ midterm victory

The dust has not yet settled from the seismic midterm elections, but the contours of the Democratic triumph are becoming clearer.

Several key demographic groups have moved toward Democrats since President Trump defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris two years ago. In aggregate, these shifts powered a massive repudiation of Trump and the GOP.

As of Wednesday evening, Democrats had won at least 54 Senate seats, while The Hill’s data and polling partner Decision Desk HQ is projecting the party will end up with 261 House seats. This would put the Democrats above their high-water mark of the Obama years, 257.

A more granular look at the election is possible because of two major studies.

One is the “ voter trends ” survey conducted by The New York Times, and the other is the voter poll commissioned by seven other major news organizations and carried out by SSRS. More details are publicly available on the methodology in both instances , which the organizations believe make these surveys more reliable than traditional exit polls.

The data may be refined over time, and these samples by their nature have some degree of imprecision or statistical “noise.” But the statistics are extensive enough to identify some of the most important trends.

Hispanic voters shifted sharply away from the GOP

Trump and his allies had taken pride in his previous showing with Hispanic voters, particularly since they felt it rebutted criticism that the president’s rhetoric on immigration doomed him with this group.

In 2024, the Times voter survey showed Trump winning 44 percent of Latino voters against Harris, while exit polls put him a notch higher at 46 percent. Either way, this represented the best performance of a GOP presidential nominee with Latino voters since at least 2004, when then-President George W. Bush won a second term.

It was a very different story Tuesday. The New York Times survey showed the GOP winning just 30 percent of Hispanic voters, while the SSRS voter poll put the number at 34 percent.

The fall-off will not have been caused by a single factor, and pre-election opinion polling suggested economic dissatisfaction across the whole electorate was a big drag on the GOP.

But it stands to reason that controversial immigration enforcement actions taken during the current administration will have hurt Republicans among Latino voters.

The New York Times reported last month that at least 25 people have been shot at by federal immigration officers during Trump’s second term, with six having been killed.

The SSRS voter poll included a question about public approval of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), though the available data does not break down those responses by race.

The poll showed a striking 50 percent of all voters saying they “strongly disapprove” of ICE’s performance and 94 percent of that cohort backing the Democrats.

Men moved against the GOP even more than women

The general shape of the gender divide in American politics has long been that women are more likely to vote Democratic and men more likely to vote Republican.

In 2024, in the Times voter survey, women backed Harris by 10 points over Trump while men favored him by 15 points.

The overall electorate moved sharply toward the Democrats on Tuesday but, strikingly, the shift was somewhat more pronounced among men than women.

Men overall actually broke for the Democrats, albeit by a modest 3 points in the Times survey and 2 points in SSRS. Still, the Times data indicated an 18-point swing toward Democrats among men, whereas the equivalent shift among women was just 13 points.

Interestingly, the pattern seemed to hold across racial groups. In the Times’s data, white men moved 15 points toward Democrats, against 11 points for their female counterparts, while non-white men shifted by 23 points and non-white women by only 16 points.

It could be merely that the GOP had more ground to lose with men, as it is otherwise difficult to deduce exactly which issues would have caused male support to erode to a greater extent than among women.

Young people shift strongly back to Democrats

Two years ago, when Trump won reelection, his performance among young voters caused delight among conservatives and made liberals fret.

Trump won 43 or 44 percent of voters under the age of 30, depending on the survey. This was, again, the highest share of the vote for a Republican presidential nominee since at least Bush in 2004.

After the 2024 election, there was a lot of media focus on the movement of young men toward the GOP — a shift that launched numerous think pieces about the influence of the “manosphere” and of podcasters with a particular appeal to young men, most famously Joe Rogan.

But Tuesday’s results suggested the GOP boom with young people is over — at least for now.

In the SSRS poll, the GOP won just 21 percent of voters under the age of 25, and 28 percent of those aged 25-29. The New York Times survey pegged Republican support among voters under 30 at 28 percent.

The Iran war could have had an influence here. Some of the commentators and influencers who are considered important with the younger demographic have been critical of Trump’s decision to join Israel in that conflict. In July, Rogan complained, “This war is not something anybody that’s conservative wanted.”

But dissatisfaction with the economy is surely playing on younger people’s minds too.

One thing is for sure, the purported “vibe shift” among younger voters toward the GOP appears to have been reversed.

GOP’s previous advances with Black voters also stall

It wasn’t only young voters who returned to their traditional pattern of favoring Democrats by big margins.

The SSRS voter poll showed Black voters going for Democrats by an 81-point margin, 90 points to 9 points. The New York Times survey showed a similar pattern, with Democrats prevailing 91-8.

Those statistics indicate a meaningful drop from the 2024 Times survey, which showed 13 percent of Black voters backing Trump — and from the exit polls from the 2022 midterms, which also pointed to 13 percent support for the GOP among African American voters.

Relatedly, significant media coverage of the marquee Senate race in Michigan had focused on whether Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed was struggling with Black voters. In the end, El-Sayed won his race comfortably, suggesting those concerns may have been exaggerated.

GOP shows more resilience among non-college whites

Republicans suffered such a rout Tuesday that they are searching for data that is less bad, in terms of the trends, rather than objectively good.

One example may come in the shape of a core MAGA constituency, white voters without a college education — especially men.

Although there has been some erosion with this bloc, it remains very strongly in the Republican camp.

The SSRS survey suggested white men without a college education went for the GOP on Tuesday by almost 30 points, 63-35. Their female counterparts favored Republicans by 16 points, 57-41.

The publicly available Times data did not break down this group by gender, but it did show non-college white voters continuing to back the GOP by 19 points, 59-40.

This isn’t exactly cause for celebration for Republicans — the Times survey noted this group still swung toward Democrat by 14 points since Trump’s 2024 win. But it does least remain solidly in the red corner overall.