US presidential election results: Harris 2024 performed worse than Biden 2020 almost everywhere

Kamala Harris and Joe Biden

TOI correspondent from Washington: Although this is not always true, providers of presidential election trivia say that the taller of the two presidential candidates is usually the winner. Nevertheless, the victory of the 1.90 meter tall Donald Trump over the 1.75 meter tall Kamala Harris was overwhelming, thanks in part to a disappointing performance by the vice president, who could not even match the stature of outgoing President Joe Biden The Democratic nomination was ceded to her just 14 weeks ago.
During a torturous Tuesday night for Democrats, it became clear that Harris was lagging in county after county, state after state, polling well below Biden's 2020 margins of victory, even as Trump increased his vote count in rural areas. Harris once claimed that although she was 5'10″ tall, she had 5'10″ heels. Well, it fell three percent behind Biden's result in more than 1,000 counties across the country – sometimes even more.
Full coverage – Trump vs. Harris for US President
Nowhere has the national strain on Harris been felt more keenly than in New York City, a reliable Democratic stronghold. Although Harris won the state and its 29 electoral votes by a significant margin of 12 percent, her margin was halved compared to the 23 percent lead that Biden won over Trump in 2020. In Manhattan, the most liberal of the city's five boroughs, Biden won 86-12 in 2020, Kamala Harris's margin of victory was 63-35.
This was repeated in many cities and states. In New Jersey, Biden's 16-point victory in 2020 was reduced to a 5-point victory for Harris. In Virginia, south of Washington DC, a state Biden won by 10 points in 2020, Harris won by just 5 points. While the victories still allowed Harris to win all the electoral votes in New York and New Jersey in a winner-take-all system, it also allowed Trump to win the statewide popular vote.
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At the time of writing, Trump had received more than 71 million votes (51 percent of votes cast), compared to 66 million for Harris. Biden polled more than 80 million votes in 2020, leading to Trump's accusation that there was a lot of voter fraud, that such a count was impossible and therefore the election was stolen from him.
Harris' poor performance hurt her most in the battleground states. In Pennsylvania, for example, she was expected to erase Trump's expected lead in the state's 50-plus rural counties by winning over 85 percent of the vote in suburban and urban centers like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, populous Democratic strongholds. Instead, she received less than 80 percent of the vote in urban areas, less than Biden. Black and Hispanic male voters went for Trump in large numbers, ostensibly for economic, cultural and gender reasons. At the same time, Trump increased his white rural vote.
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This momentum cost Harris the battleground states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Minority male voters in the suburbs and urban centers did not vote for Harris as much as they did for Biden, while rural white male voters in those states voted for Trump in larger numbers.
In doing so, they effectively refuted Trump's history as a convicted felon, twice impeached as president, and a convicted rapist. Instead, they embraced his promise to restore America's greatness and stop the flow of illegal immigrants. Even urban voters seemed fed up with the government's generosity to immigrants in so-called sanctuary cities on top of inflation.
Also read: Trump vs. Harris – who won which state?
Early on election day, a Kamala voter announced on social media: “This morning I walked into a polling station at 7:45 a.m. and voted for a Black and Indian woman (with a Jewish husband from Jersey) to be the 47th President of the United States .” America. I am my ancestor's wildest dream.
It will remain a dream.