It would have been normal to assume the presidential election would be very close. Polls such as the nationwide New York Times/Siena College poll put Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump neck and neck, not just in the national popular vote, but also in terms of the Electoral College. The election seemed to be a tossup.
Election day seemed like a different story. Trump won the presidency with over 300 electoral votes. He won the national popular vote by over three million votes, and also won all seven swing states. Republicans saw wins overall. They lead a majority in both the House and Senate.
Loudoun County and Leesburg itself saw a shift toward Trump compared to the 2020 election, despite Harris receiving more votes. Compared to the 2020 election year, Trump saw sizable gains. Many counties and districts saw similar trends.
If Harris was going to win, she would ideally have comparable results to Biden’s performance in 2020. Biden won with 306 electoral votes and set records with his popular vote. “Barack Obama earned 69,498,516 votes in the presidential election, the most ever,” CBS News reported in 2020, “Now, Mr. Obama’s former vice president, Joe Biden, has far surpassed that tally, setting a new record with more than 81,284,000 votes.”
Another area of good performance for Biden were battleground states. He only gave up five of the 15 battleground states and one electoral vote from Maine, according to CNN.
In the 2024 election, Harris was unable to win over any battleground states. The battleground states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia all switched from Democrat to Republican in 2024.
In individual counties, Harris also underperformed when compared to Biden in 2020. One example of this is Loudoun County.
Although Harris won Loudoun County, and increasing the number of Democrat-won precincts compared to the 2020 election, the Democrats had nearly 10,000 fewer votes than the prior election while Trump received 10,000 more votes. There was an overall shift toward Trump and the Republicans.
This shift was not unique to Loudoun County. “More than 89 percent of counties in the United States shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election,” The New York Times said, “…Mr. Trump improved on his 2020 margin in 2,793 counties. His margin decreased in only 319 counties.”
Trump’s gains in counties not only included ones that were in support of him in 2020, but also incorporated counties that favored Biden in 2020, along with counties across numerous locations and demographics.
Despite the success of Trump, polls showing Harris and Trump nearly tied weren’t necessarily inaccurate. According to University of California Professor J.D. Warren, high quality polls, such as the New York Times/Siena College Poll, which showed a near tie, still predicted Trump’s 50.2%-48.1% lead within their margin of error which for The New York TImes poll was 2.2%. “Overall, high-quality polls were quite accurate,” Warren said.
Even if polls seem neck and neck, or put one candidate ahead, it’s important to consider the margin of error, the amount that values in a poll are likely to differ by. Along with this, even elections that seem overwhelmingly one sided, may have candidates differ by small percentages like what happened this year. Regardless of who’s predicted to win or how much they are predicted to win by, voting matters and will have an impact.
