5 mysteries that might determine the 2024 election

The 2024 election cycle has produced some stunning and sometimes counterintuitive narratives about how demographic subgroups might end up voting. We may just see a historic gulf in the way men and women vote — or not. Polls suggest we’re in for the greatest racial realignment since the Civil Rights Act was passed — or it could be a mirage. Young people might sit out the election because they’re disillusioned and vote for a third party — or they could turn out in record numbers for Kamala Harris. The more diverse Sun Belt states might pave the way for a Donald Trump victory — but the predominantly older and whiter “Blue Wall” states might elect the first Black woman president.

We’ll know soon enough. Though Election Day is mere days away, at least 60 million people have already voted. Battleground states are hitting or exceeding their records for early voting. And with polls of likely voters still showing an evenly tied race, any combination of factors, events, or movements within the electorate could swing the outcome.

To that end, I’ve assembled a handful of questions we at Vox have been tracking for the last year. Their eventual answers could determine who wins the White House.

Will there be late deciders? And what might change their minds?

The story of the closing weeks of the 2024 election has been a scramble for undecided voters, a shrinking number in poll after poll. That share includes two groups: voters who are undecided between either candidate and voters who might have a preference but are undecided about voting at all.

We don’t exactly know who these late deciders are, though. Could they be the same kind of working class and non-college educated (primarily white) voters who boosted Trump to victory in Rust Belt states in 2016 (thus scrambling the polls)? Or are they going to be the scores of new and young (primarily nonwhite) voters who could give Harris an edge in Sun Belt states?

And for all these subgroups — what kind of message or campaign development might get them to vote that hasn’t persuaded them already? Could Harris’s late-in-the-game revival of democracy and Trump’s authoritarian bend resonate with them? Is something like the racist and extreme rhetoric at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally a factor that could make up their minds? Or is something like President Joe Biden’s “garbage” gaffe this week something that could juice more Trump support?

Regardless, these late-deciders will be pivotal. They’ve broken for Trump by massive margins in each of the last two elections he’s been a part of. But things might be different this third time.

Will there be Republican crossover to Harris?

Along those lines, Harris’s fate-of-democracy appeal and juxtaposition of her “to-do” list against Trump’s “enemies” list are the clearest examples of how the Democrat’s campaign has zeroed in on Trump-skeptical Republicans as a key part of preventing a Trump win. But will these registered Republicans cross party lines, or simply repeat as reluctant Trump voters?

Somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of Republican primary voters did not vote for Trump, and even after she dropped out, large shares of these voters opted to vote for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Many of them are women, which explains part of the focus Harris has put on touting Republican endorsers like former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, her father and former vice president Dick Cheney, and scores of former Never-Trump Republican politicians.

Partisanship is one hell of a drug, however. Republicans, even if they dislike Trump personally, routinely stick with their party’s nominee. Harris keeps asking these Trump-wary Republicans to put “country over party.” But if they don’t and Harris’s argument about Trump’s threat to democracy is right, they may have to throw a “country over” party.

Will Arab American voters drift toward Republicans?

The Gaza War, and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, has been one of the defining issues of the last year, including in the electoral realm. Biden’s handling and response drove a significant amount of dissatisfaction from more progressive and left-leaning members of the Democratic coalition, and that antipathy seems to have stuck around, to a lesser degree, toward Harris. That includes a voting group influential in a pivotal swing state: Arab American voters in Michigan.

Polls specifically of Arab Americans suggest that these voters will not turn out for Harris to the same degree that they boosted Democratic candidates in the past: An Arab News-YouGov poll this week found Trump leading Harris among Arab Americans 45 to 43. That’s a stark reversal from 2020, when Biden led Trump by 24 points, and especially 2016, when Hillary Clinton led Trump by 34 points.

But this wasn’t always the case. Before 9/11, Arab American voters leaned Republican. Only after the GOP’s anti-Muslim and anti-Arab turn during the George W. Bush years did this voting segment swing toward Democrats, reaching a high point in 2004. And since that high point, these voters have been trending toward the GOP, with the share supporting John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Trump growing from 2008 to 2012 and into 2020 (support dipped slightly in 2016). The Gaza War may be accelerating a latent rightward shift that was already happening as the GOP changed its foreign policy priorities, championed conservative culture war issues, and talked up economic populism as Democrats became more culturally progressive, including on issues of gender and sexuality.

Will Trump’s gamble on younger Black men pay off?

For much of the last year, the Trump campaign has played up its targeted outreach to a specific segment of the electorate: Black men. With an avalanche of digital advertising aimed at younger Black men, and deployment of surrogates and outside groups to reach young Black voters, the campaign has hoped to exploit two dynamics: Harris’s apparent weakness with Black men, and an overarching vulnerability Democrats have with younger Black Americans.

Traditional polling suggests Harris has been facing a challenge in hitting the same margin of support that past Democratic candidates have enjoyed among Black voters, and specifically Black men. Both social and economic reasons explain this, including former President Barack Obama’s theory that a degree of misogyny is keeping some Black men from supporting a Black woman.

But there is also a larger Democratic weakness, based on surveys finding that younger Black voters specifically may have weaker ties to the party than older cohorts of Black voters, and may be more conservative than their elders. And young Black men appear more likely this year to support Trump, perhaps as a product of that weaker bond.

But this is also among the cohort of voters least likely to vote and which, some polling suggests, is consolidating for Harris as they tune into the election. And with more outright racist remarks and prejudiced speech being deployed by Trump and his supporters in the final weeks of the campaign, it’s not clear that this investment will materialize large enough gains on Election Day to swing races in battleground states.

Will Latino voters shift right in the states that matter?

Whether Latino voters are shifting toward the Republican Party since the start of the Trump years isn’t really contestable. Trump’s gains in 2020 stuck around for Republican candidates during the 2022 midterms, and polls suggest he will, at the very least, hang on to much of the support in a week. But because the election is decided by the Electoral College and not the popular vote, the more interesting question is whether those gains will stick around or grow in the states that matter.

In 2020, much of the political media was captivated by the massive inroads Trump made in South Florida and south Texas, places that had given Democrats an advantage in Latino support for years. But Trump’s Hispanic gains also happened across the country, in primarily immigrant communities, and in both Democratic and Republican strongholds that don’t necessarily impact the results of the Electoral College map.

This year, it appears that states that are already likely to solidly back Trump or Harris might see their Latino populations continue shifting to the right (as is most obvious in Florida), even as Latino voters in swing states like Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, according to polling, buck that trend and move toward Democrats (or at least keep Democratic margins from 2020 intact).

That could result in Trump making larger national inroads among Latinos, but not enough in swing states to boost him in the presidential races that matter. It would make for more evidence of an ongoing racial realignment between parties, but one driven by Hispanic and Latino voters in California, New York, and Texas. That has real implications for control of Congress, but, unless the Latinos switching their party affiliations are in swing states, it won’t affect who wins the White House.