What the polls told us about the 2024 election

CNN
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Election polls cannot predict who will win the presidential election. They are inherently inaccurate. They have the potential for errors.

Still, polls this year have revealed many powerful insights into how voters feel about politics in 2024 — from Americans' widespread pessimism about the political landscape to the deep values ​​divide between supporters of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Typically, polls provide a snapshot of opinions rather than a prediction of how people will behave in the future – whether they will ultimately vote that way or what other decisions they will make. That's particularly true in this election, where polls show no clear front-runner in the presidential race, either nationally or in the septets of swing states that will likely prove crucial to the outcome. And while most polls suggest a close race, a more decisive victory for either candidate remains entirely possible.

“Shifts of a single point can have an impact on the outcome, but cannot be accurately captured by most polls,” Patrick Murray, the Monmouth University poll director, wrote last week.

But throughout the year, polling data has helped capture the contours of the 2024 race, with several results well outside the margin of error. The election is taking place against a fundamentally bleak backdrop: The share of voters who say things are going badly in the U.S. is higher than in any pre-election poll since 2008, and President Joe Biden's approval ratings are consistently and well below that . At the same time, to an unusual degree, the early days of the race were largely a referendum on Trump rather than the incumbent. This dynamic changed somewhat when Biden was replaced on the ballot by Harris, sparking an immediate surge in Democratic motivation.

While issue survey results can sometimes vary across settings, some results have been remarkably robust. Americans continue to largely oppose the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, with opposition in CNN polls consistently topping 60% over the past two years. Other issues reveal deep political divides: In a CNN poll this fall, Trump supporters were 46 percentage points more likely than Harris supporters to believe that growing diversity is a threat to American culture, what with the increasing interdependence of the Trump campaign collapsed from anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Here are more insights from the polls for this year's election:

A Gallup poll released in October found that economic issues are more important to voters than at any time in a presidential election since the Great Recession, with concerns about democracy also ranking high this year.

Of course, deeming an issue important does not necessarily mean voting on that basis alone, but polling on the most important issues gives an idea of ​​which issues and campaign themes resonate most with different parts of the electorate. In particular, the Gallup poll found a strong partisan divide, with no overlap between the top five issues for Republican and Republican-leaning voters and Democrats and Democratic leaners. Among voters aligned with the Republican Party, the most important issues are the economy, immigration, terrorism and national security, crime and taxes. Among Democratic-leaning voters, it's democracy in the United States, Supreme Court justices, abortion, health care and education.

How Trump and Harris supporters differ in their visions for America

The partisan disagreements extend beyond issues beyond priorities.

A Pew Research Center report released this summer cataloged the differences between each candidate's supporters “on issues that have divided Americans for decades, such as the role of guns in society, race and the legacy of slavery.” Harris supporters were more than 50 points more likely than Trump supporters to say that the legacy of slavery continues to have a significant impact on Black people in America today and that “America's openness to people from around the world is critical to who We are a nation.”

Trump supporters were more than 40 points more likely than Harris supporters to believe that gun ownership increases safety and that the country's criminal justice system is not tough enough.

Throughout much of the general election, a polling project called The Breakthrough asked Americans a simple question: What have they seen, heard or read about each candidate recently?

In the final weeks of the campaign, Harris' media appearances and Trump's rallies attracted widespread attention. And while no single issue has proven as dominant during the election as the pandemic in 2020, the words “liar” and “lies” continue to appear prominently in the public discussion surrounding Trump.

The breakthrough results also helped illuminate the tumultuous final days of the Biden campaign, the battle over Harris as the nominee and the way Trump's performance in the September debate helped push false claims about migrants onto the national stage bring to record.

Survey data is a single, incomplete measure of people's opinions – which may not always be morally or even factually correct. Ultimately, though, polling in the U.S. is a way to speak to Americans of different demographics, life experiences, and views about issues that go far beyond elections or even politics. In a highly fragmented society and because social media often only reflects an unrepresentative selection of the loudest voices, it is still a valuable tool for understanding the country as a whole.