Rebuilding the Coalition
Catalist’s 2024 Report Shows Us What Happened and the Challenge Ahead
2024 had all the makings of a political earthquake: costs rising too quickly, a candidate swap at the top of the ticket, an assassination attempt, and a pandemic still lingering in people’s lives. But Catalist’s post-election report points to something more fundamental: beneath all the chaos, millions of voters moved right, driven by cost-of-living frustrations and lost trust in Joe Biden.
On the surface, the numbers looked steady. Turnout hit 64% (just shy of 2020’s record) and even topped it in states like Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin. But dig deeper, and the story changes. Thirty million 2020 voters stayed home. Twenty-six million new voters showed up. And for the first time in Catalist’s dataset, those new voters didn’t give Democrats a majority; support dipped under 50%.
The Base May Be Eroding
It wasn’t just new voters. Harris and Walz kept most of Biden’s 2020 coalition, but not at full strength. Young voters, voters of color, men, and people in cities all pulled back. The biggest losses came from people who don’t vote every time.
Young men of color were a particular pain point: support from young Black men fell 10 points; from young Latino men, it collapsed by 16 points, dropping below half. Black voters overall still backed Democrats overwhelmingly, but their margin shrank, meaning tens of thousands of votes in key swing states.
Lately, there’s been some research to suggest that this shift may not represent a deep enthusiasm for Trump so much as disillusionment with both parties. A recent Bulwark focus group of Latino Trump voters found that many now regret their 2024 vote, frustrated by his handling of the economy and immigration, and disturbed by what they described as “bullying” and “dictatorship” behavior in his administration. At the same time, few said they would have switched their vote in 2024.
Polling reinforces the trend: Trump’s approval rating among young Latino voters overall fell 10 points between May and September, and his favorability among Latino men dropped by five. While Democrats have clearly lost ground with young men of color, there may be openings for both parties to reconnect with disillusioned voters before 2026.
Gender and Age Gaps Widened
Women’s support for Democrats held steady. Men’s support went down. Harris lost six points with male voters, widening the partisan gender gap to 13 points, and the gap showed up across race and education.
Voters under 30 also shifted right. Biden carried them with 61% in 2020; Harris won just 55%. Catalist warns that formative political years stick; if Democrats continue to lose these voters, they may not come back.
Cities Aren’t the Safe Havens They Were
Urban voters, long a bedrock of Democratic strength, drifted right by five points nationally. The biggest drops came in cities outside the battleground states. Even in places where Democrats still won, they won by less. In New York City, there was a huge 14% net swing toward Republicans.
Why the Shift?
Catalist’s data echoes what came up in youth focus groups in Michigan and Georgia, and in interviews with Latino voters in Nevada and Arizona:
Costs: Rent and housing prices, groceries, and gas topped nearly every list.
Trust: Worries about Biden’s age, his health, and whether he understood their struggles.
Disconnect: Many couldn’t connect their support for popular policies (abortion rights, affordable health care, etc) to the Democratic ticket.
The New Reality
The report is blunt: reliable voters skew Democratic. Irregular voters (who are disproportionately young, nonwhite, and non-college educated) are up for grabs. And party registration in battlegrounds tells the same story; Democratic registration dropped by 10 points in the run-up to 2024, while “No Party” surged.
Trump’s team was better at activating irregular voters in 2024. The question now is whether Republicans can repeat that in 2026, and whether Democrats can turn drop-offs into regular voters before a brutal Senate map and a shifting electoral college catch up to them.
Because if Catalist’s numbers are right, the future won’t be won by turnout alone. It’ll be won by engagement and persuasion. By figuring out who’s not voting, and why.
You can’t count on coalitions holding together on their own. You have to build them again and again by persuading and mobilizing the right voters.