How did voter turnout for Trump in 2024 compare to his 2020 campaign?
Executive summary
Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign benefited from stronger turnout among his 2020 voters and from new or returning voters, a dynamic Pew’s validated-voter study quantifies as 89% of Trump’s 2020 voters casting ballots in 2024 versus 85% of Biden’s 2020 voters [1]. At the same time overall turnout dipped slightly from 66% of the voting-eligible population in 2020 to about 64% in 2024, a change concentrated outside the most competitive states [2].
1. Turnout among prior Trump voters: higher and decisive
Pew’s validated voter research shows a clear advantage for Trump on the basic metric asked here: a larger share of those who voted for Trump in 2020 turned out again in 2024 (89%) than the comparable share of Biden’s 2020 voters (85%), a gap that contributed materially to Trump’s edge in a tightly divided electorate [1] [3]. That retention extended across multiple demographic slices: for example, 86% of Trump’s 2020 Hispanic voters voted in 2024 compared with 77% of Biden’s 2020 Hispanic voters, amplifying Trump’s gains where small percentage moves matter most [1] [4].
2. New and returning voters leaned Republican
Beyond holding his base, Trump’s campaign drew disproportionately from the pool of people who did not vote in 2020 but did in 2024: Pew reports that among those new or returning voters, a majority supported Trump (54%) while 42% supported Harris, meaning differential mobilization of infrequent voters favored the Republican [3]. Catalist and other post-election analyses likewise find that turnout declines were uneven — Republican-leaning eligible voters were more likely to turn out in many places in 2024 — which helped offset Democratic advantages in some high-turnout groups [4] [2].
3. How vote switching compared to turnout effects
Pew emphasizes that vote switching (voters changing parties) was less important than turnout differences: most 2020 Trump voters stayed with him — roughly 85% voted for him again according to one Pew feature — while Biden retained a smaller share of his 2020 voters, in part because more Biden voters dropped out in 2024 [5] [3]. Some defections did occur and mattered in certain groups (e.g., a modest share of Protestants and rural Biden 2020 voters moved toward Trump), but the dominant story in the data is stability plus asymmetric turnout [6].
4. Geography and vote totals: incremental gains, concentrated drops
Nationwide raw-vote changes were not uniform: national totals show Trump increased his raw vote haul over 2020 in many states, and analyses such as Brookings note states where Biden/Harris vote totals fell while Trump’s rose — for example, Trump received about 326,902 more votes in New York in 2024 than in 2020 while Harris received roughly 625,691 fewer votes than Biden did in that state, illustrating that Democratic turnout drops explain part of Republican gains in some places [7]. Catalist’s work finds overall turnout fell to about 64% in 2024 from 66% in 2020, with the decline concentrated in non-competitive states while some battlegrounds actually saw stable or higher turnout [2].
5. Counterpoints and evolving picture
Not every measure points to a permanent realignment: The New York Times/Siena polling after the election suggested some of Trump’s 2024 gains among young, nonwhite and infrequent voters had already softened in subsequent waves, indicating that the coalition that delivered 2024 results may be fragile or reactive to short-term factors [8]. Additionally, methodological differences among exit polls, validated-voter studies and voter-file analyses can produce divergent emphases — Pew’s validated-voter approach highlights turnout retention, Catalist focuses on geographic turnout patterns, and state-level reporting (Brookings) highlights where raw vote totals moved [5] [2] [7].
6. Bottom line: turnout, more than wholesale switching, explains Trump’s improvement
The clearest, evidence-backed answer to the question is that Trump’s 2024 turnout among his 2020 voters was higher than Biden’s retention of his 2020 voters, and that new/returning voters disproportionately favored Trump; together these turnout dynamics, concentrated in certain demographics and states, were a principal engine of Trump’s improved performance from 2020 to 2024 [1] [3] [5]. Where reporting differs, it’s often about whether the cause was turnout, modest defections in key groups, or localized drops in Democratic turnout — but Pew’s central validated-voter findings put turnout advantage front and center [1] [4].