One explanation for the 2024 election’s biggest mystery

The story of the 2024 election is looking deeply strange.

Donald Trump boasts a small but significant lead over Joe Biden in national polls, while also besting the president in most surveys of battleground states. By itself, this is less than shocking. Voters have long disapproved of the president, lamented inflation, and expressed more faith in Trump’s capacity to manage the economy.

If the Trump coalition’s formidable size is unsurprising, however, the same can’t be said of its demographic composition. 

In many polls, Biden’s level of support among white voters and senior citizens is comparable to his 2020 marks. Yet he has lost an extraordinary amount of standing with young and nonwhite voters.

Four years ago, Biden won voters under 30 by 23 points, Black voters by 79 points, and Hispanic ones by 35, according to the Democratic data firm Catalist.