Election Post-Mortem: The 8% “Magic Number” Holds True Again

Trump wins men by 10% as well as the popular vote

While I’m not shocked that Trump won—many people had it close to 50-50%—I’m surprised at the size of the victory.

I’m also not surprised that Trump won the male vote by a significant margin. According to early exit polls, Trump won the male vote by 10%, and Harris won the female vote by 10%. These numbers are preliminary and I suspect will change a bit in the coming weeks, but they are enough to indicate that the Democrats didn’t get nearly what was needed of either the male or female vote to win.

Here’s the updated graph, with data going back to 1972, in which Democrats have won every election when they are -8% or better among men, and lost every time that number was greater than -8%. I call this the “Magic Number,” and I believe it is always a key to the election, and therefore I have named it “Sutton’s Key.”

The 2024 data is from WaPo, and the earlier data is from exit polls listed here.

According to this early data, Trump won among men in all 7 swing states, and by 10% or more in 6 of them. In Pennsylvania, considered earlier to be the potential “tipping point” state, Harris lost men by 16%. Compared to 2020, you can see how much worse Harris did among men in the 7 swing states. In Nevada, 10 points worse! (Arizona and Nevada are not called as of this writing, but Trump has a clear lead in both.)

Not What I Had Hoped, But What the Data Indicates

I had hoped that the polling from the Washington Monthly Gender Gap Tracker at -8.7% for Dems among men (within the margin of error of -8%), combined with strong female voter support, was perhaps enough for Harris to win. However, that wasn’t the case. The gap was actually larger among men, and perhaps most surprising of all was that Harris’s support among women was much weaker than projected. Polling data has come under criticism, but regarding the gender gap, it’s all we have. We don’t collect hard numbers on exactly how many men and women voted for which candidate, just polling data with various methodologies.

Numbers the Democrats should aim for in terms of overall voting by gender are something close to this: +14% among women, and -4% among men; that would have been a strong victory. For comparison, in 2020 Biden exit polls showed +15% among women and -8% among men (that’s according to Edison; other polls varied somewhat). That was a pretty narrow victory. This year, Harris underperformed compared to those numbers among both men and women.

Implications of the Presidential Voting Gender Gap for Democrats

However you slice it, a major problem for the Democrats was their inability to appeal to male voters. Not just certain subsets of men, but ALL men. As I wrote in my book How Democrats Can Win Back Men and here on my blog, the Democratic Party needs to do a much better job understanding men’s and boys’ issues in order to better appeal to them. This campaign season, they failed to do that on numerous occasions. From the Democratic Party Platform, to the DNC, to the Democratic Party website, messaging to men about their issues has been nonexistent. I heard almost nothing about the longevity gap, the issue with boys and education, or other issues that men and boys are facing.

This is not all Harris’s fault—it’s a systemic issue within the Democratic Party. Remember, President Biden was the candidate until July, and they were both supported by dozens of advisors and consultants.

The Democrats have now lost the White House, Senate, and the Supreme Court; the House of Representatives hangs in the balance. When performance is this bad, it’s time to look at a change in leadership and a fresh approach. The Democratic Party needs to take a step back figure out how it can change course regarding its failure among men in America.

In my book, I’ve published two future scenarios — one in which Democrats appeal to men, and one in which they don’t. In 2024, we see what I call the “Democratic Disconnect” scenario is the path they are heading down as the Harris-Walz ticket has lost. Can Democrats figure it out and adjust course?