This article appeared in USA Today. Read it in full here.
Early Tuesday afternoon, a CEO from a Virginia market research company said Donald Trump would narrowly win the 2024 presidential election if undecided voters in Pennsylvania, Iowa and Georgia continued to lean right.
They did. And so did many other Americans – many who were not registered Republicans, according to Resonate, a predictive consumer and voter intelligence company.
Resonate says it accurately predicted the winner of the 2016 and 2020 elections using its AI-driven, predictive modeling systems. The company’s CEO Byran Gernert said in a video Tuesday that Trump would win this time by as little as two electoral votes.
The 2024 prediction didn’t go against the grain like 2016’s and may have overstated how much the abortion rights might shift the national election toward Democrats. Battleground-state polling had Trump narrowly leading in recent weeks. Even offshore betting odds gave Trump a high probability of winning.
“Regardless of what people were saying was happening, the model really did predict it correctly for the third time,” said Ericka McCoy, chief marketing officer for Resonate.
‘I admit I was wrong’:Allan Lichtman explains why his election prediction failed
Five key points the company had detected in the months leading up to the election:
1. Americans remained concerned about their financial futures
Resonate sampled U.S. consumer attitudes on a bi-weekly basis from the start of the pandemic through September 2024. They found that while the most extreme worries improved, two thirds of Americans remain at least moderately concerned about the economy. They also found two of every five Americans were just getting by or struggling.
“It’s been a theme throughout the Biden administration,” said Daniel Scantlebury, Resonate’s chief data scientist. Americans “have been mostly placing the blame on (Biden) or the administration. That’s the sort of sentiment that he could never fully escape. That might have been what late deciders were carrying with them into the voting booth.”
2. Immigration remained a strong topic for Republicans
Undecided voters were also more likely to lean toward Trump and Republicans on immigration when Vice President Kamala Harris joined the race in July. Harris and Democrats did little to cut into that lead among undecided voters in battleground states during the weeks before Election Day. Of voters who planned to vote for Trump in 2024, 67% considered immigration their top issue, according to Resonate.
3. More Latino voters leaning Republican
Resonate’s process is unlike typical polling that extrapolates the pulse of American voters from a few hundred or thousand responses. The company uses its AI-modeling system to develop insights on about 250 million people. Its data set includes more than 4 trillion bits of information that create detailed, anonymous profiles that underpin their predictions.
From their model, Resonate found that Latino voters were more likely to vote for Trump in 2024 than 2020. Mexican Americans represented the largest block of Latino voters, while Puerto Ricans likely had the largest percentage increase in votes for Trump.
A CNN exit poll of nearly 23,000 Americans found 46% of Latino voters said they voted for Trump. In contrast, 13% of Black voters said they voted for Trump.
4. Fewer Republicans behind Trump’s win
Resonate hasn’t completed its final analysis on the 2024 election, but Americans’ financial difficulties appear to have been a key factor in Trump’s broader reach. Just over half of Trump voters in 2024 likely identified with the Republican party, according to Resonate’s model.
“That kind of data keep just keeps pointing to the fact that people want to see a change because they’re really starting to feel the pinch in their wallet,” McCoy said.
5. Abortion might have been less of a national issue
Resonate saw abortion was a key issue for many voters as they went to the polls. On Monday, their data showed voters in states with full abortion bans were moving left of where they were in 2020. But on Tuesday in the voting booths, the issue doesn’t appear to have moved the national election significantly to the left.
“We were picking up on people who were concerned about access to abortion,” Scantlebury said. “But they managed to compartmentalize access through local initiatives and were still able to support Trump at the top of the ticket.”
