This Spotlight analysis examines the key factors that determined Americans’ presidential vote choice in the 2024 election, with a particular focus on gauging the importance of the economy in this election cycle. The economy was a theme emphasized by both candidates throughout their campaigns, with then-candidate Donald Trump frequently criticizing the Biden-Harris administration’s record on inflation, making repeated references to rising prices of staple goods like bread and eggs on the campaign trail. The Harris campaign, by contrast, emphasized its plan to provide more economic assistance to first-time homebuyers and tax cuts for new parents, claiming that a Harris administration would be better for building the middle class.
New survey data from PRRI showed that concerns about inflation animated a majority of American voters last fall — though not equally among Trump and Harris voters. PRRI’s 2024 Post-Election Survey asked respondents to what extent they agreed that “Increasing costs of housing and everyday expenses was the most critical issue to my vote this election year.” While most American voters (56%) agreed that increasing costs was the most critical factor in their vote choice, Trump voters (79%) were far more likely to say that this was the most critical issue to their vote, compared with Harris voters (31%).
The importance of the economy to Trump voters was also apparent in our post-election survey when we asked voters to tell us, in their own words, what the “most important factor” was in determining their vote choice for president. PRRI generated word frequency clouds to analyze these responses using NVivo, a qualitative analysis software. The word clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in voters’ responses to this question.
Responses from Trump voters feature “economy” as the most frequently mentioned word. Notably, the term “inflation” also appeared in a significant number of these open-ended responses.[1] The second-most frequently cited word among Trump voters was “immigration;” many Trump voters used the “border” in their responses as well.[2]
While the economy and immigration emerged as the clear motivating factors for Trump voters, the word cloud generated for Harris voters shows very different voting priorities. Namely, the two words used most frequently by Harris voters to explain their vote choices were “Trump” and “democracy.” [3] The words “rights,” “voting,” and “women” also frequently appear in the responses given by Harris voters.[4]
Given Harris voters’ concerns about the state of democracy under a second Trump presidency, it is not surprising that Harris voters express far less confidence in Donald Trump upholding the norms of democracy in a second term. According to PRRI’s post-election survey, seven in ten Harris voters (70%) say they are very confident that Donald Trump will use the power of the federal government to punish his enemies while in office, and just 4% are very confident that Donald Trump will peacefully leave office at the end of his upcoming term. In contrast, Trump voters have much more faith in Trump’s willingness to leave office peacefully after his second term (80%), and just one in ten Trump voters (11%) say they are certain Trump will use the government to seek retribution against his enemies.
With the economy as a highly motivating factor in the 2024 presidential election, Trump’s base appears to have found his arguments about rising costs of staple products convincing and report it as a major motivating factor as to why they voted for him. Concerns over the state of democracy under a Trump presidency were the focus of Harris voters while the state of the economy took somewhat of a backseat. The partisan divide on perceptions of the economy and the importance of inflation to voters is notable and is sure to continue being a subject of study throughout the second Trump term.
[1] There were 619 individual references to the word “economy” among Trump voters and 114 references to the word “inflation.” References to economics and economic were included with “economy” for ease of visualization. Misspellings and translations were included for both economy and immigration to achieve the most accurate reference count.
[2] Among Trump voters, the next highest frequency word was “immigration” with 263 individual references.
[3] Among Harris voters, there were 597 individual references to “Trump” and 373 references to “democracy.” All references to Donald, Donald Trump, Trumps were counted as “Trump” for ease of visualization. The same process was conducted for Kamala, Kamala Harris, and Harriss which were all counted as “Harris.”
[4] There were 296 individual references to “rights,” 258 references to “voting” (which included: vote, voting, and voted), and 154 references to women or women’s.