One in three people of color voted for Trump as GOP makes inroads in historic Democratic strongholds

American voters less divided along racial lines, NBC News Exit Poll finds, as Black, Latino and Asian voters come out for Republican presidential nominee

Donald Trump picked up one in every three votes cast by people of color in the 2024 election, according to an exit poll published late on Tuesday.

The NBC News survey’s finding indicates that the the American electorate has become less politically divided along racial or ethnic lines, with particular groups less likely to behave as unified voting blocs.

This comes despite the former president’s campaign being dogged by a number of racial controversies.

Trump complained that his biracial opponent, Democrat Kamala Harris, “happened to turn Black” in late July, disparaged the Black-majority city of Detroit and, more recently, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe insulted Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” at his Madison Square Garden rally in late October.

Both candidates made strong appeals to minorities during their campaigns, taking part in events intended to reach specific demographics, including town hall interviews with the National Association of Black Journalists and with the Spanish language news network Univision.

Trump, for his part, repeatedly insisted that members of the Black, Jewish and Catholic diasporas would “need their heads examined” if they voted for Harris, who sought to portray her own biography and background as a great American success story.

Comparing the demographic breakdown of votes between 2020 and 2024, Harris continued to dominate the Black vote as Joe Biden did four years earlier, scoring 86 percent of the vote, but lost ground with Latino and Asian voters despite beating Trump in both of those categories.

Sixty-five percent of Latinos voted for Biden in 2020 but 53 percent for Harris this time out, while the 46th president picked up 61 percent of the vote from Asian Americans last time and his deputy scored just 56 percent on Tuesday.

Voters cast their ballots at a polling site in the lobby of the Brooklyn Museum in New York City on November 5 2024 (EPA)

Elsewhere in the NBC Exit Poll, voters said that democracy and the economy were the top two issues of concern this election, with 34 percent of respondents citing the first and 31 percent the latter as their top priority.

Abortion and immigration, the issues that the Democratic and Republican campaigns placed the greatest emphasis on, featured third and fourth with 14 percent and 11 percent respectively.

Just 4 percent of respondents were concerned with foreign policy, despite the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Men and women were in agreement on the importance of democracy while 20 percent of women and eight percent of men said abortion was more important.

The poll also found the national mood broadly pessimistic, with 43 percent of people saying they were “dissatisfied” with the way the country is going and 29 percent declaring themselves “angry.” Just 26 percent declared themselves “satisfied” or “enthusiastic”.

A further 45 percent of respondents said they were financially worse off than they were four years ago when Trump was still in the White House and before the Covid-19 pandemic had begun to take a toll on the economy, driving up the cost of consumer goods.