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Voter demographics

Voter demographic data for 2020 were collected by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, a consortium of ABC News, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and the Associated Press. The voter survey is based on exit polls completed by 15,590 voters in person as well as by phone.

2020 presidential election voter demographics (exit polling)

Demographic subgroup	Biden	Trump	% of total vote
Total vote	51	47	100
Ideology
Liberals	89	10	24
Moderates	64	34	38
Conservatives	14	85	38
Party
Democrats	94	6	37
Republicans	6	94	36
Independents	54	41	26
Gender
Men	45	53	48
Women	57	42	52
Marital status
Married	45	53	56
Unmarried	58	40	44
Gender by marital status
Married men	43	55	30
Married women	48	51	26
Unmarried men	52	45	20
Unmarried women	62	36	23
Race/ethnicity
White	41	58	67
Black	87	12	13
Latino	65	33	13
Asian	63	36	4
Other	55	41	4
Gender by race/ethnicity
White men	38	61	35
White women	44	55	32
Black men	79	19	4
Black women	90	9	8
Latino men	59	36	5
Latina women	69	30	8
Other	58	38	8
Religion
Protestant/Other Christian	39	60	43
Catholic	52	47	25
Jewish	76	22	2
Other religion	68	29	8
None	65	31	22
White evangelical or born-again Christian
Yes	24	76	28
No	62	36	72
Age
18–24 years old	65	31	9
25–29 years old	54	43	7
30–39 years old	51	46	16
40–49 years old	54	44	16
50–64 years old	47	52	30
65 and older	47	52	22
Age by race
White 18–29 years old	44	53	8
White 30–44 years old	41	57	14
White 45–59 years old	38	61	19
White 60 and older	42	57	26
Black 18–29 years old	88	10	3
Black 30–44 years old	78	19	4
Black 45–59 years old	89	10	3
Black 60 and older	92	7	3
Latino 18–29 years old	69	28	4
Latino 30–44 years old	62	35	4
Latino 45–59 years old	68	30	3
Latino 60 and older	58	40	2
Others	59	38	8
Sexual orientation
LGBT	75	23	7
Non-LGBT	51	48	93
First time voter
Yes	64	32	14
No	49	49	86
Education
High school or less	46	54	19
Some college education	51	47	23
Associate degree	47	50	16
Bachelor's degree	51	47	27
Postgraduate degree	62	37	15
Education by race
White college graduates	51	48	32
White no college degree	32	67	35
Non-white college graduates	70	27	10
Non-white no college degree	72	26	24
Education by race/gender
White women with college degrees	54	45	14
White women without college degrees	36	63	17
White men with college degrees	48	51	17
White men without college degrees	28	70	18
Non-White	71	26	33
Income
Under $30,000	54	46	15
$30,000–49,999	56	44	20
$50,000–99,999	56	42	39
$100,000–199,999	41	57	20
Over $200,000	48	48	7
Union households
Yes	56	41	20
No	50	49	80
Military service
Veterans	44	54	15
Non-veterans	53	45	85
Issue regarded as most important
Racial inequality	92	7	20
COVID-19 pandemic	81	16	17
Economy	16	82	35
Crime and safety	27	71	11
Health care	62	37	11
Region
East	58	40	20
Midwest	47	51	23
South	46	53	35
West	57	41	22
Area type
Urban	60	38	29
Suburban	50	48	51
Rural	42	57	19
Family's financial situation today
Better than four years ago	26	72	41
Worse than four years ago	77	20	20
About the same	65	34	39
Abortion should be
Legal in all/most cases	74	24	55
Illegal in all/most cases	23	76	45
Climate change is a serious problem
Yes	69	29	67
No	15	84	30

The Brookings Institution released a report entitled "Exit polls show both familiar and new voting blocs sealed Biden's win" on November 12, 2020. In it, author William H. Frey attributes Obama's 2008 win to young people, people of color, and the college-educated. Frey contends Trump won in 2016 thanks to older White without college degrees. Frey says the same coalitions largely held in 2008 and 2016, although in key battleground states Biden increased his vote among some of the 2016 Trump groups, particularly among White and older Americans. Trump won the white vote in 2016 by 20% but in 2020 by only 16%. The Democratic Party won black voters by 75%, the lowest margin since 1980. Democrats won the Latino vote by 32%, which is the smallest margin since 2004, and they won the Asian American vote by 27%, the lowest figure since 2008. Biden reduced the Republican margin of white men without college educations from 48% to 42%, and the Democrats made a slight improvement of 2% among white, college-educated women. People age 18 to 29 registered a rise in Democratic support between 2016 and 2020, with the Democratic margin of victory among that demographic increasing from 19% to 24%.

Post-election analysis using verified voter data found the Associated Press's Votecast was more accurate than the exit polls.

Voting patterns by ethnicity

Hispanic and Latino voters

Biden won 65% of the Latino vote according to Edison Research, and 63% according to the Associated Press. Voto Latino reported that the Latino vote was crucial to the Biden victory in Arizona. 40% of Latino voters who voted in 2020 did not vote in 2016, and 73% of those Latino voters voted for Biden (438,000 voters). Florida and Texas, which have large Latino populations, were carried by Trump. In Florida, Trump won a majority of Cuban American voters in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The Latino vote was still crucial to enable Biden to carry states such as Nevada. Latino voters were targeted by a major Spanish-language disinformation campaign in the final weeks of the election, with various falsehoods and conspiracy theories being pushed out by WhatsApp and viral social media posts.

Demographic patterns emerged having to do with country of origin and candidate preference. Pre- and post-election surveys showed Biden winning Latinos of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Spanish heritage, while Trump carried Latinos of Cuban heritage. Data from Florida showed Biden holding a narrow edge among South Americans.

Black voters

Biden won 87% of the Black vote, while Trump won 12%. Biden's advantage among Black voters was crucial in the large cities of Pennsylvania and Michigan; the increase in the Democratic vote in Milwaukee County of about 28,000 votes was more than the 20,000-vote lead Biden had in the state of Wisconsin. Almost half Biden's gains in Georgia came from the four largest counties – Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, and Cobb – all in the Atlanta metro area with large Black populations. Trump improved his overall share of the Black vote from 2016 by 4% and doubled the Black vote that Mitt Romney received in 2012.

Asian American and Pacific Island voters

Polls showed that 68% of Asian American and Pacific Island (AAPI) voters supported Biden/Harris, while 28% supported Trump/Pence. Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political science professor at the University of California Riverside and founder of AAPI Data, said Asian Americans supported Biden over Trump by about a 2:1 margin. Korean Americans, Japanese Americans, Indian Americans, and Chinese Americans favored Biden by higher margins overall compared to Vietnamese Americans and Filipino Americans. Many voters were turned off by Trump's language some of which was widely considered racist such as ("China virus" and "kung flu") but, according to Vox reporter Terry Nguyen, many Vietnamese voters (and especially elderly, South Vietnamese migrants who populated coastal centers in the 1970s) appreciated his strong anti-China stance.

Indian American voters

Data from FiveThirtyEight indicated 65% of Indian American voters backed Joe Biden, and 28% supported Donald Trump. Some Indian Americans self-identified with Kamala Harris, but others approved of Donald Trump's support of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a speech given to 50,000 Indian-Americans during his 2019 visit to the US, Modi praised Trump with remarks that were interpreted as an indirect endorsement of his candidacy. Indian right-wing organizations like the Hindu Sena had performed special havans and pujas for Trump's electoral victory.

American Indian and Alaska Native voters

Pre-election voter surveys by Indian Country Today found 68% of American Indian and Alaska Native voters supporting Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In particular, the Navajo Reservation, which spans a large quadrant of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, delivered up to 97% of their votes per precinct to Biden, while overall support for Biden was between 60 and 90% on the Reservation. Biden also posted large turnout among Havasupai, Hopi, and Tohono O'odham peoples, delivering a large win in New Mexico and flipping Arizona.

In Montana, while the state went for Trump overall, Biden won counties overlapping reservations of the Blackfeet, Fort Belknap, Crow and Northern Cheyenne. The same pattern held in South Dakota, with most of the counties overlapping the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, Cheyenne River Sioux, Oglala Sioux, Rosebud Sioux and Crow Creek tribes going for Biden. For example, in Oglala Lakota County, which overlaps with the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Biden won 88% of the vote.

Trump's strongest performance among Native tribes was with the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, where he won a strong majority in Robeson County and flipped Scotland County from Democratic to Republican. Trump had campaigned in Lumberton, in Robeson County, and had promised the Lumbees federal recognition.

Polling accuracy

Although polls generally predicted the Biden victory, the national polls overestimated him by three to four points, and some state polling was even further from the actual result and greater than 2016's error (one or two points). The numbers represented the highest level of error since the 1980 presidential election. This polling overestimation also applied in several Senate races, where the Democrats underperformed by about five points relative to the polls, as well as the House elections, where Republicans gained seats instead of losing as polls predicted. Most pollsters underestimated support for Trump in several key battleground states, including Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, and Wisconsin. The discrepancy between poll predictions and the actual result persisted from the 2016 election despite pollsters' attempts to fix problems with polling in 2016, in which they underestimated the Republican vote in several states. The imprecise polls led to changes in campaigning and fundraising decisions for both Democrats and Republicans.

According to The New York Times, polling misses have been attributed to, among other issues, reduced average response to polling; the relative difficulty to poll certain types of voters; and pandemic-related problems, such as a theory which suggests Democrats were less willing to vote in person on Election Day than Republicans for fear of contracting COVID-19. According to CNN, research presented to the American Association for Public Opinion Research indicated one of the primary problems was an inability by pollsters to include a certain segment of Trump supporters, either due to inaccessibility or lack of participation. New Statesman data journalist Ben Walker pointed to Hispanics as a historically difficult group to poll accurately, leading to pollsters underestimating the level of Trump support within the demographic group. Election analyst Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight argued that the polling error in 2020 was normal by historical standards.

Siena College Research Institute reported that a significant source of polling error was the discounting of partial responses by "mistrustful Trump supporters" who "yelled" at their callers; when someone would "say 'I’m voting for Trump—fuck you,' and then hang up before completing the rest of the survey," it would not be counted as a response. Such "partials" made up "nearly half of Siena’s error rate."<ref>Edelman, Gilad (August 22, 2024). "The Asterisk on Kamala Harris's Poll Numbers". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 29, 2024.</ref