It may seem like a clear story: Donald Trump won the election by winning the most votes. He improved on his totals, adding about 2.5 million more votes than four years ago. But just as consequential to the outcome were Kamala Harris’s losses: She earned about 7 million fewer votes compared with Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s performance in 2020.

Ms. Harris failed to find new voters in three of the seven swing states and in 80 percent of counties across the country, a New York Times analysis shows. In the places where she matched or exceeded Mr. Biden’s vote totals, she failed to match Mr. Trump’s gains.

We can’t yet know how many Biden voters backed Mr. Trump or did not vote at all this cycle. But the decline in support for Ms. Harris in some of the country’s most liberal areas is particularly notable. Compared with Mr. Biden, she lost hundreds of thousands of votes in major cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, and overall earned about 10 percent fewer votes in counties Mr. Biden won four years ago.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, found new voters in most counties, with significant gains in red states like Texas and Florida and also in blue states like New Jersey and New York.

Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, acknowledged that Biden voters who swung toward Mr. Trump played a part in Ms. Harris’s loss, but pointed to low Democratic turnout as the larger factor.

“They just weren’t excited,” Mr. Sabato said of Democratic voters. “They were probably disillusioned by inflation, maybe the border. And they didn’t have the motivation to get up and go out to vote.”

The national rightward shift is a continuation of voting patterns seen in the last two elections. Even in his 2020 defeat, Mr. Trump found new voters across the country. (Both parties earned more votes in 2020 than in 2016.) And although Democrats outperformed expectations in 2022, when some had predicted a “red wave,” they lost many voters who were dissatisfied with rising prices, pandemic-era restrictions and immigration policy.

At the local level, three distinct patterns help illustrate the overall outcome in 2024:

1. Where both candidates gained votes, but Trump gained more.

In hard-fought Georgia, both parties found new voters, but Mr. Trump outperformed Ms. Harris. For example, in Fulton County, which contains most of Atlanta, Ms. Harris gained about 4,500 votes, but Mr. Trump gained more than 7,400.

In addition to his gains in the Atlanta area, Mr. Trump won new voters in every other part of Georgia. He flipped the state back to Republicans after Mr. Biden’s win there in 2020. He similarly outran Ms. Harris where she made gains in Wake County, N.C., Lancaster County, Pa., and Montgomery County, Texas.

2. Where Trump gained a little and Harris lost a little.

In Milwaukee County in swing-state Wisconsin, Ms. Harris lost 1,200 voters compared with Mr. Biden’s total in 2020, while Mr. Trump gained more than 3,500.

Ms. Harris still won the county at large, but her margins there and in other liberal enclaves of Wisconsin were not enough to hold off Mr. Trump’s victories in rural, blue-collar counties that voted Republican in 2016 and 2020.

Democrats’ inability to maintain their vote totals in battleground states was also apparent in the crucial areas around Charlotte, N.C., Flint, Mich., and Scranton, Pa.

3. Where Trump gained a little and Harris lost a lot.

Mr. Trump won Florida’s Miami-Dade County, becoming the first Republican to do so since 1988. But again, Ms. Harris’s loss was just as much of the story as his gain: Mr. Trump won about 70,000 new votes in the county, while she lost nearly 140,000.

Other counties that Mr. Trump flipped had similar vote disparities. In 21 of these 77 counties, Mr. Trump received fewer votes in this election than in 2020, but the Democratic vote drop-off was much steeper. This happened from coast to coast, from Fresno County, Calif., to Pinellas County, Fla.

Joel Benenson, the chief pollster for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, said he thought Democratic turnout was hurt by the party’s lack of a presidential primary. (Mr. Biden dropped out of the race in July.) That process, he said, helps energize core voters who get involved with volunteering, making phone calls and knocking on doors early in the year.

“That was a real challenge for Vice President Harris, who had a short runway and would have benefited from a real primary season,” Mr. Benenson said. “Republicans had a contested primary — even with a former president, they didn’t just hand it to him.”

Mr. Trump was clearly able to harness enthusiasm beyond his base. He made gains across almost all groups ranging in demographics, education and income, including those that traditionally made up the Democratic coalition. Ms. Harris failed to match Mr. Biden among the same groups.

Pre-election polls showed minority voters swinging toward Mr. Trump, and he appeared to make gains with those groups. He picked up votes in majority-Hispanic counties and in Black neighborhoods of major cities, a preliminary analysis of precinct data shows. But he lost votes, as did Ms. Harris, in majority-Black counties, especially those in the South where turnout dropped overall.

Mr. Trump found new voters in more than 30 states, including in the battleground states that were the sites of robust campaigning. His gains were modest in most other places. Ms. Harris was able to improve on Mr. Biden’s performance in only four of the seven battlegrounds and just five states overall.

John McLaughlin, Mr. Trump’s campaign pollster, said the campaign was focused on finding supporters who were not reliable voters and making sure they turned out to the polls. He said that internal polling showed that voters who cast a ballot in 2024 after not voting in 2022 or 2020 supported Mr. Trump, 52 percent to 46 percent.

“The strategy was very much like 2016, to bring out casual voters who thought the country was on the wrong track,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “These voters blamed Biden and Harris and generally had positive approval for Trump.”

The incoming Trump administration has reinvoked chatter about the possibility of the United States purchasing Greenland, an idea floated during the president-elect’s first term in office.

In his first term, Trump tweeted an image of coastal Greenland with an edited, glossy Trump tower building superimposed on the landscape. It was captioned, “I promise not to do this to Greenland!”

In August 2019, President Trump confirmed to reporters that he was interested in purchasing Greenland, an idea that raised both curiosity and debate.

“Denmark essentially owns it,” Trump said. “We’re very good allies with Denmark, we protect Denmark like we protect large portions of the world. So the concept came up and I said, ‘Certainly I’d be.’ Strategically it’s interesting and we’d be interested but we’ll talk to them a little bit. It’s not No. 1 on the burner, I can tell you that.”

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The Wall Street Journal first reported Trump’s interest, citing sources who said he had mentioned the idea with “varying degrees of seriousness.”

The idea was shelved after Joe Biden took office in 2021, but has resurfaced online in the wake of Trump’s victory earlier this month.

Republican Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia posted what appears to be an electoral map featuring Greenland on November 7, with the territory voting GOP. It was captioned, “Project 2029.”

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Since then, a member of parliament in Denmark has pushed back on the idea of the United States purchasing Greenland as an American territory. According to a post from Rasmus Jarlov, the Danish parliament does not intend to offer the territory to anyone, especially the United States. 

“Greenlandic independence requires approval by the Danish parliament[sic] and a change of our constitution,” wrote Jarlov. “I can guarantee you that there is no way we would approve indepence[sic] so that you could buy Greenland. Nice fantasy but forget it.”
 

This is far from the first time that the United States has considered purchasing the strategically beneficial Arctic landmass.

After World War II, President Harry Truman offered Denmark $100 million for it in 1946, but Denmark refused.

The idea actually came up earlier in 1945, when Senator Owen Brewster, R-Maine, called Greenland a “military necessity” supported by American military leaders. 

Houses on the coastline in Nuuk, Greenland. (Marli Miller/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

In 1946, a State Department official noted that the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed the U.S. should aim to purchase the territory. That December, Secretary of State James Byrnes even made an offer directly to Denmark’s Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen, suggesting a sale might be the simplest solution.

American interest in Greenland goes back even further. In 1867, the State Department explored buying both Greenland and Iceland, recognizing their strategic importance.

If Denmark hypothetically agrees to sell Greenland to the United States, it would be the largest expansion of American territory in history, topping 1803’s Louisiana Purchase.

Californians, who have historically supported efforts to raise the minimum wage, were not swayed this time around.

After two weeks of postelection uncertainty, Proposition 32, the initiative to increase the state’s minimum wage to $18 an hour, was defeated by a narrow margin.

The rejection was “a pretty poignant sign of the times in a state like California,” said John Kabateck, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, which had urged voters to vote no. “It is certainly sending a message that Californians across the political spectrum are fed up with higher costs and greater uncertainty on Main Street.”

Proposition 32 was declared defeated after falling just short, with 49.2% voting “yes.” The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday evening.

The outcome was the latest indication of a rightward shift in the reliably blue state, which saw a number of surprising results from the Nov. 5 election. Voters overwhelmingly supported a ballot measure to undo a decade of progressive criminal justice reform, and rejected an initiative that would have banned forced prison labor.

Opponents and economists said that by striking down the proposed minimum-wage increase, voters signaled that they were nervous about businesses raising prices to offset their added labor expenses. The prospect of paying more for consumer goods was especially unappealing after years of high inflation, which has led to a persistent feeling among many people that they’re on shaky financial footing.

“Arguments about the minimum wage are always very emotional,” said Till von Wachter, an economics professor at UCLA. “Economic issues are top of mind right now, and that can lead to a rejection of a higher minimum wage.”

Voters were closely divided on the proposition, which would have raised the minimum wage to $17 an hour immediately for larger employers and to $18 an hour starting in January. Smaller employers with 25 or fewer employees would have been required to do the same but at a slower rate: $17 an hour next year and $18 an hour in 2026.

The initiative received support in counties including Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and all nine that make up the San Francisco Bay Area. Higher-income counties were more likely to have voted yes, according to a Times review of voter results, although Orange and San Diego counties voted no.

California already has one of the highest minimum wages in the country, trailing just the District of Columbia and Washington. The state’s minimum wage has doubled since 2010, most recently increasing to $16 from $15.50 in January.

Many cities — including Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Santa Monica and Pasadena — have even higher minimums. Meanwhile the federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 for 15 years.

As such, voters might have felt that another wage hike was unnecessary, said Chris Thornberg, an economist who founded Beacon Economics, a research and consulting firm in Los Angeles. The outcome was in part a reflection of the overall swing to the right nationwide, he said, and also about a sense of “fairness.”

“As you continue to push the minimum wage up, people are less empathetic,” he said. “The California public is at that point where they think this is just not fair to the rest of us.”

In practice, the effects of raising the minimum wage on inflation and on unemployment are complex and hotly debated.

Supporters of Proposition 32 argued that increasing the minimum wage stimulates the economy, improves the standard of living for lower-income workers and reduces employee turnover. A new standard, they said, was necessary to cope with the state’s exorbitant cost of living.

The campaign estimated that more than 2 million California workers stood to benefit from the measure, which was spearheaded by millionaire investor and anti-poverty activist Joe Sanberg.

“The fight for higher wages and economic dignity for millions of California workers doesn’t end here — we’ll continue until every California worker earns enough to live and thrive,” Sanberg said in a statement Tuesday evening. “While today’s outcome was not what we expected, we are hopeful for the work ahead.”

Opponents said the measure was bad for consumers — and for workers. They worried companies would pass on the extra labor costs to customers through higher product prices, and would try to save money by laying off staff, slashing employee hours and replacing workers with automation.

“It was a very easy call to vote no on it,” said Bill Bender, 70, a restaurant operations consultant from San José. “It’s too much, too fast for the industry to absorb.”

California had a recent real-world case study in raising the minimum wage to consider, which may have factored into voters’ decision-making: In April, the state’s fast-food workers saw their pay jump to a minimum of $20 an hour, an increase established by Assembly Bill 1228.

Many cashiers, line and prep cooks, counter attendants and baristas saw as much as a 25% raise overnight thanks to the new law, which applies to California fast-food workers employed by any chain with more than 60 locations nationwide, and covers corporate-owned and franchised locations.

Even before it kicked in, fast-food giants including Chipotle, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Jack in the Box and Shake Shack warned that they were planning to raise menu prices as a result, leaving customers to eat the cost.

“Fast-food consumers are very frustrated by the price increases that they’re seeing,” said Jot Condie, president and chief executive of the California Restaurant Assn., which opposed Proposition 32. “They were just connecting the dots and saying, ‘This $18-an-hour minimum wage is going to increase prices across the board.’”

A McDonald’s in Azusa. The company warned it would raise prices after California’s fast-food minimum wage hike took effect in April.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Michaela Mendelsohn operates six El Pollo Loco locations in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. She believed that raising the state’s minimum wage would have led to a jump in prices, but said she supported Proposition 32 because it would have narrowed the gap between what she and other fast-food operators are required to pay their employees and what non-fast-food companies pay.

Since the state moved to $20 an hour for fast-food workers, Mendelsohn said transactions at her six stores are down 5% to 8% from a year ago and she has trimmed total labor hours by 8% to 10%.

David Neumark, a UC Irvine economist and national expert on minimum wages and their economic effects, said he was surprised by the outcome and that it was hard to pinpoint a single factor for the measure’s defeat.

His research over the years has shown there’s an economic tradeoff in pushing up the minimum wage: Some lower-income workers benefit from increased pay, but overall jobs are reduced as employers cut back due to higher costs, which hurts the financial well-being of the working poor and those with fewer skills.

Although it’s a commonly accepted theory that a boost in the minimum wage could lead to job loss, von Wachter of UCLA said that isn’t always the case.

“The argument that higher wages lead to lower employment does not have a lot of evidence going for it,” he said. “Instead, in situations where employers have some market power, higher minimum wages can raise employment.”

California voters are heavily Democratic and a high minimum wage generally aligns with left-wing values, but voters on both sides of the aisle didn’t adhere to typical party-line trends when it came to Proposition 32.

Randy Jeffs, a Republican from Irvine, said he didn’t vote for a presidential candidate last week. But he did vote yes on Proposition 32 after calculating that a worker paid at the higher rate would still only make $37,440 a year on a full-time, 40-hour-a-week schedule.

“If prices rise a little to pay for an $18-an-hour minimum wage, so be it,” Jeffs, 70, said. “If the wealth is to be spread about, what better way than to those willing to learn [and] work?”

But in the end, most voters decided that “enough is enough,” Condie said.

“The state’s voters continue to support so-called progressive policies,” he said, “but are drawing the line when it impacts their cost of living or quality of life.”