Saturday, October 19, 2024


Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and demographics in the US presidential elections

In the US presidential election in November, roughly 244 million people are eligible to vote. What demographic groups make up the country's voting population? And how have they voted in the past?

Deutsche Welle 
Published 19.10.24


Kamala Harris (left), Donald Trump (right)File picture



In 2024, election day in the United States falls on November 5 — the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Roughly 244 million US citizens over the age of 18 are eligible to cast their votes, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, though some states strip that right from people who have been convicted of felonies.



Will a majority of Black women vote for Kamala Harris in the upcoming US election? (Deutsche Welle)

The US has seen an increase in voter participation in recent years. In 2016, only about 59% of eligible voters cast ballots in the presidential election. In 2020, that number stood at 66% — the highest rate for any national election since 1900, according to the Pew Research Center.

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Democrats or Republicans? On November 5, millions of US voters have a choice to make. (Deutsche Welle)

Race in the US election


Race is a key factor in US electoral politics. And there are large disparities between different races when it comes to how many people show up to vote: In the 2020 election, almost 71% of white voters cast ballots compared to only 58.4% of non-white voters, according to the Brennan Center for Justice law and policy institute. That election saw 62.6% of Black American voters, 53.7% of Latino American voters, and 59.7% of Asian American voters cast ballots.

Over the years, the Brennan Center reports, several states have made registering to vote harder ― specifically, states that were governed by Republicans and that had seen an increase in non-white voter turnout in the years prior.


Traditionally, Black US-Americans are more likely to vote Democrat, and 2020 was no exception: In all, 87% of Black voters cast their ballot for the Democratic Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket. The majority of white voters in the 2020 election, 58%, cast their ballot for Republican Donald Trump and his running mate Mike Pence, while 65% of Latino voters and 61% of Asian American voters cast their ballot for Biden, according to exit polls.


While it's unclear whether these groups will vote for the same party again in this presidential election, we do know that there will be more eligible Black voters in 2024 than there were in 2020. According to the Pew Research Center, their number will stand at an estimated 34.4 million, which is a 7% increase compared to 2020. This also means that a larger part of the US electorate is Black. In 2000, 12.1% of all eligible US voters were Black. In the 2024 election, the Pew Research Center projects that 14% of eligible voters will be Black.


Whether this will be an advantage for Kamala Harris, who was voted the Democratic candidate for president after Biden dropped out of the race, remains to be seen. As mentioned above, turnout among Black voters is lower than among white voters. And the percentage of Black voters casting their ballot for the Democratic candidate has been decreasing slightly since 2012, when Barack Obama last ran. The fact that Harris, who is Black and South Asian-American (her father is Jamaican American, her mother was Indian American; both came to the US as young adults) was on the ticket in 2020 could not reverse that trend. It's unclear as of yet whether it will make a difference this time around, when she is the candidate for president, not just vice president.


Age of US voters


From 2016 to 2020, there was a significant increase in voter turnout among young voters, those aged 18 to 29. In 2016, an estimated 39% of them voted, while in 2020, that number went up to 50%, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University in Massachusetts.


And where do young voters stand on the political spectrum? Exit polls after the 2020 election showed that 60% of all young voters cast their ballot for Biden, and only 36% for Trump. The majority of voters aged 30 to 44 also cast their ballot for Biden, though their majority was a slimmer one at 52%. Trump won the majority of voters (62%) aged 65 and over.


In 2023, 66% of registered US voters aged 18 to 24 said they were Democrat or Democrat-leaning, as did 64% of voters aged 25 to 29. Among voters in their 30s, the majority is slimmer: In all, 55% associated themselves with the Democrats, while 42% said they were Republican or Republican-leaning. Republicans have the largest majority with voters over the age of 80: Fifty-eight percent of them associated themselves with the Republicans and only 39% with the Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center.



Will young Americans be as enthusiastically involved with the 2024 election as these young voters were in the 2018 midterms? (Deutsche Welle)

Female Biden and Trump voters


Since 1980, women have consistently turned out to vote at higher rates than men in presidential elections. In 2020, 68.4% of women who were eligible to vote did so, compared to 65% of men, according to the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University in New Jersey.


CAWP also states that "in every presidential election since 1996, a majority of women have preferred the Democratic candidate."


There are, however, differences when it comes to white women and those of other ethnicities. Since the 2000 election, the majority of white women has voted for the Republican candidate in US presidential elections, whereas a large majority of Black, Latina and Asian women has been voting for the Democratic candidate for the entire time this information has been collected.


In the 2020 election, 57% of women as a whole voted for Biden and 42% for Trump (53% of men voted for Trump and 45% of men for Biden.) Among white women, only 44% voted for Biden in 2020 and 55% for Trump, according to CAWP. The picture is starkly different for Black women. Ninety percent of them voted for Biden in 2020 and only 9% for Trump.


In a poll published in June 2024 researchers for US health charity KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that among female voters, more Biden supporters seemed to be turning away from their candidate than among Trump supporters.


Of women who voted for Biden in 2020, 83% said they'd do the same again in the upcoming election. Seven percent said they'd vote for Trump this time around and 10% said they'd vote for someone else or not at all.



Trump has passionate supporters, many of them women. (Deutsche Welle)

Of women who voted for Trump on the other hand, 92% said they'd vote for him again in the 2024 election, and none said they'd vote for Biden instead. Seven percent said they'd vote for someone else or not at all.


But Biden is, of course, not on the ballot anymore. Whether Harris can win back the female voters whose support Biden lost is one of the big questions that will be answered once November 5 rolls around.


Venture capital is going to war over the election. Here's the data to prove it.

Rob Price and Melia Russell Oct 19, 2024

  
Charles Eshelman/Getty, Taylor Hill/Getty, Stefanie Keenan/Getty, Invision/Getty, Tyler Le/BI

VCs are lobbing cash at the presidential election and key congressional races, FEC data shows.
While most VCs favored Democrats, a16z's crypto giving dwarfed all other donations.
The top individual donor was Greylock partner Reid Hoffman, who pledged support for Kamala Harris.

America is bitterly divided over politics, and the tech industry — once portrayed as a liberal bastion — is no different. Among the sector's investor class, these disputes typically play out behind closed doors, with checkbooks rather than angry social media posts.

This election cycle, investors at the top venture capital firms have plowed tens of millions of dollars into the election, both backing their favored political candidates and just cannily promoting commercial interests.

Business Insider trawled political donation data released by the Federal Elections Commission to see how employees at VC firms have donated by candidates and political entities as the hotly contested race enters its final phase.

The data is limited, focusing only on a subjective grouping of 10 high-profile firms, and cutting off at varying points over the summer. More recent FEC donor data will be released in the days and weeks ahead of the November 5 general election, often the most turbulent time in any cycle.
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The sheer volume of donations captured in the FEC filings underscores the significance of the tech constituency in the political arena, how the Silicon Valley elite has embraced politics of late, and just how flooded by money modern American politics has become.

The big spenders


For venture capitalists, talking politics can invite scrutiny — or worse, turn off founders seeking funds for what might be the next big thing. It's part of the reason why many firms won't take positions on political issues or push a candidate on their employees.

While that hasn't stopped individual investors from voting with their dollars, many VC firms are quick to point out that donations do not represent the organization's political stance.

Except when they do.

Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, is the sole firm in our dataset to make political contributions directly. In this election cycle, it contributed $47 million to groups working to elect blockchain-friendly candidates, including Fairshake, a titanic crypto-industry backed super PAC. The firm is all-in on crypto, investing in Solana and Yuga Labs, and launched a $4.5 billion investment fund focused on this area in 2022.

While the names of the firm's founders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, also appear on filings for donations to these groups, a16z says on its website that these contributions come from the firm, not the founders personally. Though the distinction a16z draws between itself and its founders might be slightly artificial, given Andreessen and Horowitz created, own, and named the firm after themselves.



Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5 million to a pro-Donald Trump super PAC


For all the brouhaha about Andreessen and Horowitz putting millions of dollars behind Trump's latest bid for the White House and Horowitz hedging his bets with a planned donation to Harris, the data shows the two are a rare breed among venture investors: relatively bipartisan donors.

Horowitz sent roughly 59% of his personal political contributions to Republicans and a little under 40% to Democrats, while Andreessen more strongly favored Republicans this election cycle, with 64% of his donations.
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In the time period covered by the data, a16z even eclipsed Greylock, where outgoing partner and Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman has personally pumped nearly $30 million in recorded donations into the presidential election and key congressional races.

Investors at Founders Fund, which has backed SpaceX and Palantir, are nearly 100% Republican in donations, though the bulk of contributions came from Keith Rabois, who left the firm in January to rejoin Khosla Ventures. Employees of venerable firm Kleiner Perkins are the opposite, giving almost entirely to Democratic causes, as is the case for Y Combinator, the colossal startup accelerator.

Like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital is largely bipartisan. Unlike a16z, its biggest donors are largely split on party lines. Michael Moritz, who left the firm midway through last year and continues to serve as an advisor to Sequoia Heritage, its wealth management group, gives to Democrats, while Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire donates to Republicans.
Number-crunching

When a candidate's campaign or other political entity receives political donations, they must report it either quarterly or monthly to the FEC, along with information about the donors, including the donor's employer. The federal agency processes these filings, before releasing them in a searchable format on its website.
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The data analyzed for this story cuts off on August 31 for entities that report donations on a monthly basis (including presidential campaigns, national party committees, and some PACs), while the cut-off for entities that report quarterly (including Congressional committees and some PACs) is June 30. (The filing deadline for Q3 data for quarterly filing entities was October 15, but this data isn't yet readily available in full online.)

Business Insider selected 10 venture capital firms to focus on, taking into account fund size and cultural and industry significance. The list encompasses employees ranging from general partners and firm founders to marketers and executive assistants.

The findings should not be interpreted as an exhaustive accounting of all venture capital investors' donations to date, but as a comparative analysis of how some of the industry's most significant players have approached political giving over the summer as the election heated up.

Business Insider divided the recipients into three categories: Democrat-aligned, Republican-aligned, and unaffiliated — a grouping that includes both bipartisan groups like Fairshake and independents like West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, as well as organizations like The Lincoln Project, run by self-described Republicans but in practice supporting Democratic causes.
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Hoffman vs. Horowitz

Hoffman, the top individual donor, has developed a reputation as tech's Democratic Party standard-bearer. In this election cycle, records show his efforts include $2 million to help fund an unusual write-in effort for President Joe Biden in New Hampshire, and millions to joint fundraising committees for Harris after Biden dropped out. Hoffman also gave $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Nikki Haley, the last major candidate to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination.

Most donors more closely resemble Hoffman than Horowitz: clearly partisan, with an overwhelming majority of their donations going to support one party.

Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures is another of the biggest donors on the Democratic side of the aisle, with more than $3 million in recorded donations during the time period to recipients including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Harris' presidential campaign. Khosla's giving puts him just above John Doerr, chairman of Kleiner Perkins and architect of cleantech investing, though he hasn't managed funds for the firm in a decade.

Sequoia Capital's Doug Leone is one of VC's most prolific GOP-aligned political donors, giving his almost $3.8 million to the National Republican Committee and other causes.


The vehicle of choice for many of these donations is via super PACs, a controversial political fundraising tool that can raise unlimited funds — bypassing FEC limits on donations to candidates and other committees — but cannot directly coordinate with candidates. Asides from Fairshake, some of the biggest super PACs out there favored by VC investors include Future Forward PAC, a tech billionaire-linked Democrat-supporting group, and America PAC, a right-wing entity founded by Elon Musk.

Investors also gave to several joint fundraising committees, which take money for multiple candidates or organizations. They, too, became favored over the years because a joint fundraising committee allows candidates to rake in cash while sharing the costs of fundraising — think website hosting fees, high-end hotels, and catering for splashy Hamptons fundraisers. The most well-loved committees in our dataset were the Harris Victory Fund and Harris Action Fund, the joint fundraising efforts between the Harris campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and state Democratic committees.

Reached for comment by Business Insider, none of the named investment firms agreed to make employees available for interviews about their political giving. Perhaps, from the donors' perspectives, they don't need to: They're already putting their money where their mouth is.

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