How Did White Women Vote in 2024?
You may remember that Galvanize Action has special expertise not just with ideologically-moderate women, but with ideologically-moderate white women. White women have a disproportionate amount of voting power in America and Galvanize Action’s research shows they tend to be open-minded about key issues.
We know you’re curious about how those women used their civic power at the ballot box in 2024—you’ve been asking all year! Now that all the data is in, let’s take a closer look at how white women voted, how that compares to other voters, and what we know about what influenced the ideologically-moderate white women Galvanize Action focuses on.
HOW WHITE WOMEN VOTED
It’s true that, once again, a majority of white women (51%) voted for Donald Trump.
It’s also true that white women voted for Trump by a smaller margin than they did in 2020. While still leaning Republican, white women supported Trump by 4 points in 2024 (51% to 47%), compared to an 8-point margin in 2020 (53% to 45%). That modest improvement for Democrats was one of the few groups where movement went in their favor.
Take a look at the chart below, which uses recently-released data from the Pew Research Center. You’ll notice that most of the arrows are red and pointing to the right, indicating movement toward Republicans over the last four years. Conversely, we can see that white women—including both white women who hold a college degree and those who do not—moved leftward.
Galvanize Action focused directly on this audience, reaching over 5.5 million moderate white women across eight battleground states with 27 research-informed persuasion ads. Our programming measurably shifted worldview and vote choice, especially by reducing blame on Democrats for inflation: the top issue for this group. We won another Expy award for the research that measured this!
VOTING BEHAVIOR AMONG GALVANIZE ACTION’S AUDIENCE
Now, let’s zoom in just on Galvanize Action’s audience of ideologically-moderate white women. This is taken from our analysis of the recently-released 2024 American National Election Study. Here’s how a sample of our target audience voted:
Among all respondents in this sample of 794, 52% voted for Kamala Harris, 26% for Donald Trump, 2% for another candidate, and 20% did not vote. Most made their decision well in advance of Election Day, but about 28% made their choice in the final two months, suggesting that while most preferences were stable, a meaningful minority remained open to persuasion late in the cycle.
HOW DID OUR AUDIENCE FEEL GOING INTO THE 2024 ELECTION?
We asked our audience how they were feeling about the country prior to the 2024 election. As you can see in the chart below, feelings like worry, irritation, nervousness and fear were widespread, with over three-quarters of respondents describing these emotions as at least ‘somewhat’ true for them. Outrage and anger were also relatively common, pointing to an underlying sense of instability and frustration about the direction of the country. Positive emotions like hope, pride, and happiness were less frequently named. Given the increasingly divisive rhetoric in the current climate, these emotional patterns are likely to continue as we move toward the 2026 midterms.
HOW DOES OUR AUDIENCE FEEL NOW?
We asked a slightly different question in October 2025 while gauging opinions about the upcoming midterm elections:
While we’re not exactly comparing apples to apples here, we can see that words like “worried” are still topping the emotional charts as we head into 2026. Read more in the 2025 Midterm Survey.
WHAT WE LEARNED LAST YEAR
Our audience was swayed by trust-building, culturally resonant content that validated their lived experiences and spoke to fairness, autonomy, and economic security. The RCT results confirm that shifting economic perceptions is possible with consistent, values-forward engagement: Galvanize Action’s specialty!
Re-watch some of our favorite messages from 2024:
