If you’re looking for some encouraging news, I recommend taking a look at Celinda Lake and Mac Heller’s article in the Washington Post on how the electorate has changed since Donald Trump’s 2016 Electoral College victory over Hillary Clinton.

Every year, about 4 million Americans turn 18 and gain the right to vote. In the eight years between the 2016 and 2024 elections, that’s 32 million new eligible voters.

Also every year, 2½ million older Americans die. So in the same eight years, that’s as many as 20 million fewer older voters.

Which means that between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2024 election, the number of Gen Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2010s) voters will have advanced by a net 52 million against older people. That’s about 20 percent of the total 2020 eligible electorate of 258 million Americans.
And unlike previous generations, Gen Z votes. Comparing the four federal elections since 2015 (when the first members of Gen Z turned 18) with the preceding nine (1998 to 2014), average turnout by young voters (defined here as voters under 30) in the Trump and post-Trump years has been 25 percent higher than that of older generations at the same age before Trump — 8 percent higher in presidential years and a whopping 46 percent higher in midterms.

In 2016, Trump pulled the equivalent of drawing an inside straight, winning the election despite losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. Needless to say, he would not have succeeded if the electorate then was like the electorate he will face next year.

On the other hand, he will have advantages he did not enjoy back then. In 2016, he did not have control of the Republican Party apparatus and he barely ran a campaign at all, at least in traditional terms. He didn’t have a massive donor base, and his loyal following was significantly smaller. And despite having served four years in the White House, he’s still the outsider running against the system, which can be a big advantage in some election cycles. It’s possible he’ll do better with some demographic groups than he did in his first effort, too, so it’s not like all the churn in the electorate necessarily works against him.

On the whole though, the trends work against Trump.

While American voters historically have tended somewhat to become more conservative as they age, no one should expect these voting patterns to change drastically. About 48 percent of Gen Z voters identify as a person of color, while the boomers they’re replacing in the electorate are 72 percent White. Gen Z voters are on track to be the most educated group in our history, and the majority of college graduates are now female. Because voting participation correlates positively with education, expect women to speak with a bigger voice in our coming elections. Gen Z voters are much more likely to cite gender fluidity as a value, and they list racism among their greatest concerns. Further, they are the least religious generation in our history. No wonder there’s discussion in some parts of the GOP about raising the voting age to 25, and among some Democrats about lowering it to 16!

Trump famously said he loves the poorly educated after winning the Nevada caucuses in 2016, but that’s also a shrinking demographic. He cleaned up with white evangelicals but, as Robert Jones wrote in Religion News in March, their share of the electorate is falling off a cliff.

As recently as 2006, white evangelical Protestants comprised nearly one-quarter of Americans (23%). By the time of Trump’s rise to power, their numbers had dipped to 16.8%. Today, white evangelical Protestants comprise only 13.6% of Americans.

Jones also made this point:

If we overlay the current ethno-religious composition of our two political parties onto the generational cohort chart, we see a stunning result. In terms of its racial and religious composition, the Democratic Party looks like 20-year-old America, while the Republican Party looks like 80-year-old America.

The 2024 electorate will be younger, better educated, more heavily female, and significantly less religious than the 2016 electorate. And, while President Biden may be a ready target as the figurehead of the status quo, he also will have all the advantages of incumbency, which is something Clinton did not enjoy.

All of these considerations make it clear that Trump will have a steeper hill to climb if he is the Republican nominee. And that’s before we get to his record in office, his overwhelming legal problems and his party’s deeply unpopular positions, including on women’s reproductive freedom and health.