Native American Voting Behavior in the 2024 Presidential Election: 2024 Post-Election Reflection Series

Prior to the 2024 US Presidential Election, APSA’s Diversity and Inclusion Programs Department issued a call for submissions, entitled 2024 APSA Post-Election Reflections, for a PSNow blog series of political science scholars who reflect on key moments, ideas, and challenges faced in the 2024 election. The views expressed in this series are those of the authors and contributors alone and do not represent the views of the APSA.

Native American Voting Behavior in the 2024 Presidential Election

by Ray Foxworth, University of Colorado, Boulder, Alex Zhao, University of California San Diego, Gabriel Sanchez, University of New Mexico, and Leilani DeLude, University of New Mexico

On election night, a topline exit poll by the National Election Pool administered by Edison Research and circulated by numerous news outlets indicated that 65% of Native American voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump. While we know that exit polls have a wide range of limitations when they are used for analysis of sub-groups of the electorate, the Edison exit poll elicited several responses from Native American leaders and organizations who equated this as disinformation on Native American voters. 

The authors of this reflection have been engaged in work to better understand Native American voters and political behavior using survey data. Thus, we weigh in on this discussion by providing an alternative narrative regarding the Native American vote in 2024 than the exit poll which was widely criticized by Native American leaders. This reflection highlights some trends among Native American voters using data from the 2024 American Electorate Voter Poll, conducted by the African American Research Collaborative (AARC) and BSP Research and supported by First Nations Development Institute. The poll was fielded October 18-November 4, 2024, and included a nationally representative sample of Native American voters (n=500, margin of error +/-4.4%) designed to be representative of the Native American electorate. 

We summarize some main findings from the poll specific to Native American voters.

How did Native Americans vote in the 2024 election? 

As reflected in the figure below, in the Presidential race, 57% of Native American voters supported Vice President Harris compared to 39% who voted for former President Trump in the presidential race. Another 4% cast their ballot for another candidate. We also looked at the correlation between county level election results and Native American population size. Counties with higher Native American population sizes were correlated with higher rates of support for Vice President Harris.  

There was a significant gender difference among Native American voters, with a 13% difference between Native American men and women – 63% of Native American women reported voting for Harris relative to 50% among Native American men. There was also a small difference in voting behavior based on age. Native American voters under the age of 40 were more likely to vote for Vice President Harris than those over the age of 40. This variation highlights that Native American voters are not a monolith and exhibit important partisan and demographic differences. 

Native American respondents were also asked to identify the most important issues they want Congress and the President to address. The state of the economy including jobs and inflation were top concerns for Native American voters, like the electorate overall. Among the top federal policy priorities identified, 55% of Native American voters emphasized the cost of living/inflation, as a top priority for Congress and the President to address.

Jobs and the economy more broadly came in second among Native Americans at 31% followed by housing costs/affordability of housing at 29%. The fourth priority among Native American voters was abortion/reproductive health. Abortion was a higher priority among Native American women, with 30% of women identifying reproductive health as a top policy priority compared to 17% of Native American men. Finally, among the top four priorities of Native American respondents, the cost of healthcare was identified by 20% of respondents. 

What are Native American specific issues important to Native American voters?  

One unique aspect of the 2024 American Electorate Voter Poll is that it asked Native American respondents if they consider Native American tribal issues when voting. 78% of Native American voters stated tribal issues mattered when they vote, and this was even more salient for those who live on or near a reservation where 82% of these Native American voters said tribal issues matter in voting decisions.

Respondents who indicated they do consider tribal issues when they vote were asked to identify the issues that were most important to them when they voted. As reflected in the figure below, tribal sovereignty/right to govern (59%) and land rights (58%) are the most salient tribal issues for Native American voters. Other tribal issues important to Native American voters included preserving culture and language (49%), Economic development (40%), the preservation of Native American history ( 31%) and concern for the environment (30%). 

Native American Political Candidates

Native Americans were not only highly influential in the election as voters, but as electorate candidates as well. According to data collected by Advance Native Political Leadership, there was a historic number of Native Americans on ballots across the country—at least 170 Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Native Alaskan candidates ran on ballots in the 2024 election. In total, Advance Native Political Leadership notes roughly 65% of these candidates won their election bids for diverse seats including school district and/or board seats, local or state assembly, council or house races, and more. 

According to Indian Country Today, there were nine political candidates running for congress, 4 of whom were incumbents. Three Native American candidates won their congressional races, all incumbents (Josh Brecheen, Republican, Oklahoma; Tom Cole, Republican, Oklahoma and Sharice Davids, Democrat, Kansas). Mary Peltola, Democrat, Alaska At-large district, who was the first Alaska Native to serve in congress after winning a special election in 2022, did not win reelection. Five other Native American congressional challengers lost their congressional bids (Denis Baker, Democrat, Oklahoma; Sharon Clahchischilliage, Republican New Mexico; Yvette Herrell, Republican New Mexico; and Jonathan Nez, Democrat, Arizona). 

Part of this work has been to intentionally focus on the diversity of the Native American electorate and better understand the issues significant to this group of voters. Moreover, given the unprecedented number of Native candidates vying for-and winning-elected office, we are interested in better understanding the implications of Native representation for Native American people and their communities. With this intentional focus, we hope that the First Americans will not be left out of political discussions in US electoral politics. 

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Raymond Foxworth, Ph.D., is research affiliate at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 

Gabriel R. Sanchez, Ph.D., is a Professor of Political Science and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Endowed Chair in Health Policy at the University of New Mexico. Sanchez is also the Director of the UNM Center for Social Policy and a founding member of the UNM Native American Budget and Policy Institute. Sanchez is also the Director of Research for BSP Research, a national leader in polling and research focused on diverse communities, including the Latino and Native American populations.

Alex Richard Zhao is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the department of political science at the University of California San Diego and a Ford Predoctoral Fellow. He is originally from Tiis Tsoh Sikaad Chapter of the Navajo Nation. His research builds on debates in American and Comparative Politics to examine Indigenous political behavior, economy, and geography. To support Indigenous perspectives in academic work, he often collaborates with Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers alike such as UCSD’s Race and Ethnic Politics Lab, the Office of Navajo Government Development, and the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research. 

Leilani DeLude is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. Leilani is involved with community-based participatory research and is dedicated to understanding how Indigenous relations to land, sovereignty, and Indigenous identity shape political behavior, activism, and policy engagement within Native Hawaiians and broader Indigenous communities.