Editor’s Note: We have the article up on American Renaissance, Unz.com and The Occidental Observer. It definitively shows that Whites are more divided by regional culture than sex.
By Hunter Wallace and Courtney from Alabama
After this last election of 2024, we decided to do a thorough analysis of how Whites of both sexes around the country voted by region. How Whites vote is always a big topic of discussion in right wing circles after every election cycle. There is usually a great deal of talk about how different age groups vote, how both sexes vote, and sometimes even how Whites vote based on their religious denominations. But, oddly, how Whites vote when comparing regions, is seldom discussed. We decided to do a deep dive on this topic, by examining 2024 post election data. We found some interesting trends.
Data Used and Methods
We obtained our 2024 post election data here. We went through and pulled the data for White men as well as for White women for every state (the percentage of each who voted for Trump), then computed the average for each sex for each region. We also did various comparisons of the resulting data, sometimes graphing it or putting it in a table, whether going strictly by state data or regional averages. We used the following regions….Pacific Coast, Interior West, Midwest, Alaska, Northeast, and the South, as shown on the map provided (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Different regions used
We put Alaska by itself because they were too conservative to be grouped with the rest of the Pacific Coast. This is why down below, Alaska will be discussed both as a state and a region. Hawaii data wasn’t included anywhere because it was incomplete in the exit poll data.
Just like how Alaska would be a statistical outlier compared to the rest of the Pacific Coast, and therefore wasn’t included with that group, Virginia is a major outlier compared to the rest of the South, having the lowest percentages who voted for Trump, of the region. We decided it would be more fitting to lump Virginia with the Northeast because it now politically lumps more with that region (Fig. 1).
This isn’t too off base because there was a time when Maryland as well was still culturally part of the South and has now long been more culturally part of the Northeast, overall. This isn’t meant as any disrespect to the numerous Southerners in Maryland and Virginia, or similar people, who still vote red, but unfortunately we had to look at overall percentages. Also, if anyone thinks we may have unfairly tried to boost the South’s overall averages by doing this, it should be noted that by adding Virginia to the Northeast, we actually helped the Northeast, since Virginia had higher percentages than any state already in that region, therefore increasing the averages there. The overall fairness that was used when determining how to divide regions is explained further below in the Discussion section.
Results
Regional averages
We found some very interesting patterns. White women on the Pacific Coast, White women in the Northeast, White men on the Pacific Coast, and White men in the Northeast, voted for Trump in the lowest percentages, in that exact order from lowest to highest. The percentages that voted for Trump were as follows: White women Pacific Coast 40%, White women Northeast 43%, White men Pacific Coast 45%, and White men Northeast 52% (Fig. 2).
Figure 2. Averages of how White men and women voted by region, determined by averaging the state percentages together
Going further from there, White women in Alaska voted for Trump at 53%, then White women in both the Midwest and Interior West each had a percentage of 55%, White men in the Interior West had 61%, White men in the Midwest had 63%, and White men in Alaska had 64%. Finally, the two groups of Whites who voted for Trump in the highest percentages in the country were White women in the South at 70%, and White men in the South at 72% (Fig. 2).
State by state trends
In addition to overall regional patterns, we also found interesting state by state trends. When looking at individual state percentages, the South was the only region that had individual state percentages going into the 80s, in regards to percentages of White men and women who voted for Trump. The Interior West was the only region outside the South that had a state reach 70% or above (Wyoming had 73% for White men and 72% for White women). The Midwest didn’t have any state reach 70% for Whites of either sex. Alaska didn’t reach 70% for either sex either. The Northeast didn’t have any percentages reaching 60% for either sex. And the West Coast didn’t have any reaching 50% (Table 1).
Table 1. This is a list of state by state percentages of White men and women who voted for Trump in descending order and color coded by region to match the map in Figure 1 above.
The group that performed the lowest, when looking at state by state percentages for White men and women, was White women in Vermont who voted for Trump at 30% (White men in Vermont voted for him at 37%) (Table 1). The group who voted for Trump in the highest percentages when looking at state averages were, surprisingly, White women in Alabama and Mississippi who both voted for Trump at 83%. These two states along with Georgia (72%) portrayed the only instances in the country where White women voted for Trump in higher percentages than the White men in their respective states. Why this is is open for speculation. It is interesting that all three states where that happened were Deep South states (Table 1).
Voting gaps between White men and Women within regions and states
When looking at regional average voting gaps between White men and women, the South had the smallest gap at 2%, with both sexes voting overwhelmingly for Trump. The second smallest gap was for the Pacific Coast at 5%, with both sexes voting mostly against Trump. The Interior West had a voting gap of 6%, with both sexes voting mostly for Trump. The Midwest and Northeast had larger voting gaps but were both still under 10%. For the Midwest it was 8% with both sexes voting for Trump mostly, and for the Northeast, it was 9% with White men voting mostly for Trump and White women voting mostly against him. Alaska had the largest voting gap at 11%, but with both sexes voting mostly for Trump (Table 2).
Table 2. Regional averages of state percentages of White men and women who voted for Trump, and the voting gaps of those averages between the sexes
When looking at voting gaps between White men and women within individual states, the Northeast, Midwest, and Alaska had the largest gaps (with the Northeast having the highest frequency). Starting with the lowest gaps within this group of large gaps, Alaska, New Jersey and Nebraska had voting gaps of 11%, with both sexes in Alaska and Nebraska voting mostly for Trump. In New Jersey White men voted mostly for Trump and White women voted mostly against him. Delaware had a voting gap of 13% with White men voting mostly for Trump and White women voting mostly against him (this type of split in directions between the sexes appears to be the most common in the Northeast) (Table 1).
New York and Illinois both had voting gaps of 14% where, again, White men voted mostly for Trump while White women voted mostly against him. Connecticut had a voting gap of 18%, once again showing the same split, while, finally, Rhode Island had a gap of 19%, again showing the very same parting of ways between sexes (Table 1).
None of the states in the South, Pacific Coast, or Interior West had any voting gaps in any states that were over 10%. In fact, most states in these regions had gaps under 10%. As specified before, in the South and Interior West, both White men and women tended to break for Trump in just about every state, with the exception of the two Interior West states of New Mexico and Colorado. In New Mexico, White men and women split in opposite directions, as was seen in several Northeastern states and just a few Midwestern states. In Colorado, both White men and women voted mostly against Trump (Table 1).
Finally, the Pacific Coast was the third region just mentioned above, where both White men and women had all state voting gaps under or at 10%. In this case, all three states in the region had both White men and women mostly voting against Trump. As a final note, while we are on this topic, the South (and Alaska) were the only regions where there were absolutely no examples of either sex in any state mostly voting against Trump (Table 1).
Voting gaps between regions
The voting gaps between regions was much larger than the sex gaps between averages for White men and women within regions. For example, there was a 20% point difference between how White men in the South voted vs White men in the Northeast. But there is only a 2% gap between White Southern males and females, and a 9% gap between White males in the Northeast and White females in the same region (Table 2).
That is just one example of course. Other than comparing them to White men in the Northeast, Southern White males also voted 32% higher for Trump than Pacific Coast White females, 29% higher than White females in the Northeast, 27% higher than White males on the Pacific Coast, 19% higher than White females in Alaska, 17% higher than White females in the Interior West and Midwest, 11% points higher than White males in the Interior West, 9% higher than Midwestern White males, and finally, 8% higher than White males in Alaska. The group that is closest to Southern White males, as mentioned before, is Southern White females with only a difference of 2% (Table 2).
White women in the South also voted for Trump in higher percentages than everyone other than Southern White males. They voted for Trump 30% higher than Pacific Coast White females, 27% higher than Northeast White females, 25% higher than Pacific Coast White males, 18% higher than Northeast White males, 17% higher than Alaska White females, 15% higher than Midwest and Interior West White females, 9% higher than Interior West White males, 7% higher than Midwest White males, and 6% higher than Alaska White males. As mentioned previously, Southern White males were the only group who voted higher by 2% (Table 2).
There is no need to go through every region here, comparing how both sexes from within voted to both sexes from other regions, like we just got done doing with the South. The regional averages have been provided above within the writing and are also displayed in different ways in different figures and tables. Going through every possible comparison between regions would become tedious and beside the point. We feel that by only comparing how the two groups who voted for Trump in the highest percentages in the country, (Southern White males and females), and going down the line comparing them to both sexes from regions that are the furthest from them percentage wise to the nearest percentage wise, that that should give the reader a good summary of how different regions stack up and compare.
Discussion
The biggest takeaway we take from this study is that how Whites vote is determined more by region than by sex. It doesn’t make sense to spend so much time in our circles, talking about sex voting gaps after every election if we aren’t breaking it down by region. Southern White women voted for Trump in higher percentages than anyone else other than Southern White men. Midwestern, Interior West, and Alaska White women voted for Trump in higher percentages than both White men and women in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast. Whites in each region of both sexes cluster together when looking at state by state percentages, much more so than Whites as a whole nationwide would cluster if divided simply based on sex alone when looking at those same percentages.
When looking at the overall sex gaps within regions discussed above from Table 2, the highest sex gap is only 11% in Alaska while the largest voting gap between regions (which would be comparing White Southern men to White Pacific Coast women), is as high as 32%! It simply doesn’t make sense to spend so much time after every election contemplating why White women as a whole nationwide vote for the Republican candidate 5 to 10% less than White men nationwide do, when we have regional differences that are up to above 30%. Our country is far more divided regionally than it is by sex when observing how Whites vote (Fig. 2 and Table 2).
Now to go back and give an analysis of why different regions have the sex voting gaps that they do….it isn’t very shocking that the South has the smallest voting gap between White men and women with both sexes being almost equally conservative when looking at voting patterns. The Pacific Coast has the next smallest voting gap which isn’t shocking either, considering that the data shows both sexes to be almost equally liberal when looking at voting patterns. It also isn’t surprising that in the Midwest and Interior West both sexes lean mostly towards Trump but with a larger voting gap than is seen in the South. Going further, as expected, the Northeast has an even larger voting gap than the previous regions mentioned, with White men leaning to Trump and White women leaning in the opposite direction. Why Alaska comes out on top with the largest voting gap is a bit shocking but could just be a fluke. In any case, both sexes there leaned mostly to Trump.
A case could be made that after each election, perhaps White women in the Northeast should be blamed the most for why a nationwide voting gap between White men and women exists to the extent that it does. The Northeast is the only region where not only was there a larger voting gap between the sexes, but where we also saw White men voting mostly for Trump (even though it was slight) whereas White women voted mostly against him. As noted before, the Northeast also had the largest voting gaps when looking within states as well as opposed to just the region overall.
When looking at gaps between regions, another takeaway from our research is that there is no getting around the fact that Whites in the South are the most conservative when compared to Whites elsewhere in the country. People in right wing circles often come up with excuses for this that seem irrelevant. It has been often said that the Northeast and Upper Midwest (as opposed to the Midwest as a whole) have purple and blue states, while the South is solidly red, simply because the former has more large cities than the South does. This may have been a good explanation 50 years ago but not today. The South now has just as many large cities as any other region, in some ways more so, and the South now is the region with the most people in it. It is also still pretty normal in different areas around the South to have cities where most of the Whites vote red within them. So the city explanation isn’t sufficient.
Another excuse that is brought up from time to time in our circles is that so many blacks left the South and moved to Northern cities, corrupting Northern voting patterns in the process. This argument doesn’t explain the full picture either because, as the data in this article has demonstrated, even when comparing only how White people voted in the Midwest and Northeast, to how White people in the South voted, the South still voted for Trump in higher percentages (in many cases it was by much higher percentages, especially when looking at individual state comparisons between the South and those two regions). All this aside, it is no longer true that more blacks live up North than in the South, with many blacks migrating back South in recent decades. And why are the Southern states with the largest black populations still somehow among the reddest states in the country?
Another argument that has been made is that White transplants moving South have made the South redder than it would be otherwise. If this were the case, then why, in the above data, do the Southern states that are notorious for having the most transplants (Texas, Florida, and North Carolina) have the lowest percentages of Whites voting for Trump in the region, whereas states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, which are notorious for having among the least amount of transplants, have the highest percentages voting for Trump, not just in the South, but in the country as a whole? There is obviously a far deeper explanation here for why the South as a whole votes redder than the rest of the country…and perhaps it is an explanation too many people are afraid to approach honestly.
We think the reason is largely for cultural reasons. The South is the most evangelical Protestant region of the country, and evangelical Protestants, after every election, vote for the Republican candidate in the highest percentages compared to all other denominations. That was the case not only in 2024, but typically in any past election. Even perhaps more controversial, the South has the largest percentage of White people of Founding Stock heritage. For good or bad, the South, for this reason, tends to be the most patriotic part of the country. In our circles, this is often viewed as a bad thing, and it can be, but it can also be an honorable thing as well. In any case, there should be an understanding of why Southerners might have a love for America, even if it is sometimes a blind love, more than Whites in other regions may, and how this might contribute to voting patterns.
To expand on the religious angle a little more, in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections, White evangelical Protestants voted Republican by a 61, 64 and 69 point margin while White Catholics voted Republican by a 33, 20 and 15 point margin. In those three elections, religiously unaffiliated voters swung Democrat by a 41, 53 and 45 point margin. Self identified atheists supported Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a 76 point margin in the 2020 election. Religious differences between Whites are much more salient and politically decisive than the gap between the sexes. Half of Republicans are Protestants. White evangelical Protestants are 33% of Republican voters and the base of the Republican Party. Secular Americans are 45% of the Democratic Party and make up the Democratic base. 62% of irreligious Americans considered themselves “very liberal” while only 11% considered themselves “very conservative” in 2024 (Appendix).
Kamala Harris won Vermont in the 2024 election by a 32 point margin. Trump defeated Kamala Harris in West Virginia by a 42 point margin in the 2024 election. Religiously unaffiliated voters are 41% in Vermont while White evangelical Protestants are 36% of voters in West Virginia. Blue states are states which are largely Catholic and irreligious while red states are states which are Protestant. Swings among White Catholics in the Rust Belt battleground states have been decisive in national elections in the Trump era (Appendix).
This pattern can be seen in the states outside the South that Trump lost which have sizeable populations of White evangelical Protestants. In Virginia and Colorado, 83% and 72% of White evangelical Protestants, respectively, voted for Trump, while 74% and 67% of irreligious Whites voted for Harris. In Washington and Oregon, 66% and 79% of White evangelical Protestants, respectively, voted for Trump, while 73% of irreligious Whites in both states voted for Harris. The relative size of the White evangelical Protestant population and the religiously unaffiliated populations explain regional differences (Appendix).
In defense of the Western states (and a further explanation on how we divided the regions)
There was a time when the Western states, even including California, were more conservative, and much of their population was descended from Southerners who ventured West to become cowboys. These states have, over the years, received Whites from bluer states, skewing the data that was displayed in this article. If it weren’t for this long term migration, it could be argued that the Western regions, or at least a large part of them, could have had percentages similar to the South when examining Whites who voted for Trump. Let’s hope the South doesn’t one day suffer the same fate as the West, due to long term internal migration.
Colorado is a state in the Interior West that is a leftist anomaly for the region. It is an example of a state that has been overrun with blue state transplants over the years, vastly transforming its politics. In Colorado 49% of White men voted for Trump, and 41% of White women. These percentages are the lowest for any state in that region. New Mexico had the second lowest percentages in the region with 52% for White men and 46% for White women. The reason this state’s percentages are lower could have something to do with Hispanics who aren’t really White being counted as White. If both of these states were removed from the Interior West data, the Interior West averages would be 65% for White men and 59% for White women, putting them closer to the South than any other region would be, when looking at either sex (Table 1).
So it could be asked how we determined what an anomaly or outlier state would be for each of these regions. Other than the Interior West, which we will touch on again in a minute, all regions had spreads under 25% when comparing the lowest to highest state percentages within each sex. Alaska is usually considered separate from the Pacific Coast anyways, but if Virginia had been kept in the South data, it would have given the region a higher spread of 25% or above for both sexes.
But unlike Virginia and Alaska, it would become tedious for us to remove Colorado and New Mexico from the Interior West, because geographically it wouldn’t make sense, even though those two states unfairly give the region a spread at or above 25%. Would we just make Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona its own separate region even though the percentages of Utah and Arizona fall more in line with the rest of the Interior West in regards to Whites of both sexes who voted for Trump? And it wouldn’t make sense to put Colorado and New Mexico by themselves. So we left them in the Interior West, but to be fair to the region, we wanted to make sure we mentioned in our analysis what the regional averages would be had those two states been omitted (Table 1).
Neither the Northeast or Midwest really had state outliers in that regard. But there were differences between sub regions within those regions. In the Northeast, the state percentages tend to get lower the closer you get to New England and higher the closer you get to the Mid Atlantic region. Maryland and New Hampshire were the exceptions to these trends with Maryland percentages fitting in more with New England and New Hampshire percentages fitting in more with the Mid Atlantic percentages. The reasons for this could warrant a future article perhaps (Table 1).
In the Midwest, the Lower Midwest as well as the western parts of the Midwest, tended to have the higher percentages, compared to the Upper Midwest. Illinois was an exception, obviously fitting in more with the Upper Midwest as opposed to the Lower Midwest. Iowa is another exception, fitting in more with the Lower Midwest than Upper Midwest. The reasons the Lower Midwest and western parts of the Midwest have the higher percentages voting for Trump is more than likely because they overlap with the South and Interior West regions. Just like with the Interior West, many Southerners settled in the Lower Midwest. Again, this could be sufficient material for a separate article (Table 1).
Lastly, it could be asked why we should even rely on exit polls in the first place. It is true that exit polls can shift a point or two for particular states in the future when examining one sex or the other, or both. But the overall regional differences discovered and presented in this article can’t be just some coincidence.
Conclusion
Whites are far more divided politically based on region than based on sex. Southern White men have more in common politically with Southern White women than they do with White men in other regions. Regional differences are largely a religious headcount, with the South being the most religious and most politically conservative part of the country. Other regions overlap with the South politically to the extent that they share heritage with the South as in parts of the Midwest and Interior West and maybe Alaska.
New England and the West Coast are the most irreligious parts of the country and had among the lowest percentages voting for Trump for Whites of both sexes. The South is the most Protestant region of the country having the highest percentages. White evangelical Protestants are concentrated in the South. This is why the South is solidly Republican in spite of its racial diversity. Vermont and West Virginia are two of the whitest states in the country, but couldn’t be more different in terms of their religious and cultural makeup which cleanly separate their politics. It would make more sense after every election for people in our circles to examine these vast regional and cultural differences between Whites far more than overall sex differences when it comes to voting.
Appendix
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