Blueprint 2024 post-election survey - 'Why America Chose Trump' / 'Lost in Translation: Swing Voters' Misperceptions of Harris And Late Turn To Trump' · Nov 6–7, 2024 · US national plus swing-state oversample
Political salienceother
trans issues as a reason not to vote for Harris - paired-choice testing of 25 criticisms
Respondents were shown pairs drawn from 25 distinct criticisms of Kamala Harris and asked which reason seemed more compelling; exact instruction text not published.
Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class
Net score, comparison item: 'Inflation was too high under the Biden-Harris Administration' (ranked 1st)
24%
Net score, comparison item: 'Too many immigrants illegally crossed the border under the Biden-Harris Administration' (ranked 2nd)
23%
Net paired-choice score, 'Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class' (ranked 3rd of 25)
17%
Net score, comparison item: 'The debt rose too much under the Biden-Harris Administration'
13%
Net score, comparison item: 'Kamala Harris would be too similar to Joe Biden'
12%
Net score, comparison item: 'Kamala Harris is too pro-Israel'
-22%
Net score, comparison item: 'Kamala Harris isn't similar enough to Joe Biden'
-24%
Net score, comparison item: 'Kamala Harris is too conservative'
-27%
Wording notes: explicitly pits 'transgender issues' against 'helping the middle class' - a zero-sum construction | attributes a focus to the candidate rather than asking respondents to evaluate a policy | scores are net paired-choice values, not percentages agreeing
double_barreled — The statement bundles two distinct claims (that Harris focused on cultural/transgender issues, and that she neglected the middle class) into one item, so a high score cannot be attributed to either component. It is framed as a criticism to be endorsed, with no counter-statement in the same item. Standard message-testing practice, but it makes the result unusable as a direct measure of trans-issue salience - a caveat pressed publicly by political scientist John Sides at the time.
Subgroup figures (2)
Political salienceparaphrasedother
swing-voter belief that Harris supported taxpayer-funded transition surgery for undocumented immigrants
Battery asking swing voters whether Harris held various positions during the 2024 campaign, used by Blueprint to measure misperception of her platform.
Kamala Harris supports taxpayer funding for transgender surgeries for undocumented immigrants
Wording reconstructed from: Paraphrase as summarized from Blueprint's 'Lost in Translation' memo; the literal item stem and response scale were not published on the accessible release page
Wording notes: measures belief about a candidate's position, not the respondent's own policy view | the position described tracks the central claim of the Trump campaign's 'Kamala is for they/them' advertising
unclear — Without the literal stem it cannot be judged whether the item was framed neutrally or echoed the attack-ad language. The finding is nonetheless central to this sweep because it quantifies uptake of the ad's core claim among the voters who decided the election.
Subgroup figures (1)
