Most Democrat-leaning states
Considering a Republican candidate won the United States presidential election in November 2024, it's easy to assume most Americans identify as Republicans. The data, however, tells a different story. According to Gallup, 28% of Americans considered themselves Democrats in 2024, the same percentage who identified as Republicans. A far greater number (43%) identified as Independents.
When choosing between the two major parties, Gallup's data shows that 45% of Americans lean toward Democratic values. Still, those values look far different from the party's initial tenets when it was created over 175 years ago. America's longest-running political party formally took shape with the founding of the Democratic National Committee in 1848, when early Democrats fought to limit federal government oversight and stood against the abolition of slavery.
Today, the Democratic Party tends to advocate for an active federal government and champions progressive causes like resisting voter suppression and advocating for gun reform and reproductive rights.
An April 2024 analysis from the Pew Research Center showed that certain groups are more inclined to lean Democratic, including Black and Asian Americans, those without a religious affiliation, and those born in the 1990s. Still, the Democratic Party isn't a united front. Opinions differ on issues like the Israel-Palestine conflict, which led to protests throughout the U.S. in 2024.
To see where Democrats are most prominent in the U.S. today, Stacker ranked each state by the percentage of residents who voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, using data from The American Presidency Project. Voting data is as of Dec. 31, 2024. Supplementary data on voting patterns from the past 16 presidential elections is also included but did not impact the ranking.
Though many of the states in the top 25 are in the Northeast or on the West Coast, as one may expect, the list also has a few unexpected outliers. Read on to see where your state ranks.
