WASHINGTON -- The lead-up to the 2024 election was all about cat owners but, in the end, the dogs had their day.
President-elect Donald Trump won slightly more than half of voters who own either cats or dogs, with a big assist from dog owners, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters. Dog owners were much more likely to support the Republican over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Cat owners were split between the two candidates.
About two-thirds of voters said they own a dog or cat, but pet owners don't usually get much attention from politicians.
"Less cat ladies" briefly became a campaign issue -- and Taylor Swift signed her Instagram endorsement of Harris in September as "Taylor Swift Childless Cat Lady."
Harris did end up decisively winning support from women who owned a cat but not a dog. Still, those voters were a relatively small slice of the electorate, and pet owners as a whole did not seem to hold Vance's remarks against the GOP ticket.
Harris found success with female cat owners
Childless or not, women who only owned a cat were more likely to support Harris than were dog owners or voters who had both pets. About 6 in 10 women who owned a cat but not a dog supported Harris. She did similarly well among women who did not own either kind of pet.
Her success with women who were cat owners didn't translate to men. Trump narrowly won the backing of men who only owned cats; slightly more than half of these voters supported him.
"It's impossible to know how much Vance's comments played into Harris' success," noted one analysis.
More voters are dog owners
If anything, the result suggests Democrats may have some work to do with dog owners. Voters who owned a dog, including those who also had cats, were more likely to support Trump and made up a bigger share of the electorate.
"Trump falsely claimed immigrants in Ohio were stealing and eating dogs and cats," reported an observer on campaign tactics.
The margin for error is estimated at plus or minus 0.4 percentage points for voter surveys overall conducted by NORC at University of Chicago for various media outlets including Fox News and PBS NewsHour.