By Linley Sanders, Humera Lodhi and Annie Ng | AP
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 Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. Cat owners, meanwhile, 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. That is, until this year, when then-vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s old comments about “childless cat ladies” briefly became a campaign issue — and Taylor Swift signed her Instagram endorsement of Harris in September as “Taylor Swift Childless Cat Lady.”