Harris and Trump tied in race for crypto voters, new poll shows

By Chris Matthews

Digital-asset holders are concentrated in swing states

One may get the impression that crypto owners are a predominantly pro-Donald Trump group, given the rousing reception the former president and current Republican presidential nominee received at this year's Bitcoin Conference and the crypto community's enthusiastic advocacy for him online.

But a new poll by Morning Consult, commissioned by the crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), tells a different story.

Crypto voters "are a bipartisan group in terms of political identification and electoral intention, contradicting the media impression of crypto owners indexing highly Republican or Libertarian," Coinbase said in its annual State of Crypto report, released Monday.

The polling included in the report showed crypto voters evenly split in the presidential race, with 47% supporting Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris and the same proportion supporting Trump.

What's more, Morning Consult found that crypto voters are concentrated in swing states that will be critical to either candidate's victory in the November election.

"When we look at ownership by state, around 6.5 million crypto owners live in the 7 battleground states," the report reads. "That's more than 16 times the vote differential combined in these states in the 2020 presidential election."

There's evidence that both campaigns see the crypto vote as a critical swing block - from Trump abandoning his first-term skepticism of bitcoin (BTCUSD) to recent remarks from Kamala Harris that it is important the U.S. remain dominant in "blockchain and other emerging technologies."

In a race that may be determined by just tens of thousands of votes, the candidates are keen to avoid upsetting an interest group if it can be helped. But it remains an open question just how many Americans will vote based on a candidate's stance on digital assets.

A recent survey of 11,400 Americans by the Federal Reserve estimated that only 18 million Americans owned or used crypto in 2023, down from about 28 million in 2021.

And some in the crypto community are skeptical that these Americans will vote based on a candidate's attitude toward digital assets.

"There is no crypto vote," wrote digital-asset lawyer Stephen Palley on X. "The election will turn on a small group of voters in 3 or 4 states, most of whom don't [care] about the SEC, coins, twitter, and so on."

-Chris Matthews

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09-30-24 0815ET

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