Donald Trump’s decisive victory last week came as a shock to many. The president-elect looks likely to win the popular vote, having run up totals not only in the swing states but also in deep-blue strongholds. Most surprisingly, the Trump campaign put cracks in Democrats’ dominance of big cities.
In fact, Trump most overperformed in large metro counties, according to analyst Jed Kolko. Compared with his run against Joe Biden, Trump ran 9 points closer to Kamala Harris in such areas—a bigger gain than he saw in suburbs, college towns, or military posts.
It wasn’t just a few cities, either. Trump improved on his 2020 performance in cities as diverse as Chicago, Detroit, and Dallas. He won Miami-Dade County outright. He got the closest margin for a Republican in New York City in 30 years. He won a precinct in lower Manhattan; one south Philadelphia neighborhood voted for him by almost three to one.
These swings are partly a byproduct of the surprising diversity of the Trump coalition, which exit polling suggests may have included a fifth of black men and a majority of Latino men. In New York City, Trump ran up votes not just on Staten Island, but in hyper-diverse Queens and South Brooklyn.
What happened? It’s not, as some might suspect, that the nation turned far right. Rather, it’s that Trump’s campaign understood how to speak to a key constituency: the forgotten middle. These voters want their cities to be safer, their schools to be better, and their culture to be saner. And Trump’s success with them clearly marks a path for repeatable political success in cities nationwide.
www.city-journal.org/article/americas-cities-want-to-be-great-again
All the things the GOP was saying all year and these guys were denying. t.co/C5dgzpPz2B
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) November 14, 2024
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