It has now became crystal clear that the Democrats are losing their grip on New York. It was evident in the last presidential election.
Donald Trump won a suburban county on Long Island last 5 November — outperforming the Republican Congress member who narrowly lost to a Democratic challenger. He actually made gains with Latino voters in the Bronx. He also picked up significant support in heavily immigrant areas of Queens.
As he obliterated Vice President Kamala Harris throughout the country in a swift and decisive victory, Trump didn’t just overperform in Rust Belt and Sun Belt states. He picked up a significant amount of support in a reliably blue state, and in a metropolis he once described as "a city in decline."
Granted, with 7.9 million of the votes in, Trump lost New York state with 44 percent to Harris’ 56 percent, but that margin marked a 12-point improvement from his losing margin to President Joe Biden four years ago. He even narrowed the gap in New York City, netting 30 percent of the vote, an improvement of 7 points over 2020.
He accomplished that with gains from cities to suburbs, in blue and red neighborhoods, among whites, Asians and Latinos — all with a resonant message disparaging Biden’s handling of the southern border and inflation, as well as far-left Democrats’ past calls to defund police departments.
He was aided by Jewish anger toward his opponents over the war in Gaza, relentless GOP ads warning of Democrats’ handling of transgender issues and the influential New York Post that has supported Trump on its editorial and news pages for years.
"The frustrations of Latino voters, and may I add Asian voters and even perhaps some Black voters, is the Democratic Party’s inability to deliver on bread-and-butter issues," said state Sen. and mayoral candidate Jessica Ramos, a Queens Democrat. "They feel like they work and work and work and it doesn’t really bear fruit. They came to this country to buy a house and provide for their families and well, that’s getting harder every year."
Queens, where Trump was born, saw the second-largest countywide gain for Trump in the state. On election day, the president-elect won 37 percent of the vote compared with 27 percent in 2020 and 22 percent in 2016.
Trump’s gains were even more pronounced in the Bronx, one of the poorest counties in New York and home to a large Latino population. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in the Bronx by 69 points. On 5 November, Harris reduced that lead by 22 points in the Democratic margin — the most dramatic swing of any county in New York.
"People who live paycheck to paycheck are hit hardest by inflation," U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat representing the Bronx, said in comparing his district with more affluent areas that stuck with Harris. "When you are college educated and higher income, you can be concerned with issues like democracy and culture. But when you are struggling to put food on the table, the cost of living is existential."