Tso Waifun, 67, cast an all-Republican ballot on Tuesday. She said crime, inflation and immigration were important to her. She also doesn’t want more undocumented immigrants to come into the city, and believes Trump will deliver on the issues she cares about. Tso voted for the Democratic party in 2020, but has soured on the party since.
“I don’t like whatever the Democratic party is doing,” she said, even though she did not like either choice for President very much.
The immigrant from Hong Kong has been in New York for more than 40 years and is one of many immigrants who seem to have had a change of heart, voting red in this election despite voting blue in 2020.
This election saw a marked shift to the right among voters in some immigrant neighborhoods, especially among Asian and Latino voters in the Bronx and Queens.
The maps below, created by the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center, show this change. On the map to the left side of the line researchers at the center mapped the certified votes from 2020.
The map on the right shows this year’s uncertified vote results with 98 percent of scanners reporting. The change in color is clearly visible when you move from 2020 to 2024. (these numbers reflect the results available at 11pm on election night and combine votes from early voting, absentee ballots that were counted up to Election Day, and Election Day votes).
According to CNN exit polls, Donald J. Trump won support from 12% of Black voters, 45% of Latino voters, and 38% of Asian voters.
“I’m a Republican. But after what [Trump] did, especially to the Asian people, I decided to give Biden a try,” said Wong Fei, 67, a Chinatown resident. “[But] he down-graded our country,” he said. So this year, he went back to Trump.
Source: Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center
Note: The color ranges show the distribution of the 2020 results:
- Lightest blue: Election districts where Biden received 63-85% vote share. In 2020, it was statistically still within a reasonable expectation for Trump to receive approximately 37% of the vote share by election district.
- Darkets blues: Election districts where Biden received 85% or more of the vote share and Trump received less than 15%. (The median vote share by election district for then-President Trump was 15%.)
- Purple: Election districts where Trump received more than 37% of the vote. This exceeded what was statistically likely for him in 2020, even though Biden won many of them. Election districts in this range (Trump 37-55%, equivalent to Biden 45-63%) were considered “GOP-leaning” by the researchers.
- Light and dark red: Election districts where Trump did especially well, receiving more than 55% of the 2020 vote.
