Associated Press
From the suburbs of New Jersey to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s New York City congressional district to reliably liberal Hawaii, Donald Trump gained ground even as support for Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, dropped off.
AP VoteCast, a far-reaching survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide, found that Trump made substantial gains among Black and Latino men, younger voters, and nonwhite voters without a college degree, compared with his 2020 performance.
Common themes emerged in the AP VoteCast data. Voters were most likely to see the economy and immigration as top issues facing the country. More voters said their family’s financial situation was “falling behind,” compared with 2020. When they voted, Trump supporters were thinking about high prices for gas, groceries and other goods and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Even in Hawaii, dominated by Democrats since the 1950s when labor unions organized sugar and pineapple plantation workers who built the state’s middle class, Republicans had commanding victories.
In West Oahu, for example, where many plantations have given way to suburban development, school teacher Julie Reyes Oda, a Republican, flipped one state House district in the heavily blue-collar, working-class town of Ewa Beach. In the district next door, state Rep. Diamond Garcia held on to a seat he turned Republican two years ago. Democrats still control supermajorities in both chambers, but the GOP’s nine House and three Senate seats are the most the party’s had in the Legislature since 2004.
Economic concerns, including the high cost of housing, may have figured prominently in the thinking of some Hawaii voters. On an island where the median cost of a single-family home tops $1.1 million, many people, including large numbers of Native Hawaiians, have been forced to move to the continental U.S.
In New Jersey, AP VoteCast showed that Trump grew his support among nonwhite suburban voters and younger women, in addition to the demographic swings that showed up nationally. In New York, the survey showed especially large movement toward Trump among nonwhite men without a college education, although a majority of that group still supported Harris, the vice president.
About half of New Jersey voters said Trump would better handle the economy, according to AP VoteCast, while about one-third said this about Harris, giving him a slightly bigger advantage on the issue there compared with national numbers.
Few places better demonstrated Trump’s strength in traditionally blue areas than Passaic County, where Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to carry the county in more than three decades.
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Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
