Analysis: Support for Trump’s Working Class Agenda Surges Among Immigrants

LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 20: New U.S. citizens wave American flags at a naturalization cere
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President Trump’s economic nationalist agenda, centered on the needs of working and middle class Americans, helped surge support for his campaign in the presidential election in immigrant neighborhoods across the United States.

A New York Times analysis of voting patterns in 28,000 precincts, across more than 20 cities, reveals that Trump’s populist-nationalist message brought over huge swaths of immigrants this election compared to the 2016 presidential election.

While the majority of foreign-born voters continue to be a boon to Democrats, Trump ushered in rightward shifts in the electorate in cities like Chicago, Illinois, New York City, New York, Los Angeles, California, and across Florida and Texas.

In 5,700 precincts, where the Hispanic and Asian population is 65 percent or more of the electorate, Trump increased his share of the vote by a 13-point average.

“In general, it suggests that Democrats’ theory of the case — that their electoral problems were all about race rather than class — was incorrect,” Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress told the Times, suggesting that the Democrat Party made a mistake in its insistence to prioritize issues concerning Black Lives Matter while tens of millions of Americans have gone unemployed this year.

(Screenshot via New York Times)

Most declines for Trump in the election, the analysis indicates, came from more affluent white neighborhoods that surround major cities and in Republican precincts. In those Republican precincts, Trump’s margin against Biden was lower than his margin against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

In Miami, Florida, Biden’s margin dropped to just seven percentage points over Trump. In 2016, Clinton beat Trump in the region by 29 percentage points.

Likewise, Trump increased his support in Texas and mostly in immigrant neighborhoods sitting on the U.S.-Mexico border. In precincts where 80 percent of the electorate is Hispanic, Trump was able to pick off about 17 points on average from Democrats.

(Screenshot via New York Times)

Even in liberal strongholds of California and New York City, Trump made significant gains thanks to his surge in support among immigrants. In New York City, for example, Trump doubled his support in precincts where Dominican nationals account for a majority of the neighborhood and more than doubled his support in Hispanic-heavy precincts.

In California, Hispanic and Vietnamese immigrants helped boost Trump. About 87 percent of Los Angeles and Orange County’s Hispanic-majority precincts shifted toward Trump compared to 2016. In precincts dominated by Vietnamese immigrants, Trump increased his support by 42 percent.

(Screenshot via New York Times)

As Breitbart News has noted, election analysis has previously found that Trump’s anti-globalization, pro-police message on the campaign trail this year won over Hispanic Americans.

Though gaining with immigrants, the uptick in support was not enough to override Biden’s margins with foreign-born voters. The nation’s rapidly changing electorate, spurred nearly entirely by immigration, has been a reckoning for Republicans.

The Washington PostNew York Times, the AtlanticAxios, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal have all admitted that rapid demographic changes because of immigration are tilting the nation toward a permanent Democrat dominance.

“The single biggest threat to Republicans’ long-term viability is demographics,” Axios acknowledged last year. “The numbers simply do not lie … there’s not a single demographic megatrend that favors Republicans.”

If legal immigration levels are not reduced, the U.S. will have imported about 15 million new foreign-born voters by 2040. Those 15 million new foreign-born voters include about eight million who will have arrived through chain migration.

In the 2020 election, about one-in-ten U.S. voters were born outside the country. Likewise, Hispanic Americans have outpaced black Americans as the largest voting minority group.

These realities are coming to a head in Georgia where Senators Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA) are facing fierce challenges from Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. Democrat activists are relying on the results of decades-long immigration to Georgia, which has rapidly shifted the state’s electorate toward Democrats, to help them win the runoff election on January 5.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

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