From New Jersey to Hawaii, Trump made an impression in surprising places on his path to the White House

TOTOWA, NJ – Murph’s Tavern customers aren’t just toasting Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, but the fact that he carried their northern county of New Jersey, a longtime Democratic stronghold in the shadow of New York City.

To Maria Russo, the woman pouring the drinks, the reasons behind Trump’s victory in the run-up to the election were as clear as the shot glasses lined up on the high tables. As a mother raising two children alone in Passaic County on a bartender’s income, she saw this in light of not only her own situation, but that of those around her.

“Everyone can see what’s going on, you know? The prices of everything. And that I’m a single mother?” she said. “I notice that when I go shopping – just like everyone else.”

Although Trump’s victory again reflected deep political divisions in the United States, he impressed in surprising places. From the New Jersey suburbs to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Trump gained ground in congressional districts from New York City to reliably liberal Hawaii even as support for Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, waned.

AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide, found that Trump made significant gains among Black and Latino men, younger voters and nonwhite voters without a college degree, compared to his 2020 performance.

Common themes emerged in the AP VoteCast data. Voters were most likely to believe that the economy and immigration were the most important issues facing the country. More voters said their family’s financial situation was “falling behind” compared to 2020. As they voted, Trump supporters thought about high prices for gasoline, groceries and other goods and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Even in Hawaii dominated by Democrats since the 1950s, when unions organized sugar and pineapple plantation workers who built the state’s middle class, Republicans won impressive victories.

In West Oahu, for example, where many plantations have given way to suburban development, schoolteacher Julie Reyes Oda, a Republican, has flipped a state House district in the working-class city of Ewa Beach, a blue-collar neighborhood. In the neighboring district, state Rep. Diamond Garcia retained a seat he turned Republican two years ago. Democrats still hold supermajorities in both chambers, but the Republican Party’s nine House of Representatives seats and three Senate seats are the most the party has had in the Legislature since 2004.

Newly elected Republican Sen. Samantha DeCorte said voters in her Waianae district west of Honolulu have long been frustrated by a lack of resources for basic needs like public safety. Residents feel like they have to look over their shoulders when pumping gas, DeCorte said.

“They don’t want to go to the grocery store at night because they have to walk back to their car in the parking lot,” she said.

Economic concerns, including the high cost of housing, may have figured prominently in the thinking of some Hawaii voters. On an island where the average cost of a single-family home is more than $1.1 million, many people, including large numbers of Native Hawaiians, forced to move to the continental US

In New Jersey, AP VoteCast showed Trump growing his support among nonwhite suburban voters and younger women, in addition to demographic swings manifesting nationwide. In New York, the survey found that there was a large movement toward Trump, especially among non-white 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 could do a better job of handling the economy, according to AP VoteCast, while about a third said this about Harris, giving him a slightly larger advantage there compared to national figures.

Few places better demonstrated Trump’s strength in traditionally blue areas than Passaic County, where Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to hold the county in more than three decades.

Interviews with voters and experts show that Trump’s hammering on the economy affected how people voted and whether they stayed home.

“The people who take the subway into Manhattan live in a very different world than the people who live in Manhattan,” says Richard F. Bensel, a political historian at Cornell University. “They live in very different worlds in terms of the pressures they feel, the challenges they feel in life, and they don’t want to be preached to.”

Sebastian Giraldo, an Air Force member stationed in Del Rio, Texas, who was recently home in Queens on leave, said it was a “no brainer” to vote for Trump despite having supported the Democrat. Joe Biden four years ago.

“Just the current trajectory of the United States over the last four years has clearly been downhill,” he said. “I mean, I think it’s been harder for everyone to live. Shopping, buying clothes and gas. Just live.”

Ramon Ramirez-Baez, a 66-year-old writer and community activist in New York’s Queens borough, said he voted for Trump and encouraged others to do so, despite being a registered Democrat who ran for office in the past four presidential elections. the Democrats had voted. and even ran without success for the Legislature as a Democrat.

The Dominican Republic native, who came to Queens more than three decades ago, blamed the Biden administration’s immigration policies for the explosion of prostitution, illegal brothels and unlicensed food carts that have plagued his neighborhood in recent years.

The White House’s position on the war in Gaza has turned away some Muslim voters in key swing states like the Gaza Strip Michiganand it cost them elsewhere too.

Selaedin Maksut, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in New Jersey, said he voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein over Harris even though he supported other Democrats.

“It’s a protest vote,” he said. “We’re not just going to give you our vote.”

In New Jersey, U.S. Rep. Andy Kimwho previously captured a House district claimed by Trump in 2020, carried Passaic County into his winning Senate race. It shows, he said in an interview, that people see local and state issues differently than national issues. He said voters have told him they like his focus on “broken politics.”

“If these are people who distrust government, I guess my message is, look, I’m frustrated too with how things are happening.”

Ocasio-Cortez, like Kim, invited split-ticket voters to discuss on social media how they could support both Trump and her. That resonated across the Hudson River in New Jersey, where John Coiro, a patron at Murph’s and a Trump supporter, said he respected her for asking the question.

Trump’s performance could lead to a reckoning among Democrats in places where they are used to winning regularly.

Ralph Caputo, a former state lawmaker from northern New Jersey, said Trump, unlike Democrats, had ties to different groups of voters. Trump was also sharper, Caputo said, because he had been tested in the primaries, something Harris did not face because of Biden’s late withdrawal from the race in July.

“Gone are the days when you put someone up for election and think he or she is going to win because he or she is participating in a democratic vote,” Caputo said. “They can’t win automatically.”

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Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.