Trump surge in blue states added to Democrats' House headwinds

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s strength in solidly blue states was one of the election’s most surprising stories.

According to unofficial results from The Associated Press, Trump came within about 5 percentage points of winning New Jersey — a state that hasn’t backed a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.

In New York, which President Joe Biden won by 23 percentage points in 2020, Trump trailed Vice President Kamala Harris by about 12 percentage points.

Trump lagged about 5 percentage points behind Harris in Virginia, according to unofficial results. That’s a marked improvement over his 2020 performance, when he lost the commonwealth to Biden by a margin twice as big.

The outcome was similar in New Mexico, where Trump was on course to lose by less than 6 percentage points, according to unofficial results. In 2020, he lost New Mexico by more than 10 percentage points.

The 2024 Democratic ticket even underperformed when compared with Biden in Minnesota, the home of the party’s vice presidential nominee, Gov. Tim Walz, and in Harris’ own political base, California.

Trump remains unlikely to win any of these solid-blue states, many of which haven’t backed a GOP presidential candidate since supporting George H.W. Bush nearly 30 years ago.

But with so much attention focused on the Electoral College map’s swing states — the crucial “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, the Southern battlegrounds of North Carolina and Georgia, and the Southwest’s Arizona and Nevada — Trump’s under-the-radar performance in presidential non-battleground states contributed to his popular vote lead.

Alarms go off

And his unexpectedly strong showing in Democratic strongholds has lifted the hopes of blue-state Republicans — and sounded an alarm for Democrats.

“New York is a blue state, but it’s not progressive blue, it’s not woke blue, it’s blue-collar blue, working-class blue,” David Laska, spokesman for the New York State Republican Party, said in an interview Wednesday. “And these are voters who care about inflation, the economy, living, in some cases, living paycheck to paycheck, and their paychecks aren’t buying as much as they used to.”

Laska said the results could signify a larger political reshuffling focused on economic issues that cut across racial, ethnic and gender lines. Trump was able to portray himself as an agent of change who would upset the status quo, a potent message in blue states where Democrats hold most of the political power.

“There’s no question that President Trump has brought about a realignment of working-class voters towards the Republican Party. You see huge numbers for Hispanics as well,” Laska said. “Because if you, if you care about hard work and the American dream and the rule of law, you’re a Republican now.”

In the waning days of the campaign, Trump’s campaign travels took him to several states considered solidly Democratic; he held rallies in Southern California, New York City, New Mexico and southwestern Virginia.

“I’m here today (in) this incredible commonwealth for one very simple reason: because I believe we can win Virginia, and that would be unbelievable,” Trump said during a Nov. 2 swing through Salem, Va.

Democrats point out that no place is a monolith and several of the nation’s most heavily Democratic states, such as Vermont and Massachusetts, have had popular Republican governors.

But a rightward shift has accelerated in the Trump era. The New York Times reports that Harris won New York City by a 37-point margin, a steep drop from Biden’s 53-point margin of victory. In 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Trump by nearly 63 points in the city.

Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, where Harris beat Trump by 2-to-1 in one of her largest margins of victory, lays the blame for Tuesday’s loss on the Democratic Party.

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders said in a statement. “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

But Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from the Bronx, suggested that the progressive wing of the party has alienated working-class voters by embracing “absurdities like ‘Defund the Police’ or ‘From the River to the Sea’ or ‘Latinx,’’’ Torres wrote on X. “The working class is not buying the ivory-towered nonsense that the far left is selling.”

The strategy yielded benefits for Trump in places he wasn’t expected to be competitive, said Bob Hugin, chairman of the Republican Party in New Jersey.

“Democrats have abandoned the lower end of the working-class spectrum. They’re the party of elitists,” Hugin said. “The realignment of the parties is accelerating, and President Trump is helping accelerate that realignment,” particularly among unionized workers.

And yet ...

Trump’s stronger-than-expected numbers in blue states likely provided a boost to some downballot candidates, but it wasn’t enough to lift all of them. For example, despite Trump’s improved performance in New York, Democrats were still able to flip at least two of the state’s GOP-held House seats, those held by Brandon Williams and Marc Molinaro, according to the AP, and were declaring victory in a third race against Anthony D’Esposito, although that race remained uncalled by the AP at press time.

In Virginia’s open 7th District, Democrat Eugene Vindman, a lawyer, Ukrainian refugee and Army veteran who — along with his twin brother, Alexander — was a whistleblower in Trump’s first impeachment trial, claimed victory over fellow Army veteran Derrick Anderson at 11 p.m. Tuesday. The Associated Press had yet to call the race at press time.

Shortly after Vindman delivered his speech Tuesday night, Anderson cautioned against claiming victory. “Over ten thousand votes – including Election Day votes, early votes, & mail-in votes – are yet to be reported,” he posted on X. “This race & the voters deserve more time.”

Democrat Abigail Spanberger flipped the GOP-held seat in 2018, but she’s leaving Congress to run for governor. The race between Vindman and Anderson was hard-fought and expensive, with Vindman raising more than $6.5 million to Anderson’s more than $1.1 million.

And in New Jersey, Republicans weren’t able to flip any Democratic seats or prevent Sen.-elect Andy Kim from cruising to an easy win to fill the open seat vacated by former Sen. Bob Menendez.

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