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My own election post-mortem pieces focused less on the question of “why Trump won”, and more on the question of what his victory implies for the Democrats going forward. But the question of why Trump won is an interesting and important one! My friend Dhaaruni Sreenivas had some thoughts on why Trump managed to attract so many Latino and Asian voters this time out. Racial depolarization was one of the most important trends this year, and it pays to think about it carefully — not just in terms of what it implies for future elections, but what it says about how Americans define themselves as a nation.
Dhaaruni is a data scientist who used to work for the Democratic political consultancy Jones Mandel. She has also worked for Representative Suzan DelBene, and volunteered on a number of political campaigns.
Since November 5, there have been many post-mortems written about Kamala Harris losing the presidency in addition to Senate Democrats losing the chamber, and House Democrats failing to regain a majority. While there are some bright spots for Democrats in the results¹, there are also blaring alarm bells for Democrats, most of all the rightward shifts of non-white working class² voters, who have long been the backbone of the Democratic Party.
Generally speaking, individuals and groups change their political affiliation or allegiance due to policy disagreements or values dissonance, and both of these factors encompass prioritization. For instance, there are many former Republicans who are now voting Democrat because they disagree with their party’s shift towards immigration restrictionism or just take major issue with Donald Trump’s character. However, in the case of Asian and Hispanic voters, their shift right is about policy disagreements with Democrats AND perceived values dissonance, which means that Democrats will not be able to win them back solely with superficial messaging changes.
To quote Simon van Zuylen-Wood in New York Magazine:
“If Trump’s victory was not in fact a reflection of voter sentiment, it became less important to court or win back his voters. Through the resistance years and into the COVID era, liberal institutions from universities to media organizations to nonprofits cathartically swung left, which bred further denial about what voters cared about and were experiencing. A partial catalog of progressive denialism, listed in no particular order: that alienating left-wing positions or rhetoric were confined to college campuses; that the externalities of pandemic shutdowns, such as grade-school learning loss, were overblown; that the rapid adoption of new gender orthodoxies, especially in settings involving children, was not a popular concern; that the “defund the police” movement would be embraced by communities of color; that inflation was overstated; that the pandemic crime wave was exaggerated; that concerns over urban disorder represented a moral panic; that Latinos would welcome loosened border restrictions. Thanks to these and other issues, the gap continued to widen not just between liberals and conservatives but between the highly educated elite and the moderate rank and file of the Democratic Party.”
In 2016, Hillary Clinton received 37% of white voters and Joe Biden did worse than Clinton with Hispanic voters (in some states, markedly so) but received 41% of white voters, gaining the most with moderate and conservative white men, which is why he ultimately won and she ultimately lost. Kamala Harris’ final tallies with voters are yet to be determined since the final Congressional races in California are still being tabulated, but based on exit polls and current results, the Associated Press has determined that Harris received 43% of white voters, more than Clinton and slightly more than Biden.
However, in addition to losing all seven swing states³ and subsequently the electoral college, Harris also lost the popular vote to Donald Trump, who lost it to Clinton in 2016 despite winning the electoral college. The primary difference between Harris’ losing coalition and Biden’s winning coalition ultimately wasn’t her margin with white voters, or Black voters⁴, it was due to her losing double digits of support with Hispanic voters, both male and female, and to a lesser degree, double digits of support with Asian men, even while improving with Asian women.
While final results for the election have not yet been determined and exit polls aren’t a perfect metric (although they’re generally directionally correct), as Jed Kolko writes in Slow Boring, we have the final vote counts on the county level. Moreover, the American Communities Project, which groups counties based on a variety of factors including income, race/ethnicity, religion etc., confirmed that Trump improved the most in majority Hispanic, Native, and Urban counties. Lastly, we also have access to the vote counts for individual precincts in large cities, many of which are defacto racially segregated, and show clear signs of Asian and Hispanic voters cratering rightwards.
In the following piece, I’ll be focusing on rightward shifts among Asian and Hispanic⁵ voters that were seen in the 2024 election, why the results came about, and where the Democratic Party goes from here.
Why Did Asian Voters Shift Right?
Kamala Harris is the the first Black woman to be on the presidential ticket, but she is also the first Asian-American since her mother, Shamayla Gopalan, is from Chennai, India. However, despite her heritage, Harris received the lowest percentage received by a Democrat in 40 years, losing 7 points of support compared to Joe Biden’s exit polls in 2020. Why did this happen?
According to AAPI Data, a research project by UC Berkeley, Asian American and Pacific Islander voters make up between 3-12% of the electorate in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, all of which Kamala Harris lost. However, these shifts weren’t just witnessed in swing states; they showed up in safe blue states and districts. For instance, Grace Meng won re-election in New York’s 6th Congressional District with 60.3% of the vote, but in the same district, Kamala Harris received 51.8% of the vote, with Meng outrunning Harris by over 8%.
While New York isn’t currently a swing state, the demographics within the state and the city itself that cratered right, including Asian Americans, are indicative of larger nationwide shifts. Trump either won outright or made significant gains in several parts of the New York metro area that are home to large Asian American populations, such as Flushing, Bensonhurst, and Sunset Park, which are predominantly Chinese-American. Parts of the Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens, where 16.2% of the population is South Asian and 7.2% is Indian, also shifted towards Trump despite Harris’ Indian heritage.
However, these trends weren’t just witnessed in NYC. As per the Chicago Board of Elections, the Dallas County Elections Department, the Fort Bend County Elections Administrator, as well as the NYC Election Atlas, Asian majority precincts shifted 15-30 points right.
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Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder of AAPI Data, believes that Trump’s improvement with Asian Americans is due to inflation and the economy, and stated, “He [Trump] succeeded in creating an impression that the economy was doing horribly.” This sentiment is echoed by Trip Yang, a professional Democratic strategist, who said that the perception that the Republican Party is stronger on the economy remains prevalent with Asian American voters.
However, when Asian American voters were explicitly asked why they voted for Republicans, their answers were more divergent.
In the Bay Area, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price were recalled on November 5, due in part to the overwhelming opposition against them from Asian American voters. In the wake of COVID-19, hate crimes against Asian Americans skyrocketed, with volunteer patrols rising up to combat them. Russell Jeong, a professor at San Francisco State University, said, “If you are a victim of crime, and your family is a victim of crime, then that’s probably the most visceral ‘in your face’ election issue to address, because you don’t want your family in danger.” In essence, Asian American voters felt hung out to dry by local governments, and the party in charge of those governments was the Democratic Party.
But, crime isn’t the only issue that is causing Asian Americans to shift right. Many Asian Americans, who prize academic achievement, are angry at the Democratic Party’s opposition to “educational excellence” as Matt Yglesias puts it. While the Biden-Harris administration never endorsed attempts by local and state Democrats to get rid of advanced math classes or gifted programs, national Democrats rarely if ever publicly condemned those initiatives. Moreover, these attempts by local Democrats to crack down on merit-based admissions at magnet schools and make it impossible for public school children in San Francisco public schools to take algebra in the 8th grade, had statewide and national implications.