Donald Trump pulled off a stunning election comeback on Tuesday, reclaiming the White House by flipping Pennsylvania, Georgia, and other key battlegrounds and getting millions more votes nationwide than his rival Kamala Harris.
But the Republican president-elect’s victory was also aided by surprise gains in the big US cities that for decades have been strongholds of the Democratic Party, and where Harris performed especially badly.
A DailyMail.com analysis of the results at 9am Eastern on Wednesday shows that the Democratic Vice President fared far worse in these big population centers than her boss Joe Biden did against Trump in 2020.
In the counties that make up New York City, Los Angeles, Illinois, Dallas, and Houston, Harris was several percentage points below Biden’s showing four years ago. In Miami-Dade County, Florida, she was down nearly 10 points on 2020 results.
Democratic strategists will doubtless pore over the results in these urban centers over the coming weeks, but it already seems clear that Trump’s campaign messages about the economy and immigration resonated among city dwellers.
Kamala Harris performed worse than expected in New York City and other major urban areas.
In Cook County, Illinois, which covers Chicago and nearby areas, is down by 12 percentage points on Joe Biden’s showing in 2020.
Residents of major cities have seen some of the biggest hikes in prices of everyday basics and housing costs since Biden took office in January 2021, as well as an influx of migrants looking for work after crossing the southern border.
Voters identified jobs and the economy as the country’s most pressing problem, exit polls showed. Many Americans remained frustrated by higher prices even amid record-high stock markets, fast-growing wages and low unemployment.
Hispanics, traditionally Democratic voters, and lower-income households hit hardest by inflation and the rise in prices of eggs, gasoline, and other everyday basics helped push Trump back into the Oval Office.
Though urban voters also elected mayors, state lawmakers and other local officials, their choices in the presidential race may indicate frustration with homelessness, crime, open drug abuse, and other social ills.
The impact of Harris’ poor showing in cities cannot be understated — she failed to win enough votes in urban Democratic strongholds to offset Trump’s advantages in rural areas, effectively costing her the election.
In Los Angeles County — home to 9.6 million people and America’s most populous county — Harris beat Trump with a huge 63 percent of the vote. Still, that was much lower than the 71 percent of Angelenos who backed Biden in 2020.
The same went for Cook County, Illinois, which covers much of Chicago and its surrounding areas, and where Harris’ 61.9 percent represented a more than double-digit dip from Biden’s 74.3 percent in 2020
In New York City, Harris has won 67.8 percent of the vote across the five boroughs. While that may seem like a dominating performance, it’s the worst for a Democrat since 1988.
Biden won the city with 76 percent in 2020 and Hillary Clinton got 79 percent in 2016.
Trump supporters celebrate outside a Cuban restaurant in Miami, Florida, where support for the Democratic candidate Harris cratered.
Trump supporters cheer during a GOP election watch party at the Ahern Hotel, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
A similar trend can be seen across the other cities, with the areas around Houston, Dallas, San Diego, and across much of southern California all seeing Harris getting several percentage points less than Biden.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, which covers Phoenix, Harris was on track for a crushing defeat. Her 48.4 percent score falls well short of Biden’s 53.5 percent four years and enabled to Trump to flip the region red.
Notable shifts have been recorded in other urban areas. Harris’ 50.6 percent tally in Bergen County, New Jersey, trails Biden’s 57.5 percent in 2020 — part of Trump’s surprise gains in the Garden State.
The shifts in the vote margins in the more-populous urban counties were larger than elsewhere, says a Washington Post analysis.
Trump gained on average 6.5 percentage points in the vote share of urban areas against 2020, compared to a 3.3-point shift in suburban and a 3.5-point shift in rural counties.
Harris’ underwhelming performance in cities was doubtless compounded by her failure to rally core Democratic constituencies, including the black, Latino, and younger voters who are more common in urban areas.
The Vice President underperformed with voters of color — particularly Latino voters — but also black voters in urban centers such as Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee. Biden carried Latino voters 65-32 percent against Trump in 2020, Harris got 53-45 percent.
