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Big cities have faced serious problems lately. But there’s little evidence those problems are what drove voters to the right in November.
Dec. 6, 2024, 5:15 a.m. ET
The presidential election has raised an uncomfortable possibility for big American cities, most of them run by Democrats.
Voters in the largest urban counties moved more as a group toward Donald J. Trump since the 2020 election than the nation did as a whole, with eye-popping shifts in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Boston.
How much voters shifted toward Trump
By type of county
Source: New York Times analysis of election results and demographic data
Shift toward Trump represents the change in his margin of victory (or loss) from 2020 to 2024. Core urban counties represent the most central counties of large metropolitan areas, as defined by the C.D.C.
The New York Times
That shift may reflect not just the sour national mood, Democratic strategists and commenters have warned, but a backlash to big cities themselves — their intractable housing costs, their homeless camps and migrant waves, their pandemic-era disruptions and long school closures. Perhaps a rising share of urban voters has rejected all that.
The theory proposes a kind of reverse-coattails effect: that local Democratic governance is dragging down the party nationally.
“It’s hard for Democrats to go out and make the case that we’re the party of good government, and Republicans are the party of chaos, when you have very visual examples of cities that look like they are ungovernable, or haven’t been governed well,” said Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist who has worked on presidential and mayoral campaigns.
How much voters shifted toward Trump
By type of county
Voters in core urban counties shifted the most toward Mr. Trump …
… but if we look just at counties that are majority-white, that’s no longer true.
And majority-nonwhite places of all kinds — not just urban ones — made big shifts right.
Source: New York Times analysis of election results and demographic data
Shift toward Trump represents the change in his margin of victory (or loss) from 2020 to 2024. Core urban counties represent the most central counties of large metropolitan areas, as defined by the C.D.C. Nonwhite population includes Hispanic residents.
The New York Times
The most diverse urban counties shifted the most toward Trump
Source: New York Times analysis of election results and demographic data
Shift toward Trump represents the change in his margin of victory (or loss) from 2020 to 2024. Core urban counties represent the most central counties of large metropolitan areas, as defined by the C.D.C. Nonwhite population includes Hispanic residents.
The New York Times
How much city neighborhoods shifted toward Trump
White neighborhoods shifted the least in most places. Neighborhoods represent voting precincts and are grouped by their largest racial or ethnic group.
Source: New York Times analysis of precinct-level results and census tract-level demographics
Groups are shown if they make up the largest group in more than one precinct in a city. White, Black and Asian groups are all non-Hispanic.
The New York Times
