Immigrants, including Asians and Latinos, voted for Donald Trump in numbers that belied progressive characterizations of the president as a racist xenophobe.
The numbers: According to a New York Times analysis of voting in 28,000 precincts in the 2020 election, areas with the highest number of immigrants and large populations of Latinos and Asians shifted to the right.
- For example, in Chicago, precincts with high numbers of immigrants increased voter turnout as compared to 2016 and many voters shifted to Trump.
- Also in Chicago, in areas where more than 50% of residents are of Mexican descent, Trump received more than 45% more votes than in his first presidential campaign.
- Across the country, the pattern was repeated in precincts with populations primarily composed of Latinos and residents of Asian descent: Los Angeles, New York City, Houston, Miami among them.
As noted by The Times, with few exceptions, these urban centers heavily gave votes to Joe Biden overall.
What does it mean? Voter patterns in the 2020 election shattered the prevailing theories put forth by many mainstream political pundits, who predicted Trump’s politically incorrect rhetoric would repel immigrant and nonwhite voters.
- The Times’ analysis found that while Trump “lost ground in white and Republican areas in and around cities,” he “gained new votes in immigrant neighborhoods.”
- Some took Trump increasing his share of immigrant and nonwhite voters as a rebuke to “woke” orthodoxy and progressives’ fixation with the politics of race.
