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What do an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, the Italian south shore of Staten Island, and the western tip of the Rockaways have in common?
They are all neighborhoods in New York City where Donald Trump won by astronomical margins in the presidential election.
Although the city (and Manhattan in particular) still overwhelmingly votes for the Democrats, Trump increased his share of the vote in the five boroughs more than almost anywhere else in the country.
Kamala Harris’s margin of victory dropped by 16 points compared to Joe Biden’s performance against Trump in 2020. In the Bronx, Trump increased his share of the vote from 16 per cent to 27 per cent. In Queens, where he was born, Trump went from 21 per cent to 38 per cent.
Click through different districts to see where Trump received the most votes.
These islands of deep red on the election map each tell their own unique story.
A street in Midwood
The street has some 30 houses along one side of the road. On the other is a public library, a community garden, and at the far end an apartment building. Autumn leaves cover the ground and mothers with young children pass by every few minutes on a brisk Tuesday a week after the election.
There are no signs, no flags and no bumper stickers to betray its secret, but this block appears to be one of the Trumpiest in New York City. A whopping 98.1 per cent of voters here voted for the former president. One sole vote went to Harris.
Such uniform voting patterns are rare in the multicultural city, but this street lies in the heavily Haredi Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Midwood, in southern Brooklyn.
Most ultra-Orthodox voters wait for the endorsements of grand rebbes before casting their ballot, and rarely stray from that recommendation.
The result was not surprising for those in this community.
“I’m not shocked at all, not one bit,” said one resident of the street, a business owner who asked not to be identified.
When asked by The Independent why he voted for Trump, he replied: “My reason is very simple: the economy.”
Javier Kibudi, a 48-year-old manager of a bagel shop around the corner, said his motivation for supporting Trump was simply that he felt he was better off four years ago.
“Four years ago when he was a president, no wars in the world. No Ukraine. No Israel — I’m Jewish Orthodox. Living good. Everything was perfect. And four years Joe Biden… catastrophic,” said Kibudi, who moved to the US from Argentina 25 years ago.
“We want to live better than the past with our family. Nothing crazy. We don’t want to fight with no one,” he added.
A September Nishma Research poll found that Trump was ahead of Harris among Haredi Jews with 93 per cent of the likely vote. The split among Modern Orthodox voters in the same poll was much more even, putting Harris slightly ahead.
In New York, an estimated 430,000 Jews live in Orthodox households, according to a United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Federation survey earlier this year; around one in five Jewish households. Of that number 249,000 are adults, and 181,000 children.
The endorsements of the grand rebbes are by no means partisan, and can often produce split ticket voting between Republican presidents and Democratic local candidates.
Trump’s decisive win here likely has a lot to do with his strong backing of Israel while in office, such as moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognition of the occupied Golan Heights as part of Israel — a decision taken in violation of international law.
The President-elect saw similarly dramatic margins in other Haredi Orthodox areas of NYC. Deep red patches mark out Borough Park, also in south Brooklyn, and Williamsburg in north Brooklyn. Trump won similarly huge margins in those same neighborhoods in 2020 and to a lesser degree in 2016.
A three-block neighborhood in an Orthodox neighborhood in Borough Park went 99.2 per cent for Trump — 356 votes for Trump to 2 for Harris.
The southern shore of Staten Island
Staten Island, a borough of some 500,000 people connected to Manhattan by ferry and to Brooklyn by bridge, is almost entirely red. Only on the wealthier northern tip do some blue patches emerge.
Trump has been an electoral force on the island since his first run in 2016, and this year only saw his margins increase further, winning some 65 per cent of the vote.
The island is home to a majority white and mostly working-class population; and more Democrat areas on the electoral map almost directly correlate to parts with higher Hispanic and Black demographics.
On the southern end of the island, home to a large population of Italian-Americans, is where Trump’s margins look staggering.
He hit above 85 per cent in several districts in the Tottenville area and just a touch below that further north in Rossville, often referred to as the largest Italian neighborhood in NYC.
The island voted narrowly for Barack Obama in 2012, but since Trump’s arrival in national politics it has been growing steadily more red. This year’s margins were helped by anger over a sharp influx of asylum seekers to the city last year. The island became a focal point for opposition against immigration when protests broke out over a school being turned into a shelter for newly arrived families.
At one earlier protest, a resident who lives on the same street as a shelter set up a loud speaker to play the same message in six languages on repeat: “Immigrants are not safe here.” Others have taken to shining bright flashing lights into the windows of shelters at night to disrupt those trying to rest.
“I was very happy with his first four years. I think he put the country in a perfect position,” said one resident, did not give her name.
“The last four years I’ve been absolutely miserable with the way the country went. The economy was horrible. I think [Trump will] bring it back. I also think he’ll bring back our reputation across the world,” she added.
A gated community in the Rockaways
From east to west, the Rockaway Peninsula electoral map turns from blue to red, to deeper red, to glowing red, like a hot poker burning with anger about the state of the city across the water.
The western end of the 11-mile barrier beach in southern Queens is where Trump’s support is strongest. Much of that support comes from a gated community called Breezy Point.
The mostly middle-class and white enclave is home to many cops and first responders who found common cause with Trump’s claims that New York had descended into chaos.
Breezy Point is surrounded by a fence and an entry gate protected by security. Only locals and their guests are allowed entry. Locals reportedly refer to it as the “Irish Riviera” because of how many residents claim Irish ancestry.
In a New York Times profile of the community published ahead of the 2020 election, it described the enclave as having “few residents of color, and skepticism of the Black Lives Matter movement is widespread.”
“We’re watching the Democratic Party move more to the left all the time,” Tom Long, 74, told the newspaper.
Some 77 per cent of voters went for Trump in this election in the district where Breezy Point is located. The district was slightly redrawn after 2020, but it marked an increase of around 5 points towards Trump in the same area.
Voters on the Western end of the Rockaways have consistently chosen Trump in 2016, 2020 and now 2024.
When Hurricane Sandy hit the Rockaways in 2012, Trump posted on social media that he had made donations to the local community.
Yet less than a decade later, Trump critiqued and ultimately blocked a study to protect the city’s coastal areas from future natural disasters.
“Sorry, you’ll just have to get your mops & buckets ready!” he wrote on X (Twitter) in January 2020.
A red wave in Queens?
Some of the most dramatic shifts over the past two elections can be seen in Queens.
While southern parts of Queens (Jamaica downwards) remain largely Democrat strongholds, the entire area from Utopia to Beechurst has seen an undeniable change in political dynamics.
A look at the electoral map shows that while in 2016, much of the Northeastern Queens area was Democrat, in just eight years Trump has turned many blocks red and the Democrats have hardly any strong support.
Click buttons to compare 2016 and 2020 results.
In Flushing, Chinatown and Koreatown in particular, Hilary Clinton had support ranging from 60 to 84 per cent.
Now, those same neighborhoods had Trump and Harris on a knife’s edge, with several areas of high Trump support.
With a high Korean and Chinese population (69 per cent) across Flushing, this could reflect the broader trend among Asian voters, who have gradually increased their support of Trump in the past three elections.
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Grace Meng, both Democrats, won congressional elections in the 6th and 14th districts which cover this part of Queens.
“I feel like Trump and you are both real,” one voter told AOC via Instagram, to explain why they had picked a Republican on the presidential ballot and a Democrat for congress.
“You [AOC] also signified change. Trump signified change. As I’ve said lately, Trump sounds more like you,” wrote another constituent.
