Democratic insiders are left scratching their heads over a shocking reversal in traditionally liberal New Jersey. Diverse, suburban Passaic County, which voted 74% for Hillary Clinton in 2016, voted for President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday.
The hourglass-shaped area in the northern part of the state is generally blue due to large down-county cities like Paterson.
But the sea of blue dried up and Trump won a landslide victory with 95,0000 votes against Vice President Kamala Harris’s 89,000 votes.
When asked what went wrong, one Democratic insider simply said, “I don’t know.”
“These numbers are bizarre,” he said, pointing to results that showed Trump giving Harris a tough challenge in the overwhelmingly liberal city of Paterson.
“I feel like a lot of people voted against their best interests,” he said. “Maybe it was an emotional thing.”
The county, with a population of about 515,000, is experiencing somewhat of a demographic wave: The black population in some of its larger cities and towns is declining, only to be offset by more culturally conservative Latinos.
Passaic County is 38% white, about 45% Hispanic, and 15% black.
Twenty years ago, the Hispanic population was just 30%. That means someone like Trump, who made widespread inroads into the Hispanic community, could benefit from the demographic shift.
According to exit polls, Trump’s support among Hispanic voters has increased by 16 points in his favor nationwide.
Democratic victories have also become more narrow over the years – the county went to Hillary Clinton by 52 points in 2016, but it narrowed to a 16-point win for Biden in 2020.
“This change has been happening for a decade, maybe longer,” the insider said.
He added, “But presidential elections are when you get a lot of Latinos at the polls.” “African Americans are more reliable Democratic voters, but there are a lot more Latinos in Paterson, for example.”
“So even if a small percentage comes forward, the numbers go up.”
This reflected a change across the state, in which Republicans bested their numbers in 2020 in almost every county – which, According to NJ GlobeThis appears to stem from changes in voting patterns among minority voters.
The Garden State GOP also received a lot of early votes, with 400,000 people voting before Election Day.
The Globe said the Democrats narrowly trailed them with 418,000 – even though the Dems have more than a million registered voters.
Ultimately, Harris’s five-point margin of victory in New Jersey was the worst of any Dem in the state’s presidential primaries since 1992.
Some voters appeared surprised Wednesday morning — but they cited myriad reasons why Trump flipped the county, ranging from the economy to immigration to some people being reluctant to vote for a woman.
Pat Deady, a 61-year-old Republican from the up-county town of Ringwood, stood outside a Quick Check in the central Passaic town of Wayne, Wayne, and attributed the victory to people’s frustration with taxes and inflation.
Meanwhile, he said, some of his more liberal friends dropped out of the election.
“They just said they can’t stand what the Democrats are doing, but there’s no way they can get behind Trump,” he said. “It made sense a little bit – if you really hate them both, why are you picking one?”
Demitri Gonzalez, a 25-year-old Puerto Rican native of Paterson, voted for Harris, but blamed her defeat on a flood of online misinformation.
“People don’t do their research,” said Gonzalez, who graduated from college with a history degree. “They only say what they read in the title. They don’t read articles, they read headlines.”
“A lot of Hispanics and black people moved to the right because naturally, our culture is conservative … because of how deeply religious values run,” he added, noting that his own father rejected his arguments. Despite this, he voted for Trump.
Another man, a 60-year-old black man from Paterson, was more concise.
“Nobody knew anything about her – that was the problem,” he said, adding that the situation might have been different if she had stayed in the race longer.
“You already know about that evil motherfucker,” he said, referring to Trump. “But people said this: What’s the point of changing if you don’t know what you’re changing?”
(TagstoTranslate)US News(T)2024 Presidential Election(T)Donald Trump(T)Kamala Harris(T)New Jersey(T)Voters
