Manhattan Got Slightly Redder In 2024. But That’s Not The Full Story.
NEW YORK CITY – According to unofficial results, President-Elect Donald Trump picked up about 95,000 votes citywide in the 2024 election.
Yes, that means New York City did indeed get a little redder in 2024.
But the bigger story isn't that the city got redder. It's how many voters sat this one out.
"Citywide, Vice President [Kamala] Harris received about 574,000 fewer votes than Joe Biden did in 2020," Steven Romalewski, mapping director at the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, told Patch.
"What that means is that, yes, the city got redder this election because it got less blue."
Romalewski and his colleague at the Center for Urban Research, John Mollenkopf, are at work analyzing preliminary results, which have yet to be formally certified by the NYC Board of Elections.
What About Manhattan?
Here in Manhattan, Trump received 18,000 more votes in 2024 compared to 2020. But Harris received 120,000 fewer votes boroughwide.
"A lot of that came out of Harlem," Romalewski said. "Harlem especially stands out because that's where the concentration of support for Biden was greatest, where Biden received as much as 90 percent of the vote in 2020."
The vote loss is particularly visible in Upper Manhattan, from Inwood and Washington Heights to East Harlem – and especially East Harlem – but also on the Upper East Side, Chelsea, and the Lower East Side.
Election districts where Harris lost votes include New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) complexes, such as Polo Grounds Towers in Harlem, Washington Houses and Carver Houses in East Harlem, the Frederick Douglass Houses on the Upper West Side, the Fulton and Chelsea Houses in Chelsea, and the Riis, Wald, and Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side along the East River.
But the NYCHA vote isn't the only story.
"It's almost everywhere," Romalewski said. "And the blocks where Harris picked up votes are few and far between."
Another map, available here , shows the preliminary 2024 results compared to the 2020 results, with a slider enabling viewers to toggle back and forth to see how voter behavior changed.
So What Happened?
"The big questions is why, and I think the key thing would be to ask people if they voted or not and why, and their answers may have implications for how campaigns were run, for messaging candidates were sending, and more. Each election is unique, but a lot of the same people work in these campaigns and it all has spillover effects going forward," Romalewski said.
"The other aspect of this is that next year, there will be a major municipal election in New York City. Does this data have any meaning or implications for 2025? That will depend in part on the answers to these questions."
Did you sit out the 2024 election or switch parties? Patch would love to hear from you. Email
