Secret Trump voters have post-election coming out party
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They’re donning MAGA hats in cafes, celebrating on social media and flying Trump flags: Supporters of President-elect Trump in deep blue cities and states are no longer keeping it to themselves.
Why it matters: Trump improved on his 2016 and 2020 margins in almost every state, including in most big, blue cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
- Many Trump voters in those cities saw his victory as validation, and are acting accordingly.
- Some residents of liberal enclaves tell Axios they've seen more Trump yard signs go up after the election than before it.
- And many supporters of Vice President Harris are grappling with the fact that their neighbors might not have voted the way they did.
Flashback: The “secret” Trump vote has been a phenomenon for the past few election cycles.
- A study from Columbia Business School found that among those who kept their choice a secret leading up to the 2016 election, two out of three went for Trump.
- "I think people recognize that that there is some kind of reputational cost of supporting Trump," says Columbia's Michael Slepian, who co-authored the study.
Zoom in: According to Slepian’s research, people primarily keep their votes secret because they're concerned about their reputation, about conflicts with family and friends, and about feeling like they don’t belong in their neighborhood or city.
- And while many people who supported Trump will continue to keep mum due to those concerns, others are seeing the rightward shift in blue cities and the broader support for Trump and deciding to go public.
- "There's such a stigma still with being a Trump supporter ... I'm not sure it's gonna be like that anymore," says Jonathan Alpert, a Manhattan-based psychotherapist who says patients told him they were keeping their support for the former president quiet before the election.
“All of these undercover Trump people are out,” says Robert Cahaly, a pollster and strategist at the right-leaning Trafalgar Group. “People that would have hidden a week or so ago aren’t hiding anymore.”
- On TikTok, Instagram and beyond, some influencers who’d kept their political preferences hidden are going full MAGA, The Cut reports.
- And social media has been full of photos of Trump paraphernalia on display in the most unlikely neighborhoods.
The other side: Big cities still overwhelmingly backed Harris. And many of the residents in those cities have been surprised to see support for Trump in their communities.
- “I feel gutted ... I feel that my country and large parts of our city have betrayed ourselves and our children and our neighbors," Annie Thoms, a high school teacher in Manhattan told the New York Times.
- Mary Swallow, a 63-year-old Democrat in Philadelphia, told the Wall Street Journal she hadn't realized how Trumpy her neighborhood of Bridgesburg had become: "How sad is that? ... Oh well, what are you going to do? Better luck another time."
