This is the Trumpiest neighborhood in D.C.
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Donald Trump in D.C. earlier this year. Photo: Allison Bailey / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP
The Trumpiest neighborhood in D.C. is not Navy Yard, a magnet for young conservative politicos. Nor is it Spring Valley, the tony enclave in upper Northwest that clocked the most Trump support in '16 and '20.
- Hill East, which includes rowhouse neighborhoods in the vicinity of the RFK campus, gave Trump his biggest margin in the city this election at 22%, according to results from Precinct 80.
The big picture: D.C. and its suburbs voted overwhelmingly for Vice President Harris — but Trump outperformed his previous runs in several areas.
By the numbers: Harris won D.C. with 90.5% of the vote, per the AP and D.C.'s Board of Elections, with some mail-in ballots still trickling in.
- But Trump's 6.6% is better than 2020, when he took 5.4%, and 2016, when he got 4%.
- And nowhere did he do better than in Precinct 80, which is about a mile-and-a-half east of the U.S. Capitol.
"Gobsmacked" is how Denise Rucker Krepp, a former advisory neighborhood commissioner in Hill East, described herself when told the news.
- "I'm really surprised that my area would have more Trump supporters than, for example, Navy Yard," says Krepp, a Democrat and Harris voter, whose political activism included successfully pushing the House GOP to overturn D.C.'s criminal code reform.
Why Hill East? "I think crime had an impact on it," speculates Chander Jayaraman, an outgoing neighborhood commissioner nearby. He wonders whether people voted in protest to U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves, a Biden appointee who has been criticized for not prosecuting more local criminals.
Another theory: Jan. 6 inmates at the D.C. Jail in Hill East drove the MAGA vote. Though a city official says there are only about 30 of them (316 votes went for Trump in Precinct 80).
The intrigue: RFK Jr. received 2% of the vote in the precinct. That's 28 people who voted for the son of the man they named the stadium after.
Zoom out: The next two Trumpy neighborhoods are Spring Valley (Precinct 9, 18%) and part of Capitol Hill (Precinct 130, 16%).
- Trump also roughly doubled his vote share in the majority-Black Wards 7 and 8, to 5.6% and 6.5%, respectively.
- Even though Ward 8 this year included Navy Yard, Trump still broadly improved his vote share east of the Anacostia River, which makes up the bulk of the two districts.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to say Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the son of Robert F. Kennedy (not the grandson).