In winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote, President-elect Donald Trump’s impressive showing while losing his native state of New York likely has been overshadowed.
Trump lost New York by less than 12 percentage points despite the state including twice as many Democrats than Republicans.
"I made a joke. I thought that his numbers in New York probably made him happier than anywhere else because instead of losing by more than 20 points, he only lost by [about] 10," Newsmax’s Tom Basile said on Wednesday’s "Wake Up America."
"And in a big state, that's extraordinary to be able to close that gap."
With 93% of the vote counted, Vice President Kamala Harris received 55.8% to Trump’s 44.2% in New York.
In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Trump by 23 points (60.9%-37.7%) in the Empire State.
Trump on Tuesday received more than 30% of the vote in heavily Democrat New York City. Gothamist reported that the share was a threshold the GOP long had seen as a key benchmark as they try to reestablish themselves in the state.
"He did that in places like Philadelphia and Detroit and these other urban environments because of the outreach to the Latino voters and because of the outreach to Black voters," Basile said.
"And we're going to see at the end of the day that he's gotten some historic numbers there for a Republican candidate."
Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said Trump won support from the state's "common-sense" Democrats.
"We're getting numbers from Democrat areas that are much better than they used to be because common-sense Democrats are saying: 'My party's going off the far end, and they're not going to go back to somewhere even close to the middle, we're going to vote Republican,'" Blakeman said, Politico reported.
Trump, who changed his primary residence from New York City to Palm Beach, Florida, in 2019, held campaign events in the Big Apple despite having little chance to win the city.
In late May, Trump held a rally in the South Bronx to reach Black and Latino voters.
During an Oct. 27 rally at Madison Square Garden, Trump said he was running against "something far bigger" than Harris, who he asserted is a "perfect vessel" for the "radical left machine."
"We're running against something far bigger than Joe [Biden] or Kamala and far more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious, crooked, radical left machine that runs today's Democrat Party. They're just vessels," Trump told the crowd of 20,000.
"In fact, they're perfect vessels because they'll never give them a hard time. They'll do whatever they want. I know many of them. It's just this amorphous group of people. But they're smart, and they're vicious."
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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