Patrons at Murph’s Tavern are toasting not just Donald Trump’s return to the presidency but the fact that he carried their northern New Jersey county, a longtime Democratic stronghold in the shadow of New York City. To Maria Russo, the woman pouring the drinks, the reasons behind Trump’s win were as clear in the runup to the election as the shot glasses lined up on the high-top tables. A mother raising two kids on her own in Passaic County on a barkeep’s income, she saw it not just in light of her own situation but those of the people around her. “Anybody can see what’s going on, you know? The prices of everything. And me being a single mom?” she said. “I notice that when I go shopping – just like everybody else does.” Although Trump’s win once again reflected a deep political divide across the United States, he made inroads in surprising places. From the suburbs of New Jersey to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s New York City congressional district to reliably liberal Hawaii, Trump gained ground even as support for Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, dropped off. AP VoteCast, a far-reaching survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide, found that Trump made substantial gains among Black and Latino men, younger voters, and nonwhite voters without a college degree, compared with his 2020 performance. Common themes emerged in the AP VoteCast data. Voters were most likely to see the economy and immigration as top issues facing the country. More voters said their family’s financial situation was “falling behind,” compared with 2020. When they voted, Trump supporters were thinking about high prices for gas, groceries and other goods and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. Even in Hawaii, dominated by Democrats since the 1950s when labor unions organized sugar and pineapple plantation workers who built the state’s middle class, Republicans had commanding victories. In West Oahu, for example, where many plantations have given way to suburban development, school teacher Julie Reyes Oda, a Republican, flipped one state House district in the heavily blue-collar, working-class town of Ewa Beach. In the district next door, state Rep. Diamond Garcia held on to a seat he turned Republican two years ago. Democrats still control supermajorities in both chambers, but the GOP’s nine House and three Senate seats are the most the party’s had in the Legislature since 2004. Newly elected Republican state Sen. Samantha DeCorte said voters in her Waianae district west of Honolulu have long been frustrated by a lack of resources for basic needs such as public safety. Residents feel like they have to look over their shoulders when they are pumping gas, DeCorte said. “They don’t want to go to the grocery store at night because they have to walk back to their car in the parking lot,” she said. Economic concerns, including the high cost of housing, may have figured prominently in the thinking of some Hawaii voters. On an island where the median cost of a single-family home tops $1.1 million, many people, including large numbers of Native Hawaiians, have been forced to move to the continental U.S. In New Jersey, AP VoteCast showed that Trump grew his support among nonwhite suburban voters and younger women, in addition to the demographic swings that showed up nationally. In New York, […]