Vote map tells economic tale

Buried in the record turnout of the Nov. 3 election, an odd turn of events in the richest and poorest communities might tell us a lot about the direction of politics in Connecticut. Or it could be a passing quirk in the quirkiest year of politics, and public health, that any of us ever hopes to see.

In New Haven, former Vice President Joe Biden fell just short of 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s impressive vote total. He trounced President Donald Trump, who notched less than 15 percent of the vote in the city that reliably gives Democrats their biggest tallies.

But look closer: As Biden held steady from 2016, Trump added 1,600 votes, a 35 percent boost over his total four years ago.

It wasn’t an isolated result. In New Haven, Wa

terbury, Hartford, Bridgeport and New Britain — Connecticut’s five large- ish, low- income cities — Trump added a combined 7,853 votes on top of his 2016 totals in those same cities. Biden managed to pile on just 1,260 ballot marks beyond what Clinton saw.

Combined, the 30 poorest Connecticut cities and towns — measured by median household income — delivered barely any improvement in vote margins for Biden, less than 1 percent. That happened even though the now presidentelect saw a statewide win of 59 percent to 39 percent, 6.4 percentage points better than Clinton’s margin over Trump.

Over by the New York State line in once- Republican Ridgefield, Trump tallied 5,689 votes, matching his total from 2016. But Biden pulled a 30 percent increase over Clinton’s Ridgefield ballot count.

The result: A Fairfield County town that gave 2012 GOP standard- bearer Mitt Romney a 53 to 46 percent win in 2012, a town that sent Republican John Frey to the state House for 22 years, which proudly holds Frey as a longtime Republican National Committee member, now looks like a blue stronghold.

Trump collected just 35 percent of the Ridgefield

vote. A Democrat breezed into the seat Frey vacated. And Ridgefield handily gave its state Senate blessing to Democratic incumbent Will Haskell.

Ridgefield wasn’t alone among Connecticut’s 30 richest towns, many of them in Fairfield County. Together, those towns gave Biden 46,600 votes more than they conferred on Clinton. Trump? Even with 180,000 extra Connecticut voters marking ballots this year, he managed just 4,002 more in those rich towns than he saw in 2016.

That spelled a whopping whupping of 60 percent for Biden to 38.5 percent for Trump in those 2.5- dozen richest towns, which accounted for one- fifth of Connecticut votes. The abrasive billionaire won just two of the 30 — Monroe and Salem, both just barely — eight years after Romney took 16 of them against an incumbent president.

Work to do on both sides

So what’s going on? Do these results in the state’s richest towns and poorest cities and towns point to new or strengthening trends?

Does Trump’s ever so slight breaking of the Democrats’ Kryptonite grip on cities show that some urban residents, especially Black and Latinx voters, are listening to the GOP pitch? It goes like this: “How’s it working out for you these

last few decades? Come on over to our side.”

Does the historic reversal in so many formerly Republican towns, at a time when New Yorkers are moving in and Democratic registrations are up, mean the old- line, moderate GOP of the past will stay in the past?

The results tell both sides they have work to do. Democrats need to deliver better results in cities and poor towns. Republicans must decide who they are in the wake of a narcissist cult leader who refuses to exit despite his clear national loss.

Two savvy political leaders from these worlds — state Rep. Jason Rojas, D- East Hartford, the newly elected House majority leader, and Darien’s veteran Republican First Selectman Jayme Stevenson — weighed in on whether the Trumpian shifts of 2020 in Connecticut will have lasting effects.

Rojas said no, at least as far as urban area are concerned. “I don’t see it being a long- term change,” he said.

“Trump has always been an outlier in this regard,” Rojas said. “He has always preyed on the fears of people who perhaps feel that they’ve been left behind.”

Stevenson is less certain, as some changes in upscale towns are well underway, not just in the 2020 presidential race. “There are just too many unknowns right

now to make any kind of a future prediction,” she said.

A slight racial shift?

I asked Rojas — whose own town under- performed the state from Biden’s standpoint — whether we’ll see inroads by Republicans in minority communities. He suggested Trump simply did well in Connecticut among his base of white, non- college educated voters, even in minority- majority cities.

Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, among other low- income Democrat hotbeds, had few if any contested races to bring out their marginal voters. That might have been a factor. Even if we take those three cities out of the equation, the remaining 30 poorest communities gave Biden just a 4 percent margin gain over Clinton’s 2016 tallies in those towns. That’s still well below his 6.4- point average.

Speaking of education, in addition to measuring rich and poor communities, I also charted how Trump fared in the top 30 and bottom 30 cities and towns by educational attainment — measured by the percent of adults with bachelor’s degrees or higher.

As expected, considering Trump plays to a less educated, less informed base, he did even worse in the most educated places than in the rich places, and better in the communities with fewer college degrees than in the poorest communities — though there was a lot of overlap. His change from 2016 to 2020 in both groups was about the same as his change in the top and bottom groups by wealth.

The Connecticut results might somewhat reflect the national picture, where Trump lost some of his moderate, suburban support but kept his rural base and over- performed among Black men and some Hispanic groups.

“It’s still very unsettling for a lot of people,” Rojas said “For a liberal Democrat like myself… I’m still a little shocked that he got 72 million votes and only lost 60- 40 in Connecticut.”

‘ Picking up the pieces’

In towns such as Ridgefield, New Canaan, Greenwich, Wilton, Avon, Trumbull and Stevenson’s Darien, Romney won decisively over former President Barack Obama, and Trump lost badly this year. Still, Stevenson said, local politics and Connecticut’s fiscal and economic crisis have more sway than the Democratic backlash against Trump.

“On hometown issues, people support more conservative viewpoints on finances and policymaking, things that effect their pocketbooks,” said Stevenson, who won her own re- election in a landslide in 2019.

Darien, with 13,250 voters on Nov. 3, a fabulous 88 percent turnout, has 326 new families and “a lot of multifamily housing projects in construction right now,” she said. Local Republicans fared far better than Trump, so it’s unclear whether the Democratic shift will take over.

“I really think it depends on what happens in the state of Connecticut,” She added, and on whether Biden “is pulled by the extremists in his party.”

So we can’t declare conservatism and classic Republicanism dead in the toniest Connecticut towns, even though they conferred on Biden and an extra 10.5point margin beyond the nice win they gave Clinton over Trump.

Many residents of these wealthy towns benefit from Trump’s 2017 tax reform, so they may well have voted against their own shortterm interests in opposing him on character grounds. Or they may have seen Trump’s global isolationism and his racially hateful dog- whistles as bad for the economic stability, which they certainly are.

“We’re picking up the pieces from probably one of the most divisive elections that any of us has ever been through,” Stevenson said. “If people are no better off four years from now than they are today, I think things could swing back a bit... We need to give it some time.”