Election shows Fairfield County continues to trend Democratic

This year’s presidential election bolstered Fairfield County’s swing toward Democrats, while rural and working-class portions of eastern Connecticut remained Republican country.

Just three of the 23 cities and towns that comprise the wealthy coastal communities near the New York border — a region that was known for being reliably Republican for decades — voted for President Donald Trump this year. That’s down from six in 2016, when Trump faced Democrat Hillary Clinton. And in some communities that backed Clinton four years ago, Joe Biden received a greater percentage of support this year.

Meanwhile, many eastern Connecticut communities, some of which had supported Democratic President Barack Obama before backing Trump in 2016, held firm this year and voted for the president again by the same percentage.

While Democrats benefited from evolving demographics and voter registration in Fairfield County, they also got some help from Trump himself.

“Let’s face it. Donald Trump played hard. He said the suburbs could be overrun by violence and project housing,” said Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont, who divides his time between Hartford and his home in Greenwich, in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday. “I think the suburbs across the country said, ‘That’s not what I see.’”

Lamont said Republicans in Connecticut would have performed better in this year’s election if they had “distanced themselves from Trump.” Biden easily won the state’s seven electoral votes, and the GOP failed to defeat any of the five incumbent Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Their overall numbers in both chambers of the Democratic-controlled General Assembly also shrank. Democrats, for example, won legislative seats in the Naugatuck Valley, in south-central Connecticut, which has been supportive of Trump.

J.R. Romano, chairman of the Connecticut Republicans, has watched affluent Fairfield County become more blue during his tenure. He maintains that people’s personal dislike of Trump, not his policies, is helping to fuel that change.