Adams: Dems Misread Mood on Immigration and “Not Surprised” by Republican Gains
Democrats lost sight of what working class people were concerned about in the current election cycle, Eric Adams said at his weekly press conference on November 12 and the resulting losses were not surprising, he said.
| 16 Nov 2024 | 08:53
Mayor Eric Adams said the Democratic party’s failure to identify immigration as a major concern for voters cost the party in the Nov. 5 election. He said he was “not surprised” by the outcome. (
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When asked about Republican gains in the city at a recent press conference, Mayor Eric Adams said, “It doesn’t surprise me” because he said too many in the party focused on “this far left agenda.”
He pointed out that he said three years ago, “public safety” was the top issue and now the top issue for voters is “migrants and asylum seekers.”
“And when I talked about public safety in 2021, it was ignored,” he said at his weekly City Hall press conference on Nov. 12. “When I talked about migrants and asylum seekers in 2023, it was ignored. 2021, the top of the issue: public safety. 2023, the top of the issues of voters: immigration.”
Adams had been sharply critical of the Biden Administration for not bailing out New York City and other cities during the migrant crisis, when 220,000 asylum seekers poured into the city over two years, costing the city billions of dollars to house and feed them.
He said the city received only about $200 million in federal aid to pay for the influx of asylum seekers during the crisis which put the city budget in a $7 billion hole. Aside from missing the public’s concern with the immigration crisis, he said Dems were ignoring working class issues overall.
”These working class people are concerned about the future for their families. And when you’re not talking to— when you’re talking about things that are not impacting them, how do I get the MetroCard? How do I make sure that I can put food on the table? These are real issues. And so when you’re not talking about those real issues, then it doesn’t surprise me that people are saying, listen, you’re not speaking on my behalf anymore.”
The problems, he said were amplified across the country, where TRump for the first time actually won the popular vote after losing the popular vote by three million to Hillary Clinton in 2016 but winning in the electoral college. In 2020 he lost by seven million popular votes and lost the Electoral College to Joe Biden.
“I’m looking at all of these analyses that are coming from after the election, it’s no different from New York than other municipalities. It’s not only New York where people decided that we don’t believe people are speaking on behalf of those issues that are important to us. And I talk on the issues that working class people talk on, public safety, affordability, making sure they can provide for their families.”
Kamala Harris still won Manhattan by a wide margin, but did not do as well as Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020. And a solitary some electoral districts in Chinatown the district actually cast most of its votes for Trump. It was an electoral district made up of the Knickerbocker Village, an affordable housing project on the Lower East Side where most of the residents are Chinese American. Trump pulled about 51 percent to 48 percent for Harris, according to the New York Post.
Unofficial tallies were actually showing several electoral districts in the Two Bridges area of the lower east side turning red while the rest of Manhattan was blue.,
Overall in New York City in 2020, Joe Biden received 76.19 percent of the vote and Donald Trump received 22.69 percent. In the 2024 race, in New York City vote across all boroughs, Harris received 1,748,140 votes or 67.70 percent and Trump received 786,294 votes, 30.45 percent.
In Manhattan, in 2020, there were 603,000 votes for Biden, vs 85,000 for Trump. In 2024, there were 103,000 votes for Trump and 482,000 for Harris. The figures show there were 121,000 fewer Dem votes cast for Harris in 2024 in Manhattan compared to Biden four years earlier, but the Trump total was up only 18,000 compared to four years ago.
There were bigger shifts in Queens where Trump was up 36,000 votes bring his tally there to 212,000. Harris in Queens was down 165,000 votes compared to Biden but still carried the borough handily with 404,000 votes overall. In Brooklyn, Harris’ 551,000 tally was down significantly, down 152,000 votes behind Biden’s 703,000 four years earlier. Trump’s tally was 219,000 in the borough of Kings this year, compared to 202,000 for years ago, a gain of 17,000. While some of the Trump increase might have come from crossover Dems, it appears the big problem for Dems is that many more of them sat it out.