Why Seattle’s CID neighborhood shifted toward Trump

Lu, who voted for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, said she voted for Trump this time because of the idea of making America great again. And she hopes he will make safety a top priority in her neighborhood.

The CID and other minority-majority neighborhoods, like South Beacon Hill, New Holly and Rainier Beach, recorded more votes for Trump than in 2020.

This year, the CID even outpaced other neighborhoods that tend to lean more conservative, except for Broadmoor, for the contest to be the most Republican neighborhood in Seattle. The following districts made the top-10 list for most votes for Trump: New Holly, South Beacon Hill, Brighton, Dunlap, Pioneer Square, Little Brook, Windermere, Mid Beacon Hill, Rainier Beach and Yesler Terrace/ Little Saigon.

“Regardless of which neighborhood ends up coming up No. 1 in the end, the top Trump neighborhoods in the city are overwhelmingly, at this point, areas of high communities of color, lots of voters of color,” said Ben Anderstone, political consultant at Progressive Strategies Northwest.

Vivian Chau, a business owner in the CID since 1987 at New An Dong Groceries & Chinese Herbs, said some of the older generation in the Vietnamese community feel like the Democratic party is leaning toward communism, which has pushed them away from the left.

She sees a divide among old and younger Vietnamese, who tend to be more liberal. Chau was born in Vietnam, but her grandparents are Chinese.

“The older generation, they went through wars and stuff like that, so they say [to the young generation] you don’t know anything,” Chau said. “They say, even though we are real refugees, we go through the legal way, not illegal. And so with immigrants, [Democrats] are giving people so much freedom and you don’t know who you bring in and it’s causing more crime and stuff like that.”

Chau said she didn’t vote this year because she felt like she was picking between two evils, and neither were good choices.

She said tariffs, which Trump has promised to increase, have already impacted her business since most of the things she imports are from Asia, especially China. One of the teas she sold used to be on the shelf for $6.99, but the price is now $13.99. Chau used to order five cases of certain tea boxes from China, but can only order one case since prices went up. Business was already slow due to safety concerns, so increased prices are adding to her business struggles.

Jacob Duvall, 45, was shocked to hear that the CID came in second for most votes for Trump out of Seattle neighborhoods.

“I don’t really see any of these people looking like they’d vote for Trump. I’m really surprised,” Duvall, who is Asian and white, said. He’s lived in the CID almost two years, but recently returned after working on a fishing boat in Alaska for several months.

The state is following a national trend, Anderstone said, which saw higher volumes of voters of color with working-class backgrounds and no college degrees voting Republican despite leaning historically toward the Democratic side.

One of the top reasons for this shift is voters are feeling economic pressures including inflation. Anderstone also mentioned a large cultural gap that’s been forming between the Democratic Party and these voters.

Although Vice President Kamala Harris won the CID by 67% with 386 votes while Trump took 27% at 158 votes, voters did not turn out for Harris as they had for President Joe Biden in 2020, when he won 75% of the neighborhood's votes. Trump took 20% of the district with 135 votes in 2020.

Voter turnout experienced a hard decline in Washington communities of color and among young voters in 2024. Anderstone said the shift away from the Democratic party could partly be because of voters choosing not to vote, some changing their opinions after the Biden administration or a combination of the two.

Despite this, Anderstone said, the swing to the right wasn’t huge for communities of color in the CID: “They did get a little more Republican, it looks like, but it wasn’t as extreme as in some other states.”

He said the appeal of the GOP was mostly “vibes,” including perceptions of the Biden administration’s policies on immigration, which didn’t change dramatically from the previous Trump administration, as well as perceptions concerning public safety, the economy and the impact of COVID.

“When you’re running a small restaurant or something, you can get kind of annoyed with having public officials who are making decisions that don’t recognize how tough it is to run a small business,” Anderstone said.

Another reason could be the shifting nature of the political parties. The Democratic Party used to represent the working class; however, Anderstone said the party is now seen as representing marginalized groups.

“For some people, they would see it as overlapping, but some working class might not resonate with trans rights or people who are in the criminal justice system, incarcerated people,” Anderstone explained.

Andrew Hong, research data analyst at the Washington Community Alliance, said Republican-affiliated groups have connected and engaged with communities in the CID on issues like homelessness and crime. Hong noted that while Asian Americans in the CID made a large shift to the right between 2020 and 2024, Asian Americans in other Puget Sound communities like Bellevue and South Seattle did not see as drastic a shift since issues like homelessness and public safety aren’t as crucial in those neighborhoods.

Hong agreed with Anderstone that the CID’s shift to the right is reflective of the nation, though it’s a smaller shift than in states like New York, Texas or California. Still, Asian Americans in Washington are moving to the right more than white, college-educated Washingtonians.

They note the demographic differences between CID residents and suburban Asian populations: Residents within the CID are older, long-time residents in senior living homes who generally did not go to college, while younger Asian American voters in places like Bellevue usually have bachelor’s degrees.

Hong pointed out that it wasn’t just a single group of people who politically shifted in Washington this year. New Holly, which has a large Muslim population, scored third on the list of precincts with the most votes for Trump at nearly 19%.

Some districts that voted for Trump still voted for progressive measures like keeping the capital gains tax, the cap-and-invest system and the long-term health care insurance program.