With Republicans holding a “trifecta,” the Democratic Party has a lot of ground to make up going into 2026, particularly as Vice President Kamala Harris saw massive losses in major urban cities compared to party gains from the 2020 presidential election.
New data analyses of turnout from this year’s election now reveal how much worse Harris did than President Joe Biden in typical Democratic strongholds, helping secure President-elect Donald Trump’s win.
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The New York Times has estimated that Harris received around 15% less votes than Biden in several urban areas where Trump saw major gains, such as Atlanta, Las Vegas, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and more.
While Harris still won the majority of these urban regions, dropping voter turnout and participation in black, Hispanic, and other minority neighborhoods made the vice president lose ground and extend Trump’s overall lead.
In Chicago, for example, Harris received around 127,000 votes in Mexican American and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, according to the outlet. While she still won the city, those votes were a steep decline from the 174,000 given to Biden in 2020.
In some areas, Harris still won these black and Hispanic neighborhoods — but not with much wiggle room. The outlet found that in Phoenix, Harris won Latino precincts by around 23 points over Trump. However, it was a steep 12-point drop from the margin won by Biden four years ago.
Even in San Francisco, a longstanding left-leaning city, Harris saw losses in her home state. This was reportedly primarily seen in predominately Asian precincts as the vice president only saw more votes compared to Biden in a handful of areas, while Trump gained more than 6,000 votes than he did in 2020.
Looking at nearly 3,000 precincts in six cities, including Philadelphia, Atlanta, Charlotte, Milwaukee, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, Politico also found a major shift from the Democratic Party toward Trump within these regions.
In around 476 predominantly black precincts, meaning regions where at least 85% of the residents identify as black, Trump saw gains of nearly 3,400 votes compared to the last election. Harris still won some of these cities. However, she failed to secure the gains needed to offset Trump’s newly found support. Compared to the votes received by Biden in 2020, Harris lost around 17,500 votes in these precincts — around a 6.1% drop.
Similar trends were also seen in predominately Hispanic precincts, as Trump saw gains of around 1,300 votes while Harris lost around 4,100 compared to 2020.
With these traditionally Democratic-leaning regions starting to put their backing toward Trump, some have begun to wonder where the left losses will end. Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini joked about the trending Republican gains in a post to X writing, “The way things are going Republicans will be winning Starbucks baristas by 2028.”
Amid these losses, some Democratic leaders have indicated the party will need to face big changes to come back stronger with gains during the midterm elections in two years.
“The Democratic Party is rapidly losing its legitimacy amongst the everyday people and marginalized communities continuously used as stepping stones to win elections,” Alexandra Rojas, executive director of fair-left PAC Justice Democrats, told the Associated Press following the election.
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Democratic pollster Jeff Pollock agreed, telling the outlet that the party needs to internally address how to target young men and rural, working-class, as well as Latino voters. Others, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), believe the Democratic Party needs to see a major shift in leadership.
“I think there needs to be a cleaning of the house. There needs to be a new generation of leaders that emerge,” Khanna said earlier this month. “There needs to be new thinking, new ideas, and a new direction. And you know, the establishment produced a disaster.”