Trump made his biggest gains in Northeast Philly's immigrant melting pot

PHILADELPHIA — The sleepy, cul-de-sac streets around Gifford Playground in Northeast Philadelphia are home to one of the city’s hidden melting pots.

On Thursday afternoon, Georgian men cracked jokes while waxing a Toyota Corolla. Central Asian women in burkas walked their children home from school. A Colombian grocery store worker played with his dog, shouting commands in rapid-fire Spanish. And every street had at least one Ukrainian flag hanging from a window — or a “f — Putin” bumper sticker slapped on the back of a van.

Six out of every 10 residents in this part of the Somerton neighborhood were born outside the United States, according to the 2020 census. But the area has also undergone a dramatic political shift: a place that broke Democratic not long ago, it‘s swung heavily Republican. And, talking to some residents, this is despite, or even because of, promises to seal the border.

“This is a very Republican community, but you cannot say that everyone is Trumpist or Democratic to the bone,” said Roman Zukhov, 38, a Ukrainian immigrant and Republican committee person in the area. “It’s an immigrant community — a very dynamic one — but they’re also concerned about immigration, because they see the change in their own neighborhood.”

While other parts of the city were redder overall or delivered more raw votes for former President Donald Trump, election data shows the Republican made his biggest gains in several voting divisions here over the last three election cycles.

In the 58th Ward, which covers the area, 47% of voters are registered Democrats and just 35% are Republicans. But like much of Northeast Philadelphia, the ward has swung further right over the past three presidential elections.

Hillary Clinton won here by a few hundred votes in 2016. In 2020, this community went for Trump by seven percentage points. And this year, he expanded his lead to nearly 16 percentage points.

One division in the ward shifted nearly 30 percentage points to the right this year, when compared to 2016 — by far the biggest Republican shift in any single division in Philadelphia over the past eight years.

Almost 60% of the ward’s 2nd division voted for Trump on Tuesday, compared to just 31% in 2016. And the nearby 44th division swung 18 points toward Trump when compared to 2020, the biggest rightward shift of any division in the city over those four years.

These gains mirror similar inroads made by Republicans in the city’s Latino communities. In Northeast Philadelphia, however, the wave of support appears to span ethnic backgrounds in an area where businesses advertise in Cyrillic and Arabic as often as English.

Census data lists Russian, Ukrainian, and Uzbekistani as the most commonly reported ancestries in the area where Trump saw his biggest gains.

Jacob, who declined to give his last name in order to frankly discuss his politics, immigrated from Israel to a modest twin house in the neighborhood 30 years ago. The professional landlord, sitting in a Mercedes-Benz parked outside his home, said he voted for the first time this year — for Trump.

His primary motivation, he said, was economic.

“I wanna see interest rates going down,” he said. “Everything is more expensive. … The people that don’t make as much, it’s hard for them to pay their bills. So you have tenants getting into issues because they don’t have money.”

But there were other factors.

Jacob said he believed Trump would bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is also married to a Ukrainian woman, and said she and other Ukrainians he knew in the neighborhood also voted for Trump for geopolitical reasons.

Many Ukranians viewed the Nov. 5 election in existential terms: Vice President Kamala Harris represented a continuation of Biden-era military support for the fight against Russia, while Trump represented a wild card. The former president has repeatedly praised Putin and criticized U.S. aid to Ukraine, but also made vague overtures about ending the war “in one day.”

Jacob said he and his wife doubted Harris would have been able to broker an end to either conflict that had festered throughout the Biden administration.

“She doesn’t intimidate the other side,” he said.

True to form for one of the city’s most diverse neighborhoods, other neighbors disagreed with rationalizations for Trump.

Alex Tsarenko, a 32-year-old Ukrainian immigrant who had lived in the neighborhood for seven years, said he was wary of what a Trump presidency would bode for his homeland.

“I don’t trust Trump,” said the Harris voter, who said the war was a major driver of his decision to vote this year.

“He was president before and I don’t see what would change now,” he said. “My opinion is it’s better for everything, (with) Kamala.”

Zhukov declined to say who won his ballot. Many Ukrainians, he said, will not publicly discuss their vote due to divisions both in the U.S. and in their war-torn homeland.

But speaking generally of his community, he cast the Trump-Harris divide among Ukrainians as more complex than Democrats depict, arguing that neither party understands the gravity of the conflict.

“The Democratic Party hasn’t done enough to stop the war,” he said. “President Donald Trump, for me, would 99.9% of the time be the best choice. But in his speeches and interviews, it’s clear that he does not understand the problems in Ukraine.”

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