As politics shift, there’s a new ‘Trumpiest’ neighborhood in Seattle

For decades, the gated community of Broadmoor has been Seattle’s Republican redoubt.

The old-money country club near Madison Park has often been the only voting precinct to go red in a deep blue city. It was especially so back in the days of Reagan and the Bushes and Romney, before the MAGA movement ate the GOP.

But in the presidential primaries this past week, another part of town suddenly went all Trumpy and, in so doing, may be about to displace Broadmoor as Seattle’s most conservative spot.

The two neighborhoods couldn’t be more different — in wealth or history or demographic makeup.

The Chinatown International District gave a larger share of its votes to Donald Trump than any other Seattle neighborhood — by far. In an analysis by Seattle political consultant Ben Anderstone, the Chinatown ID emerged as the Trumpiest neighborhood in the city.

Grouping together all the votes cast for candidates in both parties, and looking at them by neighborhood, Trump was winning 32% of all the votes cast in the CID. In just one of its three precincts — the area surrounding the Uwajimaya grocery between South King Street and South Dearborn — Trump was winning the GOP primary by 95 votes to just 7, for challenger Nikki Haley.

In only one other Seattle neighborhood did Trump top 15% — that was Broadmoor. Haley, however, was beating Trump there.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden still got the most votes in every Seattle neighborhood, as the city is overwhelmingly Democratic. But only in the CID was Biden getting fewer than 50% of all the votes cast across both party primaries.

“What’s happening there is a massive change from a few years ago,” said Anderstone, of Progressive Strategies NW, a Seattle campaign consulting company for Democratic candidates.

Before Trump came along, the CID voted solidly Democratic, only about 12% Republican. Now it’s more than three times that. (Adding the votes for all Republican candidates together, it comes out to about 40% Republican.)

It’s not just the CID: “Voters of color are starting to vote Republican in unusual numbers.”

These vote totals and percentages are preliminary, as votes are still being counted. Anderstone’s precinct analysis is based on the ballots counted on election night, and so percentages will doubtless shift. His boundary for the CID stops at Interstate 5, so did not include Little Saigon to the east.

He also cautioned that a low-turnout primary, in which not much was at stake, won’t necessarily resemble the main event that takes place this fall.

Still, you can see in Broadmoor vs. the CID the two ships of the Republican Party, the old one and the new, passing. The wealthy, white and educated enclave of Broadmoor — call them Republicans who listen to NPR — has recoiled as the boorish Trump has taken over the party. With nowhere to go, they’re increasingly voting for Democrats.

The same thing has been happening with moderates and Republicans with college degrees out in the Eastside suburbs. It’s become hostile terrain for GOP candidates.

Meanwhile the CID, which trended a bit Republican in the 2022 election as well, has begun flirting with MAGA.

“Most Seattle neighborhoods are dominated by white people with college degrees,” Anderstone said. “That’s now the Democratic base. We have become the party of Wallingford.”

Only 2% of Wallingford’s total primary votes were going to Trump, compared with the CID’s 32%.

Anderstone found that the next Trumpiest Seattle neighborhoods were all in the south end — places like South Park, Brighton and New Holly.

Again, none of these areas are likely to go for any Republican in the fall, let alone Trump. In 2020, Trump didn’t win a single one of Seattle’s 1,000-plus precincts. Instead Anderstone is suggesting these primary votes are indicators, signals, of a realignment that’s happening to varying degrees across the country.

What would compel folks in the Chinatown International District to back Trump? Anderstone said it’s speculation to guess specific reasons, especially across a neighborhood that cast nearly 500 votes.

But polling and political science studies suggest that since Trump came on the scene in 2015, the telltale indicator for how you’re going to vote is now educational attainment. One party is seen, for better or worse, as lecturing and policy oriented. The other, due to Trump, is more of a cultural crusade, or a sort of free-form personality parade.

You can see this “diploma divide” in Washington’s primary voting. Trump did relatively poorly in places where everyone went to college, such as Mercer Island, where Haley was winning the GOP side of the primary despite dropping out the week before. Down in the less affluent, less college-going suburbs such as Federal Way, Trump was clobbering Haley by more than 50 percentage points.

Anderstone said that statewide, his firm also estimates about 40% of both Hispanic and Asian primary voters opted for the Republican ballot in this past week’s primary. That’s a big shift in party choice from eight years ago, when only around 20% of each group participated in the 2016 GOP primary; the rest selected Democratic ballots.

“It’s another sign that we may be starting to lose some working-class Latinos and working-class Asians,” he summed up, referring to Democrats.

In our state, the GOP’s loss of places like Broadmoor and the affluent suburbs is a much bigger deal, numerically, than the Democrats’ emerging troubles with voters of color. But these same shifts, and the balance between the two, may decide the entire presidential election in states like Georgia. There, Trump is struggling in Atlanta’s suburbs, but is apparently starting to make inroads among working-class Black voters.

Back in Seattle, the election maps will no doubt continue to display a sea of blue. But beneath that surface, the city contains multitudes.

“There’s quite a change happening,” Anderstone said. “The class realignment in politics is real.”

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