Trump Bites the Hand That Voted for Him
He couldn’t have won in 2024 without naturalized Americans—yet now he’s threatening their citizenship status.
DONALD TRUMP’S LATEST ASSAULT ON IMMIGRANTS—threatening to “denaturalize” U.S. citizens who were born in other countries—is an affront to human rights and American values. It’s also a betrayal of the six million naturalized Americans who voted for him last year. Without their ballots, he wouldn’t be president. And if they turn against him, his party will be out of power.
Trump won the 2024 election in large part because nonwhite Americans, relative to their voting decisions in 2020, moved significantly in his direction. Pew’s survey of validated voters found that black, Latino, and Asian-American voters shifted toward Trump by 16, 22, and 23 percentage points, respectively. In the national exit poll commissioned by CNN and other networks, blacks slipped just a bit, but Asian Americans shifted toward Trump by 12 points, and Latinos shifted by 27 points. In AP’s VoteCast survey, blacks and Latinos both moved toward Trump by 16 points. The numbers vary among these surveys, but the overall picture is the same: Trump did better among these groups than he had four years earlier.
What’s interesting about the Pew survey, in particular, is that it didn’t just analyze voters by ethnicity. It also specifically identified naturalized citizens. In the Pew sample, white, Asian, and Latino naturalized voters moved toward Trump by 31, 25, and 22 points, respectively. The shift wasn’t primarily about voters changing their minds; it was about who showed up. Pew found that two-thirds of the naturalized citizens who voted in 2020 but not 2024 had been Biden voters. Conversely, most of the naturalized citizens who voted in 2024 but not 2020 backed Trump.
These shifts were highly consequential. Pew found that 9 percent of voters in 2024 were naturalized citizens, and between the two elections, naturalized voters moved toward Trump by 17 percentage points. When you do the math, that movement accounts for a transfer of slightly more than 1.5 percent of the overall electorate. Trump won the popular vote by slightly less than 1.5 percent. So there’s a case to be made, albeit with plenty of caveats, that naturalized Americans delivered Trump’s re-election.
If these voters expected Trump to help them and not persecute them as president, they made a grievous mistake. He hasn’t just launched a massive operation to deport illegal immigrants; he has halted legal immigration from nineteen countries, suspended all consideration of asylum applications, and threatened to revoke the citizenship of naturalized Americans.
IT’S TRAGIC THAT THESE PEOPLE empowered the man who has now betrayed them. But the story isn’t over. What happens if they punish him? What happens if they turn against the GOP?
We don’t have data on how naturalized citizens have voted since 2024. But we do have racial and ethnic data for the 2025 elections. And it indicates a big backlash against Republicans.
In Virginia, black and Latino voters shifted 13 and 15 points, respectively, away from the GOP. That is, their margin of support for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee (Abigail Spanberger) over the Republican nominee (Winsome Earle-Sears) was significantly higher than their margin of support for Kamala Harris over Trump.
In New Jersey, the shift was more pronounced. By margins of 28 and 24 points, respectively, blacks and Latinos voted more strongly for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee (Mikie Sherrill) over the Republican nominee (Jack Ciattarelli) than they had voted for Harris over Trump.
For Asian Americans, state-by-state breakdowns in 2024 weren’t published. But in Virginia, the one state that was polled in 2021, exit polls indicate a similar change from 2021 to 2025. By a margin of 26 points, Asian Americans voted more decisively for Spanberger over Sears than they had for the 2021 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Terry McAuliffe, against then-GOP nominee (and now-Governor) Glenn Youngkin.
These shifts were decisive. In both of this year’s gubernatorial elections, Republicans won the white vote. But nonwhite voters accounted for about 30 percent of the electorate, and these voters, relative to their decisions in 2024, turned against the GOP by 14 points in Virginia and 22 points in New Jersey. The result was a wipeout, even in Virginia, where Republicans had won four years earlier.
So if Trump thinks he can strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship, he’d better move fast. The backlash from nonwhite voters has already cost his party two governorships. If it continues, and if naturalized voters who supported him in 2024 turn against him, Republicans will lose a lot more.