Ariela Lopez

A week after Donald Trump was elected to a second term, finalized citywide results show a slight rightward shift in the Elm City even as New Haveners still largely voted against the president-elect. 

The November 2024 election, in which New Haveners also reelected Sen. Chris Murphy, Rep. Rosa DeLauro and state legislators, saw a dip in citywide turnout since the past two presidential elections, when Trump was also on the ticket. Across the city, Trump saw his largest turnout yet — 6,626 New Haveners voted to usher in the 45th president’s second term, up from 6,146 in 2020 and 4,540 in 2016. 

Nevertheless, the Elm City remained overwhelmingly blue, with 80.5 percent of voters casting their ballots for the Democratic ticket.

“While New Haveners made a different choice, Donald Trump is now our president-elect,” New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, a Democrat, wrote in a statement the day after Election Day. “These results are disappointing, and I believe a true setback for our country on its long and winding road towards a more perfect union.”

The News mapped New Haven’s election results.

Eastern Elm City is most Republican

Like in 2020, some of the most politically diverse districts in the city included Quinnipiac Meadows, the Annex and Morris Cove. Trump’s share of the vote, however, was less than 41 percent in Ward 18, the most Republican of these eastern districts, handing the Democratic ticket a majority in every ward.

New Haven’s East Shore area, which covers the Annex and Morris Cove, has the city’s greatest share of white residents, per the latest census results. Nationally, 56 percent of white voters supported Trump. 

Meanwhile, Trump saw his lowest percentages in Beaver Hills, Dixwell and Downtown.

City swings — slightly — right

Across the city, Trump won higher percentages in New Haven in 2024 than in 2020. Ward 30, which covers West Rock and West Hills, and Ward 19, which represents Prospect Hill, are the only two wards in which Trump won smaller margins this year than in his previous presidential bid.

Wards 11 and 12, the Elm City’s northeastern districts, saw the largest increase in the share of voters marking their ballots for Trump — about a 9 percent shift rightward in both wards. 

Yale turnout up amid citywide dip

Around 4,000 fewer New Haven voters turned out in 2024 than in 2020, when Trump lost his first reelection bid to lame duck President Joe Biden. 

In 2024, Morris Cove — Ward 18 — and Westville — Wards 25 and 26 — saw the highest turnout rates in the city. But turnout rates in each of those wards were still lower than their 2020 levels.

Beaver Hills’ Ward 29 faced the most drastic drop in turnout, a more than 30 percentage point decline from 74.6 percent of voters casting ballots in 2020 to only 41.7 percent voting this year. Ward 29 Alder Brian Wingate told the News he found these results unexpected.

“I think that people were almost exhausted with politics,” Wingate told the News. “I was out there all day trying to force the people to come out. I was disappointed in the turnout for Ward 29. I thought the numbers were better.”

Usually, Wingate plans voter registration efforts through an annual August block party in his district. This year, he said, the party did not happen. Wingate told the News that the party will return in 2025.

Wingate pointed to the brevity of Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign — only 107 days from Biden’s campaign suspension and endorsement to Election Day — as a hit to her chances in the race that made Trump more appealing to some voters. 

Meanwhile, Ward 1, which covers most of Yale’s residential colleges and other student-dense parts of downtown, saw a huge jump in turnout from its 2020 levels. In 2020, only 173 individuals voted in Ward 1 — 23.8 percent of eligible voters.

But in 2024, 398 residents voted in the ward — 64.1 percent of eligible voters. Alex Moore ’26, the president of Yale Votes: A Student Initiative, a nonpartisan campus organization that aims to increase turnout among University students, said that he anticipated the increase. He pointed out that the 2020 election was held during the pandemic, when many students did not live on campus and a nationwide push to vote by mail could have encouraged many to vote absentee in their home state.

“This time around, mail voting wasn’t emphasized nearly as much and many students didn’t make a plan to vote until it was too late to vote by mail, and so lots of students ended up voting on Election Day or in the days before,” Moore said, describing 2024.

Moore does not believe that Yale Votes’ work to increase engagement during the election can claim credit for the increase in turnout because the statistics could merely indicate a shift in where — not whether — students voted.

New Haveners more likely to vote early if they live near the polling site

The November 2024 general election marked the third phase of Connecticut’s early voting rollout — and the first general election — since the state first implemented early voting in the April 2020 presidential primary. In total, 8,022 New Haveners cast their ballots early, representing around 21 percent of all voters in the election. About 1,000 more participated in same-day voter registration during an early voting day.

Early voting election moderators called the early voting numbers “tremendous” and expressed surprise at how many New Haveners chose to cast their ballots before Election Day. The city offered 14 days of early voting, all located in a meeting room on the second floor of City Hall. Throughout the two weeks, lines of up to two hours occasionally formed.

42.8 percent of voters in Ward 7, which covers Ninth Square and much of New Haven’s downtown area,  chose to cast their ballots through early voting — the highest proportion in the city. On Election Day, Ward 7 voters are assigned to vote in the Hall of Records at 200 Orange St., which is connected to City Hall, making the early voting location no less convenient to these voters than their Election Day polling place.

Unsurprisingly, other wards with high early voting turnout were those adjacent to Ward 7. Meanwhile, voters in the city’s outskirts — Morris Cove in the Southeast and West Rock in the Northwest — largely chose to vote on Election Day.

The Hill and Fair Haven also saw low proportions of early voters, though they are geographically closer to City Hall.

38,097 New Haveners voted in the 2024 presidential election. 60,203 New Haveners are eligible to vote, according to the Registrar of Voters.