Donald Trump made significant gains in working-class neighborhoods in Hawaii, where voters hardest hit by inflation and rising costs, propelled the president-elect to a 20-year high among Republican presidential candidates.

It mirrors what’s happening across the country, where Trump leads the popular vote by more than 3 million. In Hawaii, Trump posted his biggest gains in eight years in neighborhoods like Waipahu and Kalihi, a Civil Beat analysis of turnout data shows.

“He was really talking about things that a working person and a family person thinks about when you’re talking about the effects of inflation, the economy, crime and a lot of the big issues that affect the average person,” Joel Borgquist, a Republican political strategist, said. said.

Those were areas Kamala Harris failed to hit hard enough during her truncated campaign, Borgquist said.

“The person trying to make ends meet doesn’t care who Beyonce endorsed,” he said.

Hawaii is often considered a deep blue state, but data shows that most areas outside urban centers are deep purple.

while Harris dominated the vote in Hawaiithe data shows that Trump has gained ground. In 2016, 29% of Hawaii voters voted for Trump. This rose to 34% in 2020 and 37% this year.

It’s the best showing by a Republican candidate in the Aloha State since 2004, when George W. Bush won 45 percent of the vote.

Support for Trump saw a big boost across the state. Precinct-level votes for the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 rarely exceeded those of the Democrats. This year, votes for Trump outnumbered those for Harris in nearly two dozen of Hawaii’s 250 polling places.

Niihau voted almost entirely for Trump this year. Harris received just one vote there, compared to Trump’s 22.

Some of the biggest increases in turnout for Trump came in Kalihi and Waipahu.

They have somewhat similar demographic profiles: Both communities have a high percentage of multigenerational households, similar annual household incomes, and both have a preponderance of people working in service industry and other managerial jobs, according to U.S. Census data.

In House District 30, which runs from Kapalama Canal in the east to Middle Street in the west, Trump won 47.4 percent of the vote, an increase of more than 20 percentage points from 2016.

Trump made similar gains in House District 36, which covers much of the area bordered by the freeway and Farrington Highway in Waipahu. Trump won 47.2 percent of the vote this year, up from 28 percent eight years ago.

On average, 7.7 percent of Hawaii’s households are considered multigenerational, which the Census Bureau defines as having three or more generations in a household. In Kalihi, that number is more than twice the state average of 19 percent.

Parts of Waipahu are even higher, over 20%.

The median annual household income in Kalihi varies widely, between $51,000 and $143,000. It’s slightly higher in Waipahu, where annual income ranges from $76,000 to $176,000.

Wendy Balidoy lived in Kalihi and now owns several businesses in nearby Liliha. She serves as the Hawaii Republican Party chair for the West Honolulu districts, which includes Kalihi.

She described Kalihi residents as “the working hands of America.”

“This is the person who is having a really hard time, working paycheck to paycheck,” she said.

In addition to the economic concerns that began during the pandemic, she said residents are also dealing with a growing number of homeless people in the area and concerns about crime. She owns a coffee shop in Liliha and remembers workers having to clean human feces from a parking lot or dealing with broken storefronts.

It’s a perennial problem in Hawaii that Balidoy believes incumbent Democrats haven’t done enough to address, especially when it comes to strengthening the mental health resources available to people experiencing homelessness.

The backlash against local Democrats has grown over the past four years, and the GOP has increased its numbers in both the House and Senate. Republican candidates in this election did well in parts of the state, such as Ewa Beach and Waianae, that already skewed Republican or had a history of electing conservative candidates.

However, districts that saw large increases in turnout for Trump still elected Democrats back to the Legislature.

Voters in Kalihi’s House District 30 overwhelmingly elected Democrat Shirley Templo to the state House. Templo had 64.8 percent of the vote to 28.9 percent of GOP candidate Premier Azinga.

Nationally, Democrats considered more moderate have been successful even in red districts. During the primary Templo picked up an upset win over Sonny Ganaden, one of the few progressives in the House.

The district representing Waipahu’s central neighborhoods has never elected a Republican representative to Parliament. This year, the GOP did not field a challenger for incumbent Rep. Rachele Lamosao.

And Democrats are doing better in wealthier, older neighborhoods, some of which were previously considered Republican bastions.

Harris had nearly 70% of the vote in the 18th House District, which returned Republican Representative Gene Ward to the House for 18 consecutive years. Trump actually lost 3 percentage points in the district.

Similarly, support for Trump in the precincts that make up most of Kailua has fallen from 35 percent in 2016 to 31 percent this year. The district was represented by former Republican Rep. Cynthia Thielen, who endorsed Democrat Natalia Hussey-Burdick before leaving office in 2022.