Orange County leaned slightly to the right this election cycle, but the story is in the details, especially when voting data is broken down by demographic groups.
While no racial group can be taken as a monolith, a recent survey by UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology indicated that the county’s White voters were most likely to vote for President-elect Donald Trump in the general election, giving him 56% of their support.
And when compared to the March primary and the 2020 presidential election, the poll found Asian voters moved more to the left and Latinos moved more toward the center this election.
Election data from the county provides a window into these trends.
For example, White voters in some of the county’s majority-White cities increased their support for Trump in 2024. In Newport Beach, where White residents make up about 75% of the population, Trump improved his vote share from 52.8% in 2020 to 55.6% this year. Similarly, Trump gained ground in San Clemente, where more than seven in 10 residents are White.
In Laguna Beach, where nearly 80% of residents are White, Trump gained more votes than in 2020, although the city still decisively supported Vice President Kamala Harris with 59.8% of the vote. In 2020, 62.3% of Laguna Beach voters went for Joe Biden over Trump.
Jon Gould, dean of UCI’s School of Social Ecology, which oversaw the survey, said a greater shift toward Trump for White voters could in part be explained by economic dissatisfaction, which the survey found was more of a Republican concern than Democrat.
Another factor could be voter turnout, Gould said.
“Turnout was down by a good chunk this time around,” he said. “It may well be that Democrats and Republicans had the same attitude they always had, it’s just the Democrats didn’t turn out.”
According to the ballot tracker by Political Data Inc., a political data firm that supplies voter data and that works for Democrats and progressives, Republican voter turnout in Orange County outpaced Democrats by about 6% countywide. Additionally, county data shows red-leaning cities like Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Yorba Linda, Villa Park and San Clemente, where the majority of residents are White, saw higher voter turnout compared to other parts of the county.
Meanwhile, data indicates that Latino voters in Orange County swung toward Trump, though the UCI poll found they generally shifted more toward the center overall. This trend was seen in predominantly Latino cities like Santa Ana (nearly 80% Latino), Anaheim (53.8%), and La Habra (59.3%).
In Santa Ana, 36.2% of voters backed Trump in the 2024 general election, up from 29.2% in 2020. Similarly, in Anaheim and La Habra, Trump increased his vote share by about 4.7%, though all three cities ultimately supported Harris overall.
“They’re becoming more disillusioned with both (Democratic and Republican) parties,” Gould said, citing GOP political consultant Mike Madrid, a founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “Latinos have fared worse economically than have others in America over the last four years, and they feel like no one’s looking out for their interests.”
For Latinos, economic challenges now outweigh concerns tied to the immigrant experience, Madrid argued, and addressing affordability and other economic issues could re-energize Latino voters.
The UCI poll also found that upward of 9% of Latinos said they did not vote for president, chose a different candidate than Harris or Trump or couldn’t remember their choice.
County election data shows lower voter turnout in much of Santa Ana and parts of Anaheim compared to other parts of the county as well as from the 2020 presidential election.
Asian voters, on the other hand, moved left in the 2024 election, according to the UCI poll — although election data shows these voters are, as a whole, to the right of Latino voters.
In Westminster, where more than 50% of residents are Asian — predominantly Vietnamese — Trump’s support slightly declined compared to 2020. And parts of Little Saigon trended slightly more blue in the general election compared to the primary.
But Gould noted the uncertainty surrounding this shift.
Little Saigon’s Vietnamese residents in particular, have displayed fluctuating voter behavior in the past eight years or so. Much of the community’s early ties to Republicanism came from the older generation, but as more second and third-generation Vietnamese Americans are reaching the voting age, experts have said those generational gaps are affecting the community’s vote.
“What’s really interesting is the question of how much farther, if at all, they’re going to keep moving left,” Gould said of the county’s Asian vote.
“Or is this a more permanent phenomenon as the Asian American community in Orange County is here for more and more generations and less tied to the politics of their predecessors?”
Gould said candidate-specific appeal — or lack thereof — may have influenced this trend.
“If there isn’t a candidate they’re particularly attracted to or repelled by in the next election, that dynamic may not hold,” he said.
The poll, conducted from Nov. 12-18 online, surveyed 838 Orange County voters and has a margin of error of 5.5%.
Leave a Reply