Donald Trump has plans to upend families, neighborhoods, businesses, livelihoods, and lives — from his deportation agenda, to his calls for abusive policing and restrictions on abortion, to his attacks on trans rights.
That should be an urgent call to action, but since the election, pundits and politicos have wrung their hands over Trump’s surprising gains in New York. Just how deferential to Trump do voters want New York’s leaders to be?
Let’s not misread the election swing: Now is the very time for New York leaders to fight to protect our freedoms.
A closer look makes clear New Yorkers do not want what’s going to come from an emboldened Trump.
Let’s start with what should be obvious. Trump made gains in New York, but a million more voters still rejected him, losing him our state by double-digits. That means millions more New Yorkers didn’t sign up for the MAGA agenda. Most still expect our state to resist his cruelest impulses.
Take the success of New York’s Equal Rights Amendment, or Proposal 1, at the ballot this November. It protects abortion in the state Constitution and expands anti-discrimination protections to include ethnicity, national origin, gender, age, and disability. It passed by a landslide, outperforming both presidential candidates despite millions in attack ads trying to demonize trans people and immigrants.
Not only does this show most New Yorkers still want to expand rights and protections — including for immigrants and trans people — but it also shows there are even many Trump voters who do too.
We saw these contradictions in battleground New York last year. In the spring our organization conducted research in two representative battleground congressional districts. We found Republicans outrunning Democrats. Even so, we found majorities favored investment in affordable housing, mental health treatment, quality schools, and good jobs in order to prevent crime, instead of relying merely on arrest and jail — Trump’s preferred and really only suggestions.
Strong majorities in these districts backed pathways to citizenship and recognized the important contributions of immigrants to our communities. All of this runs counter to the red meat MAGA message.
There is also evidence Trump votes aren’t necessarily what they seem. America’s Voice has collected national research showing that, while in theory support for mass deportations has grown, this seems only to be the case when people are asked about deportations alone, without alternatives. Support for mass deportations falls when people are also asked about a pathway to citizenship and border enforcement as an alternative. Support for mass deportations also falls when people learn more about them.
What that research, our battleground polling, and post-election research from the Vera Institute suggests is that voters feel, by and large, only Trump and Republicans are speaking to the issue of immigration. People understandably think the immigration system is broken and are hungry for action. They may not ultimately want what Trump promises, but his plan was the only suggestion they felt was on offer. Democrats echoing tough-on-immigration and crime messaging didn’t break through.
A binary choice between two candidates — one viewed as representing change like Trump, and the other as representing the status quo like Kamala Harris — obscures a good number of voter preferences.
In fact this fall, Fwd.us found voter support for criminal justice reform remains strong, and that candidates can win voters — especially young voters and Black voters — by leaning into reform. Post-election research by the Human Rights Campaign shows a strong majority of Americans wants LGBTQ people to have anti-discrimination protections, most don’t want government interfering with gender-affirming care, and anti-trans attack ads this election were ultimately ineffective.
All of this complicates the prevailing but misplaced political narrative that New York is getting MAGA-ier.
Instead, New York leaders would do well to work harder with those of us fighting for access to abortion care, immigrants’ rights, LGBTQ rights, and privacy protections, and demanding a world that offers our communities more than just police and jails. We’re not only fighting for what is right (and needed more urgently now given Trump’s plans), but also for what the voting New Yorker actually wants.
As Donald Trump begins to carry out his chaotic and cruel agenda, New Yorkers won’t like what they see. New York leaders will be presiding over history. By fighting back, they would not only defend our freedoms, but they could also win voters who are eager for officials to govern — and lead — like our future is on the line.
Krueger & Lieberman are the chief communications officer and executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.