Orange County voters didn’t hand Donald Trump a victory in 2024, but they came closer than ever before.

Mirroring a rightward shift seen across the country in the most recent election, Trump lost the county to Vice President Kamala Harris by just 3 percentage points — a remarkable improvement from his showings in the county in past elections.

In 2020, he trailed now-President Joe Biden in the county by just over 9 points. And in 2016, when Trump stunned the political world with his first presidential win, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bested him in Orange County by 8.6 points.

This year, the president-elect garnered 47.1% of the county’s vote by deepening his base in conservative strongholds and marginally growing his appeal in blue precincts.

“It’s becoming clear that the politics of Orange County has begun to reflect the politics of the entire country,” said Dan Schnur, a former campaign consultant who teaches political messaging at UC Berkeley and USC.

“The trends we’re seeing here are very similar to what’s taken place throughout the U.S. over the last three presidential elections,” he said.

A political landscape in flux

The 2024 election map reveals a polarized but evolving Orange County.

In the race for the White House, for example, many of Trump’s strongholds from the past two presidential elections marginally turned redder. Meanwhile, he made modest but measurable gains in areas of historically Democratic communities, including Santa Ana and Anaheim.

The last time a Republican presidential candidate won Orange County was in 2012, when now-Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, defeated Barack Obama with 51.9% of the vote to the former president’s 45.6%.

For Trump, the bedrock of his support has largely been concentrated in the southern and northeastern parts of Orange County, areas with longstanding Republican leanings.

Trump has also done well in wide swaths of several wealthy coastal cities, like Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and San Clemente.

None of that really changed this year. Actually, Trump’s support in Orange County deepened in some areas already favorable to him. Areas in Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, for example, turned redder from 2016 and 2020 to this election.

“In Orange County, like in the rest of the country, red America is getting redder,” Schnur said.

What changed is that Trump made marginal gains in some suburban and urban areas where he previously struggled. Cities like Garden Grove flipped to Trump this year, giving him a narrow 2.6% edge over Harris after backing Biden by 1% in 2020.

Urban centers like Irvine, Santa Ana and central Anaheim remained Democratic strongholds, but several precincts shifted to a lighter blue this year. The three cities — Orange County’s most populous, each with over 300,000 residents — all swung toward Trump, even while voting for Harris overall.

In Santa Ana, a city where nearly 80% of residents are Latino, Trump’s vote share jumped by 7 percentage points compared to 2020. This year, Harris defeated Trump in Santa Ana 59.6% to 36.2%, while Biden dominated in 2020 with 67.6% of the vote to Trump’s 29.2%. When he first ran in 2016, Trump garnered just 20.2% of Santa Ana’s vote while Clinton secured 71.2%.

“There’s a noticeable trend among working-class voters, including voters from minority communities away from their historic home in the Democratic Party, to voting Republican in higher numbers than ever before,” Schnur said. “In much of the U.S., this shift has been fueled by young men from all ethnic backgrounds especially those who have not had the opportunity to go to college.”

Nationwide, Trump made gains with Latino voters, including in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and heavily Puerto Rican communities in eastern Pennsylvania. Trump was also the first Republican since 1988 to win Miami-Dade County in Florida, home to the one of the nation’s largest immigrant populations.

Schnur added that similar dynamics likely played out in Orange County.

Christian Grose, a pollster and political science professor at USC, explained that while Santa Ana, Irvine and Anaheim remain Democratic, the marginal shift toward Trump in these cities contributed to Orange County’s overall rightward movement in this year’s presidential election, along with bigger increases of support in cities where Trump already had strong backing in 2020.

Turnout may partly explain these shifts, especially among White voters, Grose said.

“I think in Orange County in particular … White voters tend to vote Republican more in most of these places,” he said. “You see a lot of the heavier White areas are supporting Trump more than in 2020, so I think some of that is turnout.”

Polling shows economic concerns also played a significant role. Grose said a pre-election survey by USC indicated that voters most concerned about inflation and economic conditions were more likely to back Trump. A post-election study from UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology echoed those findings.

“This was a very angry electorate, and Trump was one of many leaders around the world who benefited from those sentiments,” Schnur said. “Two groups of voters that were especially upset — Republicans for partisan reasons and minority communities because they felt that they were left behind.”

However, it’s unclear whether the shift is part of a lasting realignment or if it’s just a temporary reaction to the economy. There are also questions about whether Trump’s growing support in Orange County could boost down ballot Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections.

But Schnur said history isn’t on Trump’s side.

“History shows us that a president’s first midterm election is almost always an uphill fight for his party,” he said. “It’s entirely possible that Trump could reverse those trends, but there’s not much precedent for it.”

Election results further down the ballot this year revealed a truly purple county. While Trump made modest gains but still lost in Orange County, voters chose Republican and ex-Dodger Steve Garvey for the open U.S. Senate race over race winner Adam Schiff.

In the House races, Rep.-elect Dave Min, D-Irvine, successfully defended California’s 47th congressional seat, an Orange County district, against Republican Scott Baugh. However, Min’s margin of victory was slimmer this year than that of outgoing Rep. Katie Porter in 2022.

In two congressional districts that extend beyond Orange County — the 45th and 49th — Republican candidates won within the county, even though Democrats ultimately secured victories in the overall district results.

Notably, the CA-45 race, which includes Los Angeles County, was razor-thin, with Rep.-elect Derek Tran winning by just 653 votes — a significant shift from two years ago, when Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Seal Beach, won by nearly 7,000 votes, or a 5.1% margin.

And in the southern Orange County portion of CA-49, Republican Matt Gunderson had a much bigger lead over Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, 55.4% of the vote to Levin’s 44.6%. But Levin won with 52% of the vote in the entire district, which includes San Diego County.

According to election results certified by California’s secretary of state last week, 654,815 Orange County voters backed Trump, while 691,731 went for Harris.

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