Skip to content

Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania Favored Biden over Trump

Over 80% of Philadelphia’s voters chose President-elect Joe Biden in the 2020 general election, but as analysts scrutinized the results, they were surprised to also see increased support for President Trump.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Trump picked up about 127,000 votes in the typically Democratic city, compared with his 100,000 votes in 2016.

Latino Decisions poll

Latino Decisions, a polling company focusing on Latinx issues, checked in with Hispanic voters in Pennsylvania right before the presidential election. They found that 70% of Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania supported Joe Biden, and only 24% supported Trump.

This was only slightly different from the overall Hispanic vote, which was 69% for Biden and 26% for Trump.

Some additional results from this poll:

  • 69% of Pennsylvania’s Puerto Rican voters say Joe Biden really cares about  voters like them, while only 26% feel that Donald Trump cares.
  • 49% said that Trump didn’t care about them, and 22% said he was hostile to voters like them.
  • 66% believed that Trump’s choices about the pandemic led to more deaths than necessary, while only 30% believed that Trump was not at fault.
  • 66% believed that racism has gotten worse in America over the past four years.

Philadelphia voted

With all the votes counted, Philadelphia showed a higher voter turnout than the city has seen since 1984. More than 749,000 people voted, for a 68% turnout.

The city of Philadelphia accounted for 20% of the votes for Biden in Pennsylvania. Biden got 79% to 95% of all the votes in parts of Philadelphia with large percentages of Hispanic voters, including Puerto Ricans.

Philadelphia’s 7th district, is home to the city’s historic Puerto Rican neighborhood. According to El Nuevo Dia, Biden won 83% of the vote in this neighborhood. Compare with 2016, however, Trump doubled the votes he collected. This vote totaled about 1,000.

Matt Barreto, co-founder of Latino Decisions, told El Nuevo Dia that 77% of Latinos favored Biden in Philadelphia County, The pollsters estimate that 63% of those voters may have been Puerto Rican.

Suburban counties around Philadelphia also mobilized for Biden. Observers claim that the Democrats got out the vote much more effectively in 2020 than they had in 2016, with many nonvoters from earlier elections showing up.

Pennsylvania results

Trump got 372,000 more votes in 2020 than in 2016, but it wasn’t enough to win Pennsylvania. Biden, a Pennsylvania native, carried the state by more than 65,000 votes.

Leave a Reply

Subscribe to our Magazine, and enjoy exclusive benefits

Subscribe to the online magazine and enjoy exclusive benefits and premiums.

[wpforms id=”133″]