As we’ve been instructed for decades, the key to Republicans doing better among immigrant voters is to let in more immigrants. Thus, Donald Trump in 2020, while he may have done better among whites because of their innate xenophobic racism, was swept away by the righteous wrath of immigrants.

Except … the opposite happened.

From the New York Times:

Immigrant Neighborhoods Shifted Red as the Country Chose Blue
By Weiyi Cai and Ford Fessenden Dec. 20, 2020

Across the United States, many areas with large populations of Latinos and residents of Asian descent, including ones with the highest numbers of immigrants, had something in common this election: a surge in turnout and a shift to the right, often a sizable one.

The pattern was evident in big cities like Chicago and New York, in California and Florida, and along the Texas border with Mexico, according to a New York Times analysis of voting in 28,000 precincts in more than 20 cities.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. beat President Trump in almost all of these places en route to his record popular vote victory. But the red shifts, along with a wave of blue shifts in Republican and white areas, have scrambled the conventional wisdom of American politics and could presage a new electoral calculus for the parties.

Thousands of new voters across the country turned out in areas with significant numbers of Latinos and residents of Asian descent — populations whose participation in past elections has lagged. And over all, Mr. Trump, whose policies and remarks were widely expected to alienate immigrants and voters of color, won the lion’s share of the additional turnout.

It’s almost as if immigrants don’t tend to be the genteel, cultured NPR listeners of Stuff White People Like legend, but tend to be somewhat crass, materialistic, and on the make, like Trump himself.

Keep in mind that because Trump didn’t do well in 2016 in these neighborhoods, it was easier for Trump to show a bigger percentage gain than for Biden to show it.

Due to the huge McKinley vs. Bryan-level turnout of 2020, Biden’s vote totals were higher than Hillary’s in all of these cities except Miami, where he was down 6% in Latino/Asian neighborhoods, and Philadelphia, where Biden was down 17% in those neighborhoods (perhaps in part due to the big BLM riots the week before the election).

It’s important to keep in mind that Trump mostly got beat among Latinos and Asians in 2020, but slightly less so than in 2016.

Nate Silver makes the good point that a common mistake in election analysis is to assume a newly identified trend will always continue. If Trump did better among immigrants in 2020 than in 2016, then by 2032, the GOP candidate will do great among them. Well, perhaps. Perhaps not, though. It’s especially dangerous for Republicans to conclude that this one election trend proves that Republicans should bring in a lot more immigrants, because Real Soon Now they’ll be voting majority Republican.

For one thing, Trump is, to say the least, a unique personality. A more generic Republican candidate might lack the appeal of Trump.

With only a few exceptions, all of these areas continued to be Democratic strongholds, giving more votes to Mr. Biden by substantial margins. But in a divided American electorate, any shift can be consequential. Already the shift appears to have changed outcomes in a number of congressional races.

Here’s Cook County, home to Chicago. Mr. Biden won it by 50 percentage points over Mr. Trump. But these red arrows on the map show precincts that have shifted right since 2016 — there are 2,158 of them, compared with the 1,508 that have shifted left.

In particular, Chicago precincts with a lot of immigrants saw more people turning out than in 2016, and many shifted to Mr. Trump.

In this map of Cook County, highly immigrant neighborhoods are shown in yellow. Red arrows pointing to the right say the precinct swung more toward Trump from 2016 to 2020. This does not say Trump won, just that he did better. Blue arrows pointing to left indicate Biden did better than Hillary. (In non-immigrant precincts, the arrows are faded out but still visible. Trump 2020 did better than Trump 2016 in much of the city, but got killed even worse among Lakefront Liberals.)

Almost all of the precincts with a majority Latino population showed an increase in enthusiasm for the president … … including ones with tens of thousands of residents of Mexican descent. Mr. Trump received 45 percent more votes in these areas than four years ago. Mr. Biden still won, but the number of people who voted Democratic did not increase over 2016.

It was not just Latino areas. In a belt of suburbs north of Chicago — precincts that are home to South Asian, Arab and Eastern European immigrants — there was also higher turnout, and a shift to Mr. Trump.

In Chinatown, Mr. Trump’s vote increased by 34 percent over 2016, while Mr. Biden received 6 percent fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Mr. Biden still won in precincts with a majority of residents of Asian descent, but the Democratic margin of victory fell 12 percentage points.

Chicago’s showcase downtown shopping areas were sacked twice this year by BLM mostly peaceful protesters. Immigrants didn’t seem to appreciate that.

Meanwhile, areas with more modest red shifts tended to be predominantly Black, with few immigrants. Mr. Biden received fewer votes than Mrs. Clinton in these areas while Mr. Trump’s vote increased slightly.

The Times analysis also shows that in urban and suburban precincts with the highest proportion of white voters, turnout also rose steeply, but Mr. Trump’s margin declined in those places, compared with 2016. It also fell in Republican precincts: In 3,600 of the 5,000 precincts where he beat Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump’s margin in 2020 was lower than it was in 2016.

But even as Mr. Trump lost ground in white and Republican areas in and around cities — ultimately leading to his election loss — he gained new votes in immigrant neighborhoods.

Here’s NYC:

Areas where Dalton School students live shifted even more Democratic, and Staten Island went slightly more Democratic, but the nonwhite parts of NYC voted a little more Republican.

Trump in 2020 was the Stuff White People Don’t Like candidate.

Indeed, in Maricopa County in Arizona, home to Phoenix, the overall turnout even in Latino precincts that shifted right was so large that it added far more votes to Mr. Biden’s totals than Mr. Trump’s, and was instrumental in turning the state blue, in spite of the shift. …

Why did Trump do worse among suburban whites and better among urban immigrants?

Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, said he worried before the election that Democrats’ focus on racial justice issues came at the expense of outreach about easing the lives of hard-pressed workers.

“In general, it suggests that Democrats’ theory of the case — that their electoral problems were all about race rather than class — was incorrect,” he said.

Probably immigrants were hit harder by Democratic-backed lockdowns, since many don’t have Work From Home jobs.