When President-elect Donald Trump leaned into rumors that Haitian migrants in the Ohio city of Springfield were eating pets, some mainstream media outlets predicted the move could alienate loyal Republican voters.
A September Politico piece, for example, noted that Trump won Clark County, which includes Springfield, with more than 60 percent of the vote in 2020. It stated that Trump's rhetoric had turned off "even some Trump-backing Republicans" and served "as a distraction from a more coherent message on immigration." A Newsweek piece went so far as to suggest that backlash over Trump's comments "could influence the results of November's race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in Florida, a state which has a Haitian American population of around 500,000."
It's true that Trump has historically carried Clark County, winning it with 57 percent of the vote in 2016 and 61 percent of the vote in 2020. But Springfield, the county's largest city, is no bastion of conservatism—in fact, it usually goes the opposite way. Hillary Clinton carried Springfield by roughly 2,800 votes in 2016, a Washington Free Beacon review of election results found. Four years later, Joe Biden won the city by a slightly lower margin, roughly 1,800 votes. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance didn't fare much better during his 2022 Senate campaign, losing Springfield by 1,300 votes to Democrat Tim Ryan.
That changed last week when Trump carried Springfield by a razor-thin margin of roughly 150 votes out of more than 20,000 cast. The flip helped drive up Trump's margin in Clark County to its highest level: Trump won 64 percent of the county vote this time around, the highest margin for a Republican presidential candidate in at least four decades.
-
Election results from 2016 to 2024 in Springfield, Ohio.
The results are a demonstration of how the immigration issue, for all the media histrionics, redounded to Trump's benefit. In Springfield, it helped deliver working class voters away from the Democratic Party and toward Trump, reflecting the strain mass immigration has inflicted on the city in recent years.
Once a flourishing manufacturing town that employed some 13,000 factory laborers in the late 1990s, Springfield was hit hard by the subsequent decline in blue-collar jobs. From 1999 to 2014, its median income decreased 27 percent, the largest drop of any U.S. metropolitan area. The city lost half its manufacturing jobs in the 2000s, and an effort to revitalize its downtown in the 2010s did not bring economic recovery.
At the same time, the city launched a "Welcome Springfield" initiative aimed at making it "a more appealing place for immigrants." By 2024, as many as 20,000 Haitian immigrants had arrived, swelling Springfield's population to nearly 80,000.
Many of the migrants received Section 8 housing vouchers, and rent in the city rose faster than the national average, the Free Beacon reported in September. Residents spoke of a city in crisis, with the explosion in population overwhelming social services.
"They’re not really bothering nobody, but I was down at the food pantry and had to wait two-and-a-half hours," Springfield resident Kelly Hall said at the time. "It felt like there were 3,000 Haitians in line. You used to be able to fill your cart up, now you’re lucky if you get one thing."
At least one mainstream reporter, the Washington Post's Danielle Paquette, has acknowledged Trump's win in Springfield. Still, her Nov. 7 piece—headlined, "The Haitians of Springfield, a Trump campaign target, brace for his presidency"—downplayed the win. "Election results show that Trump won Springfield," Paquette wrote, "but by a narrow margin of fewer than 150 votes of the roughly 20,000 cast." Paquette did not include Trump's 2016 and 2020 margins in Springfield, nor did she note that Trump improved his standing in Clark County.
Local outlets have also downplayed the result. In its own Nov. 7 piece on Springfield's reaction to Trump's win, the Columbus Dispatch argued that the "negative attention focused on Springfield did little to move the needle for either party in Tuesday's election," citing Trump's "slightly" improved margin in Clark County as proof.
Haitian migrants in Springfield enjoy Temporary Protected Status granted by the Biden-Harris administration, meaning they are legal residents but not U.S. citizens. Trump has vowed to revoke that status for migrants across the country.