Donald Trump may have won New York state by a large margin Tuesday, but the Manhattan billionaire’s biggest margin of victory may be in the Big Apple’s Staten Island.
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Trump led opponents Ted Cruz and John Kasich with 81.93 percent support with over 20,000 votes, according to Associated Press estimates.
Kasich came in with 10.21 percent, and Cruz at 7.86 percent.
While Trump leads in most counties across the Empire State, he lost to Kasich in his home city, Manhattan, by less than 100 votes. Though Manhattan’s population of over 1.5 million dwarfs that of Staten Island (474,000), about the same number of Republican voted in both location on Tuesday.
The 58-square-mile island has long been known as a Republican stronghold in a city that is overwhelmingly liberal. Trump campaigned in Staten Island over the weekend. “Staten Island is a great place,” Trump said. “We have safety on Staten Island. We have great police, great people on Staten Island and I know it so well.”
At the Staten Island Republican Party’s Lincoln Day brunch event, the county’s GOP chairman, John Antoniello said Trump has a “wide following.”
“We could have sold twice as many tickets as we did,” Antoniello said. “These are his people. Staten Island is a real base of support for him.”
Trump does not own property on Staten Island, according to the AP, but had worked on the island many years ago in a development for his father’s business.
