It’s hard to imagine two political candidates occupying more distant points on the political spectrum than Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But with parts of Ocasio-Cortez’s solidly blue district in New York City going for both the extreme-right Republican president-elect and the House of Representatives’ most outspoken progressive, the congresswoman took to Instagram on Sunday night to ask her followers what inspired them to vote for both.
“It’s real simple… trump and you care for the working class,” one replied.
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“Trump is going to get us the money and let’s men have a voice. You’re brilliant and have amazing passion!” another said.
“I feel like Trump and you are both real,” wrote a third.
In 2020, Trump won just 22 percent of Ocasio-Cortez’s district, which covers parts of the Bronx and Queens. In 2024, he won 33 percent, the New York Post reported.
With Ocasio-Cortez winning 68.9 percent of the vote and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris winning 65 percent—nearly a four-point difference—logic dictated that at least some of those voters had pulled the lever for both Ocasio-Cortez and Trump.
Digging into precinct data showed that the Queens borough of Corona, for example, went for both the Republican billionaire and the Democratic working-class families advocate.
During a live story on her personal Instagram account, Ocasio-Cortez described districts like hers, where Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives outperformed the Democrat at the top of the ticket, as “a very rich environment for us to dig into.”
“As a matter of fact, let’s do this right now. “If you voted for Donald Trump and me, I would really love to hear from you,” she said, adding a section for her followers to respond directly to the story.
“I feel that you are both outsiders compared to the rest of DC, and less ‘establishment,’” one replied.
Others said they voted against Harris because they blamed President Joe Biden for not ending the war in Gaza.
“[Trump] speaks of war as something that is bad,” one person wrote. “Democrats became the party that supports war.”
AOC/Trump voters are of course a small sub-set of the electorate, and some Democrats might have felt it was safe to cast a “protest vote” against the war since New York is a solidly liberal state, for now.
But if even some of Ocasio-Cortez’s fans—and not just voters, but people who like her enough to follow her personal Instagram account—are throwing their support behind Trump, it’s another sign that Democrats have a lot of work to do.
Ocasio-Cortez apparently isn’t wasting any time. On Monday, she asked her followers a series of follow-up questions.
Starting with: “Trump voters: What places/accounts do you follow for info/news?”
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