Mass Defection: Somali Voters in Minnesota Abandon Democrats, Rally Behind Trump

Many Somali voters from Minnesota, the largest Somali community in the United States, are leaving the Democratic Party and declaring their support for Donald Trump. Economic concerns and social issues, particularly LGBTQ policies in local schools, are driving this shift.

Salman Fiqy, a Somali immigrant who transitioned from Democrat to Republican, highlights the trend, noting that as Somali Muslims become increasingly middle-class, their cultural conservatism aligns more with Republican values. Many Somali voters are prioritizing economic policies and express disillusionment with Democrats’ neglect of their community. This shift is part of a broader increase in Republican support among voters of color, reflecting changing priorities within Minnesota’s Somali community.

Actually This is good for Somali People if trump wins we can ride on his victory 😉 pic.twitter.com/EvuA0jXkxL

— Galayr🐪 🇸🇴 🤝 🇺🇸 (@ina_galayr) July 28, 2024

Somalis for Trump say, "We live in Minneapolis. We're against Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN)." pic.twitter.com/KGyKntxrd4

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) July 28, 2024

This is part of the contingent of Somali Trump supporters here in St. Cloud. Some of them will be seated behind the former president on the stage later tonight. pic.twitter.com/p9fABXYcfP

— John Croman (@JohnCroman) July 27, 2024

“Some Somali voters say economy, social issues are driving them to vote for Trump”, by Joey Peters, Sahan Journal, July 15, 2024

Economic issues and LGBTQ issues in local schools are prompting more Somali voters to choose Republican candidates, say several Somali community members.

Salman Fiqy arrived in Minnesota on a historic day — January 20, 2009, when Barack Obama took office as president for the first time.

Salman, who was 19 at the time, was excited. 

“I wasn’t a conservative then — I was a Democrat,” he said. 

That changed throughout the years, as Salman obtained a biology degree from Minnesota State University-Mankato, pursued a career in medical consulting and started a family. By the time Donald Trump was president, Salman, a 35-year-old Burnsville resident, had become conservative. 

Salman, who is Somali, believes this trend is gaining traction in his community. That’s because of two things, he argues: Somalis in Minnesota are becoming increasingly middle class and, as Muslims, have always been culturally conservative. Many Muslim voters are also fed up with Democrats taking their votes for granted, Salman said. 

“They pimp our vote without giving us anything back,” he said of Democrats. “If you speak to the Muslim community now, they say, ‘This time, I can try conservative.’”

His story isn’t unusual. A day after President Joe Biden’s much maligned performance in the June 27 debate against former President Donald Trump, several East African patrons at the 24 Somali Mall in south Minneapolis expressed support and enthusiasm for Trump. 

Many voters say they’re willing to look past Trump’s previous anti-Muslim rhetoric and temporary ban on travel from six Muslim-majority countries, including Somalia, during his administration. Immigration from Somalia dropped during Trump’s administration; the United States went from granting 1,797 visas to immigrants from Somalia in 2016 to 464 visas in 2019. 

“I used to vote Democrat,” said Mawlid Duale, a truck and Uber driver who is supporting Trump. “But all the issues changed. Everything.”

The idea that voters of color are abandoning Democrats in favor of Republican candidates is a familiar narrative. Political scientists say this trend is overall accurate, but they offer several caveats. 

The evidence does show that there has been a shift in preference for Republicans among Black and Latino men since the middle of Trump’s presidency between 2017 and 2021, according to University of Minnesota Political Scientist Christopher Federico. But the shift is marginal, he emphasized, and doesn’t apply to women. 

“There does appear to be movement,” he said of voters of color choosing Republican candidates. “It’s real, and it’s modest in size.” 

‘We have always had conservative values’ 

On a recent Friday morning at the Five Star Barbershop inside 24 Somali Mall, owner Yasin Ali lamented slow business at his shop as he cut a lone patron’s hair. 

“Look at this barbershop,” Yasin said. “It used to be full. Right now, it’s empty. There’s just one person here.”

Business has been slow for the past few years, and Yasin blamed policies from the Biden administration.

“I will vote for Trump because of the economy,” Yasin said. “Two times I voted Democrat. This will be my first time voting Republican. I want another person in office.”

Biden has frequently touted the economy under his watch, pointing to low unemployment rate and persistent job growth during his term. But his term has also been marred by high inflation and high interest rates from the Federal Reserve, increasing the costs of goods and more.

Sabiq Hirsi, a 26-year-old truck driver, is also planning to vote for Trump in the November 5 general election. Sabiq said business has gone down and gas prices have spiked in the past few years, hurting his bottom line. The cost of living in Minnesota, he said, has gotten too high for his family. He plans to move to Texas later this year.

“Trump is good for business,” Sabiq said.

Sabiq opposes Biden sending U.S. dollars to support Israel in its war against Hamas, and to Ukraine in the ongoing war with Russia. 

“Biden is spending billions on wars,” he said. “War wasn’t as crazy when Trump was president.”

He’s also not persuaded by arguments that Trump’s harsh rhetoric on topics like immigration amounts to racism. 

“They convinced me the first time when he was running that Trump is a racist and he hates us,” Sabiq said. “Actually, Democrats are bad for the country.” 

But it’s not just economic issues that’s driving his vote for Trump. Sabiq has two school-aged sons and said he’s concerned about what they’re taught at school.

“We really don’t have freedom of religion,” he said. “I’m opposed to transgender and LGBT stuff. That’s an issue.”

Several Muslim parents have protested LGBTQ policies and books at Twin Cities schools between late 2022 through 2023. 

In December 2022, parents in the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage District expressed concern about a new policy that provided guidelines on supporting transgender students, saying it could potentially conceal information about their children. In the fall of 2023, the parents of up to 200 Muslim students said they might withdraw them from DaVinci Academy in Ham Lake because the school used picture books with LGBTQ characters.

The issue arose again in December 2023 when six Somali families with children in St. Louis Park Public Schools warned they would take “legal recourse” if they were not allowed to opt their children out of LGBTQ picture books. The district eventually allowed parents to opt their children out of such books. 

Abshir Muse, owner of Abshir Barbershop at 24 Somali Mall, offered similar cultural reasons for why he’s also planning to vote for Trump. Shortly before conducting their Friday afternoon prayer in a mall hallway, Abshir and three patrons discussed the cultural issues in his barbershop, emphasizing that “a man is a man, a woman is a woman.” 

“I have six kids; they go to school,” Abshir said. “They could come back a different way, a different color.” 

Abshir said a lot of local Somali voters are leaning Republican because of issues like these. 

Salman agrees. With two school-age boys of his own, Salman opposes LGBTQ and gender identity curriculum taught to kids in public schools, which he said is contrary to traditional Muslim values. 

“The idea that you can have a different sexual orientation — we feel it is too early for our kids to be indoctrinated with that kind of education,” Salman said. “They can make a decision later on in their life when they are sound.

“As Muslims, we have always had conservative values, and we’ve been all along preaching conservative values that are similar to the Republican Party.”

Marginal growth in Republican support

Salman comes from a politically active family. Many of his relatives acted as clan leaders in Somalia during and after the civil war, resolving financial, criminal and marriage disputes between clan members during a time when the country had no central government. Salman observed with fascination as his family brokered disputes. 

He immigrated to the United States in 2007 following the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, and landed in San Diego. He eventually moved to Minnesota to be near a larger Somali community, and attended college in Mankato at South Central College and eventually Minnesota State University, Mankato, where he obtained a biology degree.

Salman developed an interest in western classics during college, delving into the writings of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith. This cemented his passion for politics. 

He grew more conservative throughout the Obama years, and sometime during Trump’s presidency, he fully converted into a Republican. 

Salman believes that changing demographics in the Somali community is prompting more to vote Republican. The first wave of Somali immigrants that arrived in Minnesota in the 1990s were refugees, he said, and historically voted solidly Democratic because they believed the party represented their values. But as their kids grew up and moved up economic ladders, pro-business and pro-entrepreneur perspectives became more attractive to them, he argued. 

“The next generation is middle class,” he said. “Their perception has changed because of their economic status, and that plays an important role.” 

The data driving the narrative that voters of color are turning conservative largely comes from crosstabs in opinion polls breaking down respondents’ race and gender, which aren’t as reliable as the overall poll sample, said Federico. 

There are no statistics specifically for the Somali community, but there is data for other communities of color. 

Too often, Federico said, current opinion polls are compared to how people of color voted during the Obama years. That era was a high point for voters of color choosing Democrats, he said, and is not necessarily indicative of how they’ve voted in the long term. 

David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University, shares that view, noting that President George W. Bush picked up 40 percent of Latino voters’ support in 2004 — the highest for a Republican presidential candidate ever, according to polls. 

“There’s a lot of noise out there right now,” Schultz said regarding voters of color voting for Republicans. “And how much of that noise translates into real political behavior, we just don’t know yet.”

For presidential elections over the past 60 years, the percentage of the Black vote for Republican candidates has ranged between 6 and 15 percent. Trump’s support from Black voters grew from 6 percent in 2016 to 8 percent in 2020. 

‘I’m hoping they vote for me’

How the Republican vote breaks down in Minnesota’s East African community is unclear. It’s also not clear whether Minnesota’s Republican Party is making efforts to court Somali or East African voters this election, or voters of color in general. 

A state party spokesperson did not return emails or phone calls seeking comment. Two years ago, the party hosted a Minnesota Somali Republican Dinner, which attracted a room full of attendees. 

Mawlid, the truck and Uber driver, is a regular at 24 Somali Mall. He said the last time he remembers a Republican making real efforts to reach out to the Somali community was former Governor Tim Pawlenty, who’s been out of office for more than a decade. Pawlenty served two terms as governor, and his 2006 reelection marks the last time a Republican candidate won statewide office in Minnesota. 

Mawlid said he’s also planning to vote Republican this fall after years of voting for Democrats. He opposes Biden sending U.S. dollars to support Israel and Ukraine. 

“All this money is going outside of the country,” he said. 

Mawlid in particular is incensed over how Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, whom he previously voted for, vetoed an ordinance last March that would have increased rideshare drivers’ wages in the city. 

“Democrats do nothing for our community,” he said.

Mawlid’s friend quickly noted that Republican lawmakers in the Minnesota Legislature also voted against a similar rideshare bill at the state Capitol earlier this year. That’s because Somali people don’t have power in the state Republican Party, Mawlid reasoned. 

“If we had power in the Republican Party, then they would have voted for the Uber bill,” Mawlid said. “I am going to vote for Republicans, and then I’m hoping they vote for me.”

Schultz said he doesn’t see evidence of a significant push by the state party to win voters of color, but instead believes that it’s aiming to turn out its base, which is largely rural and white. The state GOP may get a boost from the Trump campaign, which wants to put resources in Minnesota this fall.

But it may be too little, too late for people like Salman, who earlier this year pursued the Republican nomination for a state House of Representatives seat to represent Burnsville. Salman lost the Republican endorsement this spring to Van Holston and did not file for candidacy to challenge him in the August 13 primary. 

‘He rubbed us the wrong way’

There’s also the question of whether Trump’s harsh rhetoric on immigration harms his appeal to immigrants. During a 2019 rally in Minneapolis, Trump condemned the legacy of Somali refugee resettlement in Minnesota. 

“He’s very racist. He banned all the Muslims,” said Gulad Abdi, referring to the Trump administration travel ban. 

Gulad, a regular patron at the 24 Somali Mall, is planning to vote for Biden this fall, although he had concerns about Biden’s performance in the presidential debate, which sparked questions about whether his age was affecting his ability to serve.

“Biden is getting old,” Gulad said. “As a Democrat, I want them to find a new candidate.”

Abdi Mohamed, another regular patron at 24 Somali Mall, said he would also vote for Biden.

“The other guy is a lunatic,” Abdi said of Trump.

Abdi said he does not see support for Trump or Republicans growing among Somali voters. 

Some Somali voters say they’re willing to look past Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric. Fatumo Nur voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. She plans to vote for Trump this fall. 

“He’s just a noisy guy,” she said. “But he’s not a bad guy.”

Imam Abdirisak Duale, a longtime Republican activist from East Grand Forks, called Trump’s previous remarks about Somalis “unfortunate and divisive.”

“While I may not agree with everything he says, I support many of his policies that prioritize national security, economic growth and religious freedom,” Abdirisak said. “It is important to look at the overall impact of his policies rather than focusing on specific comments.”

Salman added that although Trump’s comments upset many Somali community members, some view it as part of the political game. 

“He rubbed us the wrong way,” Salman said, referring to Trump’s statements on Somali refugees. “But I think the majority realize it was a political statement to rally his base.”