Baltimore — a city that President-elect Donald Trump dismissed as “dangerous and filthy” — is a Democratic stronghold in reliably blue Maryland. But the region includes neighborhoods that have become bastions of strength for the Republican, who takes office Monday.

“People who support Trump are silent,” said Richard Grilli, who voted for Trump in November at his polling place in Pikesville, four years after he voted for President Joe Biden. “Some of our friends support Trump but don’t go around advertising it.”

Although Vice President Kamala Harris easily won the state’s 10 electoral votes, the Democratic candidate’s margin of victory was about 3 percentage points narrower than Joe Biden’s was in 2020. A pattern that played out nationally also held in Maryland. Trump performed better in almost all of its 23 counties and Baltimore than he did four years earlier.

Most communities in the Baltimore area, including the city’s Black Butterfly, shifted toward Trump, a Banner analysis of precinct-level election returns found. Neighborhoods with large Jewish and Hispanic populations shifted the most. Whiter, more affluent communities shifted toward Democrats.

East Baltimore

Maria Alvarado voted for Democratic Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott in November, crediting him with improving public safety and caring about the city.

She also voted for Trump. Her Latino friends and family did, too, she said.

“Even some of us who can’t vote say the same things,” said Alvarado, standing by her broken-down car waiting for assistance outside her East Baltimore home.

Like many who sent Trump back to the White House, Alvarado said her choice was driven by the economy. Her groceries and housing are more expensive; making ends meet between her warehouse job and her husband fixing cars is tougher than before.

Alvarado is part of the only demographic in Baltimore that’s really growing — people who identify as Hispanic or Latino. In her neighborhood, Latinos or people identifying with two or more races outnumber all other demographics.

The area northeast of Patterson Park, where some homes back up into industrial lots, is wedged somewhere between neglect and promise. Crosswalks are few; speeding cars many. A bright neighborhood sign for Baltimore Highlands stands next to an alley overflowing with trash. Vacant buildings are rare, and there are plenty of pedestrians, even on a cold day.

Voters here shifted heavily toward Trump compared to the 2020 election. About 100 more residents cast votes for Trump in this section of Baltimore than four years ago, matching a statewide trend.

The average Maryland neighborhood shifted 1.6 percentage points toward Trump. Neighborhoods where 25% or more of the population is Hispanic shifted 5.1 percentage points toward Trump.

For some immigrants, there’s a sort of identity crisis that could explain the rightward shift nationally of Latinos, especially Latino men, said Pedro Palomino, whose Canton-based outlet, Somos Baltimore Latino, is a leading news source for Spanish-speaking Baltimoreans.

“Se agringan” — they become more “gringo,” quipped Palomino in Spanish with a laugh, using the term popular throughout Latin America to refer to white people in the U.S. It can change their mentality and opinions, he said.

Some who once navigated the bureaucratic labyrinth of securing U.S. citizenship prioritized the economy over the issue they believe no longer impacts them, Palomino said — even if they have friends, relatives or business clients stuck there now.

“You forget who you are, where you were born, how you got to where you are,” Palomino said. “Now you’re a citizen, but how did that happen? Or how did your parents arrive?”

Plenty in the community don’t share Alvarado’s views — despite the shift, Harris won the census tract. And plenty are terrified of Trump’s promises of mass deportations, especially among people who are in the country without authorization or those with tenuous, temporary immigration status.

But some Latinos don’t believe Trump’s immigration tough talk.

“He likes to run his mouth” was a common phrase throughout the neighborhood, including at a restaurant off Pulaski Highway and a corner bar down North Conkling Street across from a Jewish cemetery. Sitting on a barstool there, Misael López, a Salvadoran living in East Baltimore who works in home remodeling, said former President Barack Obama’s record on deportation was just as bad as Trump’s.

Meaningful reform of the immigration system hasn’t happened no matter who’s been in the White House or Congress, Palomino said.

For some, the Democrats and their threats of what Trump and the Republicans will do have become the boy who cried wolf. Alvarado said she thinks those who follow the law, the hardworking immigrants, no matter their status, will be able to stay.

If López could have voted, he said, he would have voted for Trump.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele — a strongman and self-described “world’s coolest dictator” — appeals not just to people all over Latin America but to Lopez and to many Latinos living in the U.S. That includes Alvarado, who said she wishes her country of birth, Honduras, could get a president like him.

The millennial president’s face adorns T-shirts sold in a Fells Point bodega.

His crackdown on criminal gangs, which includes suspending some civil liberties, has made many Salvadorans feel safe. And it has intrigued Trump allies such as Matt Gaetz, a former Florida congressman who was Trump’s choice to head the Justice Department before withdrawing, who visited the country’s latest mega prison last year and had nothing but praise for it.

Bukele was reelected last year with more than 80% of the vote.

Northwest Baltimore

Trump recorded some of his biggest regional gains in Pikesville and Northwest Baltimore, where the war in Gaza was front of mind for many voters.

Here are the only two Baltimore City communities to flip from Democratic to Republican between 2020 and 2024. And just across the line in Pikesville, two communities shifted toward Trump by 10 and 11 percentage points, almost 700 more voters combined. Those were the incoming president’s biggest gains in Baltimore County.

Pikesville and the city’s northwest neighborhoods of Cheswolde, Cross Country, Fallstaff and Glen are home to Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish families. These communities shifted 5.5 percentage points toward Trump — more than three times the average.

Here, single-family homes fly American and Israeli flags. Backyard playgrounds are painted in Israel’s national colors, azure and white. And lawn signs announce, “I stand with Israel.” One front yard stands out as a haunting memorial to the war, with homemade signs showing the faces of Israeli hostages. The war is distant but also close to home.

Grilli, the Pikesville voter who flipped to Trump from Biden, considers Trump to be the staunchest ally to Israel, and the only candidate with the nerve — “cojones,” he said — to stand up to Iran.

The 71-year-old, retired from the insurance industry, is Jewish with an adult daughter who made “Aliyah,” the Hebrew term for emigrating to Israel. His late mother was among more than 600 mostly Jewish children who escaped German-occupied Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s. Their rescue by the British humanitarian Nicholas Winton was dramatized in the 2023 film “One Life” starring Anthony Hopkins.

“We were raised to be very cognizant of history,” said Grilli, lingering after bridge club at the senior center on Fallstaff Road in Cheswolde. (Guests are asked not to interrupt their competitive card games.)

Grilli said he found aspects of Trump’s campaigns and first presidency to be distasteful. And he blamed Trump for letting the national debt run wild.

“He’s just so disagreeable, it’s hard to stomach him,” Grill said. “But, in 2024, I could look the other way and stomach him.”

Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer, a Democrat who represents Northwest Baltimore on City Council, asked to keep his vote private but acknowledged widespread support for Trump in his district.

Biden had strong support in the community, but once he withdrew, Jewish voters started looking outside the Democratic Party.

“I heard it everywhere I went, that as much as people don’t like Trump, his stance on Israel was a primary reason why they would consider supporting him,” Schleifer said.

Baltimore County Councilmember Israel “Izzy” Patoka, who represents Pikesville, said he voted for Harris and that the November results discouraged him. But he — like many in the area — said the election was fair and its result unsurprising.

“In this community, Orthodox or not Orthodox, I would say that people were voting for Israel,” said Josh Cline, a Northwest Baltimore resident who is Jewish and declined to disclose whom he voted for in November.

Still, he explained he’s not beholden to a political party, that he’s supported Republican candidates such as Trump in past campaigns, as well as Obama and other Democrats.

From his conversations with friends and neighbors, Cline said, family-oriented Jewish voters were willing to overlook the personal flaws of Trump for the strength of his policies.

Whether or not they voted for Trump, area residents said they expect the incoming president to pressure Hamas to release all Israeli hostages.

Trump had famously warned there would be “hell to pay” if Hamas did not set free the Israelis. Jewish families in Baltimore and beyond are waiting to see if he will back up the bluster.

Reports emerged last week that Israel and Hamas were negotiating a ceasefire, with an agreement to release about one-third of the hostages. Hamas and its allies hold almost 100 people who were kidnapped when militants stormed into southern Israel in October 2023. Grilli said he is optimistic but cautious.

A peace deal had seemed imminent before only to fall through. Still, he credited Trump with pushing the matter forward — whether by Trump’s strategic diplomacy or mere bravado.

“The powers to be, Iran, Hamas, Israel, they’re all concerned about what Trump would do,” Grilli said. “He’s so unpredictable. He can’t be put in a box.”