• A notable part of the Silicon Valley electorate has gradually turned towards Donald Trump.
• Although the region remains solidly Democratic, the GOP candidate has made progress in this election.

Silicon Valleylong considered a progressive bastion, began to move towards Donald Trumpaccording to new voting data analyzed by Business Insider.

Through the three San Francisco In Bay Area counties that make up the epicenter of America’s tech industry, there was a sharp increase in support for Donald Trump in the last presidential election, and a corresponding decrease in support for Kamala Harris and the Democrats , according to provisional voter data.

California may take weeks to count all of its ballots, so final totals won’t be known for some time. But with more than 76% of votes counted in San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties on Tuesday, a trend is emerging.

Among voting citizens in Santa Clara County, home to Apple, Google and Nvidia, 28.2% voted for Donald Trump this year. This is an increase from four years ago, and significantly more than in 2016.

Meanwhile, 68.1% voted for Harris. That’s down from the 72.6% who supported Joe Biden four years ago and the 73.1% who voted for Hilary Clinton in 2016, according to data compiled by California’s secretary of state.

In San Mateo County, home to Facebook’s parent company Meta, the vote fell from 77.9%-20.2% Republican-Democratic to 73.6%-23.5% this year. cycle.

And the vote for Trump in San Francisco County increased from 9.3% in 2016 to 15.3% this year.

These figures show that Trump and the Republicans are still far from obtaining a real majority in Silicon Valley. However, even this relatively minor shift suggests that the region and the tech industry are becoming less staunchly Democratic — and comes as some tech executives are becoming more pragmatic on policy.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously publicly supported Democratic candidates, but has not done so this year. Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz said they were supporting Trump this summer, although Horowitz did as well. provided funding for the Harris campaign.

Even though Elon Musk is based in Texas these days, many of his companies, including Tesla, are still very active in Silicon Valley. He invested hundreds of millions of dollars to help re-elect Trump this year and is arguably the president-elect’s most high-profile supporter in tech.

Incoming Vice President, JD Vance previously worked in venture capital and is considered a protégé of PayPal co-founder and investor Peter Thiel, one of the most influential conservative voices in the tech industry.

Part of this comes down to self-interest. Trump, with Musk’s support, promised to cut regulations, which could help Silicon Valley startups are growing faster.

“The most exciting thing will be putting Elon in charge of government effectiveness,” said Ben Narasin, an Atherton-based VCin San Mateo County. “He’s going to run a chainsaw through calcified butter, and it’s going to be great to tackle the bloat and excess that we’ve had in government.”

The trend toward Trump in the Silicon Valley electorate mirrors statewide and national trends. Nationally, Democrats fall from 51.3% to 48.1%while the GOP increased from 46.9% to 50.2%.

In California, Democrats’ vote share fell from 63.5% in 2020 to 58.9%, according to data available Tuesday.