Donald Trump’s immigration policy probably doesn’t have a lot of fans in Perris.
But while residents in the heavily Latino city stay home to avoid U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, more of them are opening their doors to the Republican Party, according to recent voter registration numbers.
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Between October 2020 and June 2025, GOP voter registration in Perris surged 49% while the number of registered Democrats in the city grew just 8%. During that time, Republicans outpaced Democrats in registering voters in more than 30 Inland Empire cities, an analysis of voter registration data shows.
While Democrats continue to make up a solid plurality of Inland voters, the trend is encouraging to local Republicans who enjoyed broad success in the 2024 elections.
“Voters are turning to Republicans because Democrats turned their backs on us,” Riverside County GOP Chair and Murrieta City Councilmember Lori Stone said via email.
Republicans are gaining voters because “we’re focused on what matters, safe neighborhoods, lower costs, and accountable leadership,” Stone said.
“Democrats have had total control for years and failed at every level. The red wave isn’t coming. It’s already crashing through Riverside County and Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.”
Stone’s counterpart in the San Bernardino County Democratic Party said that, while the GOP surge is “slight, we see enough shifts there to take those changes seriously.”
“We’re not sure if these are temporary or not, but we’re taking countermeasures just to be sure,” Kristin Washington said via email.
Marcia Godwin, a professor of public administration at the University of La Verne, wonders what effect the 2024 elections had on registration.
“There is consensus that Trump voters were more energized for the 2024 election cycle,” she said via email. “The Republican Party has a more closed presidential primary system that may have attracted some new party members.”
The California GOP, she added, “has been more organized in recent years. There is also good evidence that the Trump campaign had success in micro-targeting male voters who had been previously disengaged from politics. Democratic voter registration efforts were not as visible.”
Inland Democrats were on a roll for most of the 21st century.
They swept races for several open legislative and House seats in 2012 and four years later, Democrats overtook the GOP in Riverside County’s voter registration.
The blue winning streak ended with a thud last year.
Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate in 20 years to win Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Also, the GOP scored upset wins in two Inland Assembly districts and saw several Inland incumbents — Rep. Ken Calvert, state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh and Assemblymember Greg Wallis — win reelection against well-financed challengers.
In cities from southern San Bernardino County to mid-Riverside County, the number of GOP-registered voters since 2020 grew 16.6% compared to 6.09% for Democrats.
Republicans’ biggest gains were in Chino, Colton, Fontana, Jurupa Valley, Lake Elsinore, Montclair, Moreno Valley, Ontario, Perris, Pomona, Rialto and San Jacinto. In those cities, Republican voter ranks swelled by at least 23%.
Overall, Republican voter registration outpaced Democrats in 24 Inland cities, including large cities such as Riverside, Corona, San Bernardino and Rancho Cucamonga.
For the most part, the GOP’s biggest gains came in cities with sizable Latino populations. With the exception of Chino and Lake Elsinore, Latinos accounted for roughly two-thirds of residents in cities where Republican voter registration grew by at least 22%.
This tracks with 2024 gains Republicans and Trump made with Latino voters nationwide. While Joe Biden won the Latino vote by 25 percentage points in 2020, Kamala Harris won it by just 3 percentage points four years later, according to the Pew Research Center.
Most Latinos are about “God and family and the Democrat Party is not necessarily the best platform regarding family values,” said Riverside County Republican Central Committee member Daniel Silvas of Jurupa Valley.
“In the last couple of years, the school boards and a lot of these Democrats have been infringing on parental rights, family rights and also taking away rights from our own kids at public schools,” said Silvas, a 34-year-old father of three and the son of Mexican immigrants.
“Being a parent, I’m really upset with that.”
In talking with local voters, Silvas said Republicans will tell them about a “no-name” political party that’s “voting for that bill and voting for this.”
“(They say) ‘Oh, that’s horrible. Why are they passing this? Who’s passing this?’ Well, the Democrats are passing this. Do you still see yourself (as a) Democrat?”
Mike Madrid, a political strategist and expert on Latino voting behavior, said Latinos are both an ethnic voting bloc and a populist economic voter bloc.
“When the economy is doing really poorly and affordability is off the charts, they’re an economic voter and rejecting Biden/Harris,” said Madrid, a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.
“When there’s ICE and immigration crackdowns and constitutional violations and federal overreach and elimination of due process, they’re an ethnic voting block.”
He added: “It’s not a swing voter. It’s a spurned voter … These voters are basically saying: ‘You’re racist (and) you’re nativist Republicans, you’re a failure on the economy and education Democrats. I’m going to punish whoever is in there and isn’t doing what they should be doing.’”
Despite outpacing Democrats, Republicans have a long way to go before turning the Inland Empire red.
Democrats make up close to 40% of voters in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Meanwhile, the percentage of GOP voters has stayed relatively flat since 2020 — 32% in San Bernardino County and 31% in Riverside County.
Most cities where Republicans made the biggest gains remain solidly Democratic. In Perris, where GOP voter registration went up 49%, roughly 49% of voters are Democrats compared to 19% who are registered Republicans as of June.
In eight Inland cities — Claremont, Hemet, La Verne, Menifee, Murrieta, Redlands, Temecula and Wildomar — Democrats registered voters at a greater clip than Republicans between October 2020 and June 2025.
Democrats tend to do well with White, college-educated voters, a trend reflected in the party’s Inland gains. Claremont, La Verne, Murrieta, Redlands and Temecula have more White residents than Latinos, and at least four in 10 residents in those cities hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Washington, the San Bernardino Democratic Party chair, said voters “never thought the world would change if they didn’t (vote).
Now, she said, “the world is changing” because of immigration raids and the GOP’s tax cuts for the rich and social services cuts, among other recent events.
“That type of eye-opening realization is how we are combating efforts to drive up Republican voter registration around the county,” Washington said.
Sky Allen, executive director of the progressive group Inland Empire United, noted 2024 Inland voter turnout was low compared to 2020. She hopes public anger about the Trump administration changes that, regardless of voters’ party affiliation.
“I think there’s lots of ways that we’re hearing from the community that they don’t appreciate what’s happening regardless of who they voted for,” Allen said.
“And I think that our priority as an organization is to try to capture that … If you’re angry enough to take time out of your weekend to go to a protest, then you should be submitting a ballot that reflects your values and ideals in June of next year and November of next year as well as 2028.”
Madrid said that “it may be enough to be anti-Republican in this climate … my caution to Democrats is that in 2018 … Latinos had the highest midterm turnout in history, and it was the most anti-Republican.”
“But after that, the next three election cycles have the biggest rightward shift in American history. Democrats continue to think that just being anti-Republican or that anti-Republican sentiment is enough.”
