Why Republicans Voting To Defund Ukraine Will Endanger Their Majority

In fact, we’ve calculated the number of people who say they have a Ukrainian background for every congressional district in the nation, shown in the map above. Six districts are home to more than than 10,000 residents of Ukrainian extraction: California’s Sixth, New York’s Eighth and 11th, Ohio’s Seventh, Pennsylvania’s First, and Washington’s Ninth. Notably, these are not all solid blue districts, as half of them are currently represented by Republicans—New York’s 11th, Ohio’s Seventh, and Pennsylvania’s First. And plenty more Republicans represent districts in the next tier, which each have thousands of residents with Ukrainian heritage.

There are many Republicans who would cynically ignore the needs of large numbers of their constituents in order to appease their primary voters, but Ukrainians are not the only ones threatened by Russia’s aggression. All of Eastern Europe is affected, and when you look at Americans with Eastern European ancestry, you’re now talking election-shifting margins—and not just in tight races. These are numbers that could bring an off-the-radar race into competition.

The districts with the greatest concentrations of Eastern European ancestry are mostly in the Midwest and New York, where Republicans have made gains of late, as well as other portions of the Northeast. Indeed, all four of the districts Republicans won in New York last fall that previously went for Joe Biden have more than 3,000 Ukrainians and 10-20 percent who identify as having Eastern European backgrounds. And competitive Republican-held districts with Eastern European populations greater than 10 percent can be found across the country, from Florida to Arizona to Nebraska.

When your family comes from Eastern Europe, it strikes the heart to see the names of cities you’ve heard of all your life in war reports, or videos of refugees from the very train station your grandfather left more than 100 years ago in a town whose spelling was a mystery to you for most of your life. As Republicans in Congress threaten to draw down support for Ukraine, they would do well to remember the large number of Ukrainian Americans, and Eastern Europeans in general, who live in their districts.