FALL RIVER, Mass. (WPRI) – President Donald Trump won the majority of cities and towns in Bristol County, Mass., on Tuesday, becoming the first Republican to win in Fall River since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. The Republican nominee lost the statewide race to Democrat Kamala Harris, but Trump capitalized on a base of conservative support in Bristol County that’s been growing for more than a decade. A preliminary tally by CBS News showed Harris leading Trump by just 258 votes out of nearly 270,000 countywide as of Wednesday afternoon. Trump won at least 11 of the 19 communities in Bristol County, with Norton still counting votes as of midday Wednesday, nearly doubling his victories from 2020, when he won just six of the communities against Joe Biden. The biggest surprise to political observers was Trump’s victory in Fall River, which has long been considered a Democratic stronghold. Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan, a Democrat who's been in office since 2020, said Tuesday's results reflect a conservative-shifting trend he’s witnessed over the past 12 years. He noted Hillary Clinton’s 22-point victory over Trump in 2016 was followed by Biden’s more narrow 12-point win in 2020. “Now, it’s flipped,” Coogan told Target 12 on Wednesday. “The city is trending in a conservative way right now," he added. "People tie the inflation issues to the Biden administration. I think they don't like our homeless population and, while Fall River is a welcoming city, they think the residents who are from here should go first.” Coogan said he recognized the irony of Fall River residents being wary of immigration considering the city is heavily populated by people of Portuguese decent, including many who emigrated from the Azores. But, Coogan said, “people don’t like change, and when things change, they tend to go back to their conservative roots.” Fall River, however, is only one part of a larger shift happening throughout Bristol County where a Target 12 analysis of preliminary results shows Trump gained support in every municipality over the past four years. Some communities are still counting absentee ballots that could tip the scales one way or the other, but preliminary AP results show Trump flipped Fall River, Raynham, Seekonk, Somerset and Westport, which were all communities Biden won in 2020. Trump's biggest gain was in Acushnet, where he increased his margin of victory by 35 points. In New Bedford, the county's largest city, his margin of support increased nearly 16 percentage points. “Here’s a stunning statistic: In the 1996 presidential election in Bristol County, 47K people voted Republican, 127K voted Democrat,” Dan Medeiros, a veteran editor at The Herald News, posted on social media. “Yesterday, 129K people voted Republican, and … 129K voted Democrat." Trump likely got a boost from the fact that there weren’t a lot of competitive local or state races throughout the region, which translated into lower turnout. In Fall River, for example, unofficial results show turnout totaled just 47% on Tuesday, a sharp decline from the nearly 62% of registered voters who turned out in 2020. But years of high inflation paired with Trump’s message of representing change from the Biden administration clearly resonated with the voters who cast ballots, and there had been signs of Trump's strength for months. "Much of this shift can be attributed to the fact that Fall River is a post-industrial city with a large white working class — the exact type of place Trump has wrested from the Democrats in other states," Public's Radio reporter Ben Burke, who covers the South Coast, wrote ahead of the election. (Burke was first to highlight how long it's been since a Republican won Fall River.) Trump's Bristol County support also came as no surprise to former Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, who served as Trump's honorary campaign chair in Massachusetts. He hosted a Trump campaign viewing party Tuesday night and said people are tired of the "lawless" attitude of leaders that "puts penalties on the average person who's working hard to get ahead." "I believe with what we've seen with regards to the overwhelming support for President Trump has everything to do with Democrats, independents and Republicans being impacted in their families and their neighborhoods," he told 12 News. "Every week families are reminded when they go to the grocery store -- how outrageous the prices are at the gas pumps." Eli Sherman ([email protected]) is a Target 12 investigative reporter for 12 News. Connect with him on Twitter and on Facebook. Ted Nesi and Kim Kalunian contributed to this report.