When progressives held a post-election march in Manhattan last weekend, one New Yorker knew she had to be there.

With her Trump flag.

Mikaela Widlanski, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, does not display the flag in her famously liberal neighborhood. But this was a special occasion.

“If they’re upset,” she said, waving her flag at the demonstrators, “it’s not my fault.”

More than a week after Election Day, New Yorkers are still grappling with a changed reality, not just in Washington, but at home as well. The city, which had resoundingly rejected Donald J. Trump in his first two election bids, inched closer to him this year.

Kamala Harris still carried the city by a huge margin, more than doubling Mr. Trump’s vote count, but it was not the blowout some New Yorkers have come to expect.

She received nearly 600,000 fewer votes in the city than Joseph R. Biden Jr., had in 2020, while Mr. Trump gained almost 100,000. Where once New Yorkers could see Mr. Trump as somebody else’s doing, now the city was implicated.

Mr. Trump improved his results throughout the city, but some of the biggest gains were in neighborhoods with large low-income or immigrant populations. This was especially hard for some progressives, who campaigned for immigrant rights and a strong social safety net.