How Trump changed the Obama landscape
November 14, 2016
Donald Trump peeled off nearly a third of the counties that voted
twice for President Obama, one of the shifts that helped drive his
improbable victory in last week’s presidential election. In all, Trump
turned 209 of the 676 counties that had twice supported Obama. Those
counties, home to 17 million people, were centered largely in the
Midwest. They are smaller, whiter, and slower-growing than the counties
that supported Democrats again this year.
Votes shift Republican in the North
Voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012
Voted for Obama in 2008
No shift
Source: Associated Press Note: Alaska does not report county-level results.
Divide more pronounced
The 2016 election continued a trend of Democratic support
strengthening around major U.S. cities, and support for Republicans
strengthening almost everywhere else.
2004
2008
2012
2016
Source: Associated Press Note: Alaska does not report county-level results.
Economic variables
The counties that voted twice for Obama, then backed Trump were not
economically distressed; incomes and employment there were not all that
different from other parts of the United States. In 2014 – the most
recent year for which Census records were available – unemployment in
those counties was at 9.1%, a rate identical to the rest of the USA.
Each line represents a county that voted for Obama twice, and then Trump or Clinton
County unemployment in 2014
Median household income in 2014
Demographics
But the counties that switched their votes from Obama to Trump were
far smaller, whiter, and slower-growing than the rest of the Obama
coalition. The population of counties that flipped to Trump was 78%
white.
Population growth (2010-2014)
Percentage of white residents in 2014
Two votes for Bush, then Clinton
Parts of the political map have shifted in the opposite direction,
though the change has taken longer. Eighty-three counties that George W.
Bush won twice, in 2000 and 2004, supported Clinton this year,
including those surrounding Dallas and Houston, and the suburbs of
Atlanta.
Contributing: Mark Nichols, USA TODAY
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