Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
that's a solid point.
MSAs are not all created equally.
looking at the data in Manitopiaaa's awesome table, you would see that SLC's MSA was more blue than St. louis' by a handful of points (+9 vs. +3).
however, the SLC MSA consists of only Salt Lake County and the very sparsely populated Tooele County to its west. that's it. one highly urbanized/suburbanized central county and then a gigantic unpopulated desert. nothing else.
all of the very red and highly populated counties directly adjacent to the north and south of salt lake county are in the separate ogden and provo MSAs.
the st. louis MSA, on the other hand sprawls across 15 counties (and the independent city of st. louis) in MO and IL, deep into SOLID red rural farm country in all directions.
that's not really apples to apples for comparative purposes.
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There is no doubt Salt Lake is moving further and further to the left, though, even if marginally. In 2008, despite Obama having a landslide victory, he barely bested John McCain in the County.
Of course, it helps that Trump is despised by a great deal of residents here and the Republicans actually did better in the county-wide results than Democrats (picking up an at-large seat on the county council, as well as winning lower offices like County Assesser, Recorder and Treasure, though, the initial two were by a point or less - and Salt Lake County did reelect a Democratic mayor, so, a mixed result).
Still, the Wasatch Front still remains heavily conservative because, beyond Salt Lake County, the rest of the counties are still heavily LDS.
Just looking at the Wasatch Front, this is the results:
Utah County: Trump 183,008, Biden 72,324
Salt Lake County: Biden 266,080, Trump 206,835
Tooele County: Trump 21,006, Biden 8,936
Davis County: Trump 101,989, Biden 56,216
Weber County: Trump 64,066, Biden 39,652
So, total:
Trump: 576,904
Biden: 443,208
Just head-to-head, not counting the other parties, Trump won the Wasatch Front 56-43, which is probably the best a Democrat has done among these counties since LBJ in '64.
If you add Summit County (home to Park City), it helps Biden a little bit but not a lot:
Trump: 616,556
Biden: 507,274