Largest Counties By Votes for Biden and Trump, 2020

[eschaton]

Dunno about the rest of New York State, but I saw NYC announced it has 713,000 absentees to count.

[badrunner]

District of Columbia, population 705,749, 3 electoral votes.

Biden 93.3%
Trump 5.2%

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Crawford

OH is slightly more white working class than MI and PA, I think. And has fewer "metropolitans". Detroit is a somewhat wealthier and more cosmopolitan metro than Cleveland or Cincy.

And S/SE Ohio is Appalachia, which is about as Trump-friendly as it gets. Rural MI is hard-right, like rural America overall, but not quite as extreme as Appalachia.

no, rural mich not like america overall at all. with the long history of militias in the rural knuckles of the mich mitt and their attack, err, protest in the lansing state capital bldg, which they were allowed to walk away from because they are white, and also with the recent militia plot to kidnap the gov, i would hardly say rural mich is "not quite as extreme" as ohio or appalachia. in fact if these mich militia nuts were not complete nitwit losers, it could well be considered thee most extreme right wing area in the country.

[Crawford]

I'm talking about voter share, not whether there are militant nuts. Appalachia has extreme Trump voter share, higher than non-Appalachian rural America.

Also, and this is probably a minor factor, but the Amish are heavy Trumpy, and I believe Ohio is #1 or #2 in state population of Amish.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Dunno about the rest of New York State, but I saw NYC announced it has 713,000 absentees to count.

Similarly in chicago, cook county still has over 400,000 ballots to process, and if they're heavily mail-in, which they most likely are, then we might see cook county edging up from its current 73% vote share for biden to something closer to 80%.

That's a very high percentage for a 5.1M person county of some 1,000 square miles that not only includes the giant central city, but also vast, VAST swaths of its inner and middle ring suburbia.

[Quixote]

How about this:

California will probably end up being the state with the most Biden support, overtaking Massachusetts and Vermont. This is especially true because there's a shit ton (both in raw number and percentage) of absentee ballots that remain uncounted.


CA
64.8% Biden
33.2% Trump

89% in


VT
64.9% Biden
31.7% Trump

95% in


MA
65.2% Biden
32.5% Trump

93% in

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

The LA Times usually puts out a Dems vs. Repubs interactive map during Presidential elections, showing each precinct. I usually have to go to other sources to see how ALL political parties fared. This year I voted for Gloria La Riva, who was representing the Peace and Freedom Party in California.

Here's LA, Orange and San Diego Counties. As you can see, the northern half of LA County (mainly the Antelope Valley) is reddish, while the rest is blueish. There are pockets of Trump supporters in wealthy LA County areas, like La Habra Heights and the Palos Verdes Peninsula (Rolling Hills). Most notably, parts of Beverly Hills also have Trump supporters; Beverly Hills is usually considered a Democrat Party area.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/tru...ts-california/

CA Congressional District 25 is a very tight race. Christy Smith has pulled ahead of the Republican incumbent by 1,287 votes with more than 98% of the vote in.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Crawford

OH is slightly more white working class than MI and PA, I think. And has fewer "metropolitans". Detroit is a somewhat wealthier and more cosmopolitan metro than Cleveland or Cincy.

And S/SE Ohio is Appalachia, which is about as Trump-friendly as it gets. Rural MI is hard-right, like rural America overall, but not quite as extreme as Appalachia.

That's true. Ohio has no equivalent to Oakland County- a large, mostly suburban county of over a million people- that was red in the past, but is now reliably blue. A suburban county with a ton of wealthy, educated people. And Ohio's bluest and most urban county, Cuyahoga, is still 500,000 people smaller than Wayne County (Detroit), so there are less votes to run up there.

Ohio's largest suburban county is Butler County, which is north of Cincinnati. It, by contrast, is where the book Hillbilly Elegy takes place...so that should say it all. It went about 60-40 Trump.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by edale

I actually think it is a bit of a mystery why Ohio has gone so red in the past ~8 years. Obama won the state in 2008 and 2012. It has similar demographics to neighboring Michigan and Pennsylvania. The state is getting blacker (14% in 2019 vs 12% in 2010), and while Hispanics and Asians represent a fairly negligible slice of the vote, their numbers and percent of the population have also been increasing.

I get that the white working class has basically all jumped ship from the Democratic Party, but does Ohio really have that many more people in that category than Michigan and Pennsylvania?

I think the utterly absurd gerrymandering at the state level has really beaten down the Democrats in Ohio. Thankfully voters passed gerrymandering reform, and the districts will be redrawn in 2021 (I think), which should result in a couple Democratic pickups in the House and throughout the state senate and house. But largely, the total lack of opportunity for democrats to even compete in races has really eliminated the grassroots network that proves critical for organizing, registering voters, getting voters to turn out-- all the stuff Stacey Abrams was able to do in Georgia.

The other explanation I would posit is that Ohio has a significant slice of Appalachia in it, including urban Appalachians who migrated in large numbers from West Virginia and Kentucky to Cincinnati and Columbus. Pennsylvania, of course, has this population as well. But Ohio doesn't have a mega city like Philly to balance it out. If Philly was roughly equal in size to Pittsburgh, it would probably be a reliably red state now, too. Given the way Columbus is growing, maybe it will eventually become large enough to shift state-wide elections, but right now there just aren't enough votes in the urban counties to off-set the massive amounts of R votes coming from the rural (yet still fairly populated) and suburban counties.

yes to all that.

and throw in being low for overall immigration with relatively little new blood, that is net loss for domestic and middling foreign (only 4% foreign born vs mich and penn 6.5%).

so its not a mystery at all.

obama galvanized people, actually that was the outlier.

anyway, its still purple though, but for how long?

fixing the ridiculous gerrymandering situation will help, although being it is court ordered i am dubious that will be made fair.

[Docere]

Re: Italians, I think they're often in the higher income but less occupationally prestigious demographic which is ripe for Trumpism (or Doug Ford in Ontario).

[Docere]

The WOW counties outside Milwaukee stayed Republican but the Democrats were able to move the needle a bit and carry Wisconsin.

[Steely Dan]

^ yeah, metro milwaukee's WOW counties remain steadfastly republican, particularly washington and waukesha (ozaukee was more purple this cycle), but biden did make modest gains over Hillary's 2016 result, which no doubt helped. Racine county also veered ever so slightly more blue as well, but remains very purple with an overall 4 point split in trump's favor, virtually the same as 2016.

Biden's performance vs Hillary:

Waukesha: +5.4
Washington: +2.9
Ozaukee: +5.5
Racine: +1.8


That said, I think the biggest needle movers in WI were Milwaukee county and Dane county (madison), the two largest counties in the state that also went modestly more blue this time around.

Biden's performance vs Hillary:

Milwaukee county: +3.0
Dane county: +4.3

[Docere]

I wonder if Queens will start voting to the left of Brooklyn at some point. Brooklyn is whiter and although it has more of the "Jacobin reader" demographic, it also has the ultra-Orthodox voting bloc.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

I wonder if Queens will start voting to the left of Brooklyn at some point. Brooklyn is whiter and although it has more of the "Jacobin reader" demographic, it also has the ultra-Orthodox voting bloc.

I'm pretty sure Queens will eventually vote left of Brooklyn. I could even see Westchester, long-term, voting left of Brooklyn.

Central Queens has large Orthodox and Israeli communities (Kew Garden Hills area) and former Soviet community (Bukharan Jews in Forest Hills and Rego Park), and Far Rockaway is now almost entirely Orthodox (more urban extension of Five Towns), but still, these populations pale in comparison to Brooklyn. And Queens has relatively few Ultra Orthodox. Modern Orthodox, in particular, are probably theoretically in play by both parties.

Also, Queens has a larger Asian community, and the NY Asian community votes pretty hard left, even the upper middle class homeowner areas of NE Queens.

Of course, Brownstone Brooklyn is hard left, much moreso than anywhere in Queens, and Brooklyn has large low income black/Hispanic communities that vote hard left.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ yeah, metro milwaukee's WOW counties remain steadfastly republican, particularly washington and waukesha (ozaukee was more purple this cycle), but biden did make modest gains over Hillary's 2016 result, which no doubt helped. Racine county also veered ever so slightly more blue as well, but remains very purple with an overall 4 point split in trump's favor, virtually the same as 2016.

Biden's performance vs Hillary:

Waukesha: +5.4
Washington: +2.9
Ozaukee: +5.5
Racine: +1.8


That said, I think the biggest needle movers in WI were Milwaukee county and Dane county (madison), the two largest counties in the state that also went modestly more blue this time around.

Biden's performance vs Hillary:

Milwaukee county: +3.0
Dane county: +4.3

Apparently Milwaukee County's performance improvement was entirely based upon the suburbs. Turnout was flat in the city compared to 2016, and Trump did better in terms of an absolute number of votes - something which was also noticed in Detroit and Philly.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Check this out:

Lake County (696,535 people): +20 biden
Dupage County (922,921 people): +18 biden*
Kane County (532,403 people): +14 biden
Will County (690,743 people): +8 biden

Lake and DuPage are your classic affluent Republican turned Democratic suburbs. Obviously Obama over-performed and Trump was a terible fit.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

There's a certain machismo to Italian-North American culture that may leave it susceptible to right wing populist "strongmen" leaders. It's probably for that same reason that Trump performed better than expected amongst Latinos as well.

Though I'm not sure how well that maps out onto Italian-Canadians (which are mostly post-war immigrants, and seem to be a bit less region-specific than the Sicilian-origin that dominates the US). My own family is very left-leaning, and in the GTA at least, Italians are pretty heavily tied into the Liberal political machine. Most older Italians can be expected to reliably vote for the same Italian Liberal candidates that they've been voting in for decades, but perhaps the younger generations would be more open to supporting a populist conservative though, should one ever materialize.

since material politics are dead and labor organization has been gutted, we now just have the don’t be a pussy party (macho/masculine) and don’t be an asshole party (feminine).

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

since material politics are dead and labor organization has been gutted, we now just have the don’t be a pussy party (macho/masculine) and don’t be an asshole party (feminine).

It's more like the urban elite party vs the country, rural party.

[Docere]

Culture has transcended economics in terms of voting, both in America and increasingly in Europe too where there is a stronger tradition of class-based voting.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by badrunner

It's more like the urban elite party vs the country, rural party.

perhaps so, but i was getting at something deeper in that case. i would argue that what i said explains the outliers.