Back in 2016 City Labs mapped who carried the country’s various metro areas. As it turns out Hillary Clinton carried the largest metro areas but Trump carried more metro areas:
Hillary Clinton won the largest metros, but Donald Trump carried more of them, as well as rural and micropolitan places. Overall, the 2016 election served to harden and solidify America’s enduring fault lines of class and geography, knowledge, and density.
I wanted to take a closer look at the metros that went for Trump versus Clinton. As I noted previously, election returns are not typically collated by metro area, but county-level results are available. My Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI) colleagues arrayed the county-level data to the country’s 350-plus metros using data from two sources. Our main source was Dave Leip’s county-level election results. Where data was missing, we used data from Simon Rogers, data editor at Google News Lab. (Again, I note that while there are still some vote tallies yet to be certified, the overall shares of the vote at the metro level are unlikely to change much at this point).
The map below by MPI’s Taylor Blake charts the metro area vote. Clinton votes are in blue, Trump votes are in red, and the height of the bars indicates the percent of the national vote cast in metros.
Check your stereotypes. There are strong regional differences in political preference and they go beyond the urban/rural bifurcation.
I think it’s likely that as Midwesterners flee the consequences of decades of mismanagement that Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee will become purpler but so will Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
“There are strong regional differences in political preference and they go beyond the urban/rural bifurcation.”
This was always overstated and should be filed under False Democrat Excuses. Or alternatively, Fantasy.
Your comment about some red states becoming bluer is undoubtedly true, but difficult to gage. Here on the Fl Gulf side more NY, NJ, Philly etc types are coming, but they definitely lean heavily red. Hard to know the net effect.
I was hoping Global Warming might flood only Miami and make it fall into the ocean. I’ve been told it’s settled science. But I thought, well, that might be a tad harsh.