Hamilton County, TN

[walleye26]

Is this county trending D? What type of people are moving in here? Educated people? Young folks?

[lfromnj]

This county funnily enough has literally refused to move anywhere in the past 30 years. I mean there have been trends but for the actual percentage no Democrat has gotten above 43.3% or gotten below 37.1%

[Skill and Chance]

This county funnily enough has literally refused to move anywhere in the past 30 years. I mean there have been trends but for the actual percentage no Democrat has gotten above 43.3% or gotten below 37.1%

Bredesen did almost 5% better than his statewide performance with 48.7% in Hamilton last year.

[lfromnj]

This county funnily enough has literally refused to move anywhere in the past 30 years. I mean there have been trends but for the actual percentage no Democrat has gotten above 43.3% or gotten below 37.1%

Bredesen did almost 5% better than his statewide performance with 48.7% in Hamilton last year.

I meant presidentially sorry.

[Calthrina950]

This county funnily enough has literally refused to move anywhere in the past 30 years. I mean there have been trends but for the actual percentage no Democrat has gotten above 43.3% or gotten below 37.1%

Bredesen did almost 5% better than his statewide performance with 48.7% in Hamilton last year.

It's still astounding to me how Bredesen was unable to flip any of the counties that Trump won, even though he did 9% better than Hillary Clinton. He couldn't even win Hardeman County, which voted for Obama as late as 2012. Polarization has definitely become a drug, as Bredesen's performance was generated almost entirely by his overpowering numbers in Davidson and Shelby, and by his improvements in Knox and Hamilton, though he fell short in the latter two.

[lfromnj]

This county funnily enough has literally refused to move anywhere in the past 30 years. I mean there have been trends but for the actual percentage no Democrat has gotten above 43.3% or gotten below 37.1%

Bredesen did almost 5% better than his statewide performance with 48.7% in Hamilton last year.

It's still astounding to me how Bredesen was unable to flip any of the counties that Trump won, even though he did 9% better than Hillary Clinton. He couldn't even win Hardeman County, which voted for Obama as late as 2012. Polarization has definitely become a drug, as Bredesen's performance was generated almost entirely by his overpowering numbers in Davidson and Shelby, and by his improvements in Knox and Hamilton, though he fell short in the latter two.

Hardeman is a low 40% black county, Im guessing Bredesen did just as well with whites in this county but black turnout fell.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

This county funnily enough has literally refused to move anywhere in the past 30 years. I mean there have been trends but for the actual percentage no Democrat has gotten above 43.3% or gotten below 37.1%

Bredesen did almost 5% better than his statewide performance with 48.7% in Hamilton last year.

It's still astounding to me how Bredesen was unable to flip any of the counties that Trump won, even though he did 9% better than Hillary Clinton. He couldn't even win Hardeman County, which voted for Obama as late as 2012. Polarization has definitely become a drug, as Bredesen's performance was generated almost entirely by his overpowering numbers in Davidson and Shelby, and by his improvements in Knox and Hamilton, though he fell short in the latter two.

I'd also note that he came pretty close in Rutherford (Murfreesboro) and Montgomery (Clarksville) too, although Montgomery only trended slightly Democratic relative to the state from 2016-18.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

Chattanooga is still a relatively small city compared to Nashville or Memphis.

And there were no Ancestral Democrats for the party to slowly lose over time because the sort of people who would be Ancestral Democrats in the rest of the state were Ancestral Republicans the whole time.

[Adam Griffin]

It's kind of weird overall, in that ancestral Republican influence can still be felt. I know what most people think of when the term "latte liberal" is used, but I've always had a second definition of sorts; basically "cultural liberals", or people who you'd think would be Democrats based on a lot of their lifestyle habits, but still vote GOP. Hamiton County has a lot of these. The core of the city is different, of course, but alas.

Sort of related: I was also surprised at how much ground Clinton lost even in Chattanooga proper in 2016. Compared to 2008, Chattanooga swung as much to Trump as the remainder of Hamilton County. The fact that Clinton only got 53% in Chattanooga actually shocked me, given Obama got like 58-59% in both of his elections. Granted, Chattanooga's city limits are expansive, take in a lot of random suburban areas and have expanded even more so since 2008, but still.

Year	Chattanooga	Rest of Hamilton
2008	Obama +19	McCain +34
2016	Clinton +12	Trump +42
Swing	GOP +7	GOP +8