Why didn't Hillary have a big margin in New England?

[Alcibiades]

For largely the same reasons she did poorly in the Midwest, and rural areas more generally. New England working class whites have been, and still are, the most Democratic in the country. But as Hillary sustained massive losses among this group nationwide, she had further to fall in New England than pretty much anywhere else. She did make improve over Obama in the wealthy towns of Fairfield County and suburban Boston, but nowhere near as much as she lost in the rural and blue-collar parts of the region. Basically, by the Obama years, Dems were pretty much maxed out in New England (and they still are at the congressional level).

Vermont is a different case altogether. Trump actually got a lower vote share than Romney (by 1pp), but Clinton did 11 points worse than Obama. Essentially it seems a significant share of the state’s left wing Democrats, upset at the defeat of their man Bernie, wrote him in or voted Green (Bernie + Stein equalled almost 8%, most of it Bernie!). Only Utah had a higher third party vote share. Incidentally, Vermont was also the only state where Trump got fewer than 100,000 votes (also he obviously did in DC), and after DC and Hawaii his worst margin. So here it was definitely a case of Hillary doing badly, not Trump doing well.

Edit: Checking all New England states, Hillary actually did better than Obama (both margin- and vote share-wise) in MA and Trump improved on Romney’s vote share by less than 1 percentage point in both CT and NH. Only in RI and ME (the two most blue-collar New England states) did Trump actually significantly improve on Romney.

[Alcibiades]

For largely the same reasons she did poorly in the Midwest, and rural areas more generally. New England working class whites have been, and still are, the most Democratic in the country. But as Hillary sustained massive losses among this group nationwide, she had further to fall in New England than pretty much anywhere else. She did make improve over Obama in the wealthy towns of Fairfield County and suburban Boston, but nowhere near as much as she lost in the rural and blue-collar parts of the region. Basically, by the Obama years, Dems were pretty much maxed out in New England (and they still are at the congressional level).

Vermont is a different case altogether. Trump actually got a lower vote share than Romney (by 1pp), but Clinton did 11 points worse than Obama. Essentially it seems a significant share of the state’s left wing Democrats, upset at the defeat of their man Bernie, wrote him in or voted Green (Bernie + Stein equalled almost 8%, most of it Bernie!). Only Utah had a higher third party vote share. Incidentally, Vermont was also the only state where Trump got fewer than 100,000 votes (also he obviously did in DC), and after DC and Hawaii his worst margin. So here it was definitely a case of Hillary doing badly, not Trump doing well.

Edit: Checking all New England states, Hillary actually did better than Obama (both margin- and vote share-wise) in MA and Trump improved on Romney’s vote share by less than 1 percentage point in both CT and NH. Only in RI and ME (the two most blue-collar New England states) did Trump actually significantly improve on Romney.

Obama received 60.67% in Massachusetts, while Clinton obtained 60.01%. But she did win by a wider margin than Obama, because of the larger third-party vote in the state compared to 2012.

Sorry you’re right. I checked at first on Wikipedia, which for some reason, unlike the Atlas, doesn’t include write-ins.