Bizarre swing in Spalding County Georgia

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I was combing through the NY Times interactive electoral map and noticed some rather bizarre swings in a couple of towns in Georgia that I would have thought were an error at first given that the surrounding county swung towards Biden. Birdie, Georgia which Hillary won by seven points in 2016 went for Trump by SEVENTY points in 2020. The neighboring town of Caruso went from 76-22 Clinton in 2016 to 68-31 Trump in 2020. Does anybody know anything about the area to know why their would be such a radically counter-cyclical trend?

[Tiger08]

Saw a similar swing in a corner of Lamar County, MS. 72-24 Trump 2016 to 71-26 Biden 2020. Wondered if there was a typo

[One Term Floridian]

Obviously a typo

[Vice President Christian Man]

How big is the county? Counties with a small population are prone to large swings.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

How big is the county? Counties with a small population are prone to large swings.

It's fairly small and swung slightly to Biden overall which leads me to think that this was a typo on the part of the Times.

[NOVA Green]

Not sure if it might explain this swing vs the typo theory, but I seem to recall that Cinyc some 6-7 Months back expressed some major concerns regarding the NYT methodology when it came to coding precinct boundary changes between '16 and '20, which accounted for some of the more unusual numbers on their "swing map" view.

Haven't spent that much time on the Forum for a bit so not sure if he completed his project, but I recall he had modelling which he felt was more representative of actual swings for places with precinct changes.

[Horus]

That's absolutely a typo. This county has seen a big Black influx, no way these precincts swung super right.

[Schiff for Senate]

That's absolutely a typo. This county has seen a big Black influx, no way these precincts swung super right.

And even otherwise - how does a town just swing 92 points rightward as everything around it shifts leftward?

[ChiefFireWaterMike]

That's absolutely a typo. This county has seen a big Black influx, no way these precincts swung super right.

And even otherwise - how does a town just swing 92 points rightward as everything around it shifts leftward?

Majority orthodox (or is it conservative?) communities are the clear answer here.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Not sure if it might explain this swing vs the typo theory, but I seem to recall that Cinyc some 6-7 Months back expressed some major concerns regarding the NYT methodology when it came to coding precinct boundary changes between '16 and '20, which accounted for some of the more unusual numbers on their "swing map" view.

Haven't spent that much time on the Forum for a bit so not sure if he completed his project, but I recall he had modelling which he felt was more representative of actual swings for places with precinct changes.

That actually makes a lot of sense. A weird pattern I noticed about the NYT swing map was the ubiquity of heavy Trump swings throughout the country in the rural areas directly surrounding small towns. That's probably not a real geographic trend, but an artifact of how their coding dealt with precinct boundary modifications that were intersecting municipal limits.