What does this map show about American political geography?

[ProgressiveModerate]

This map shows the 2020 election by net votes by county.

It reveals the pretty extreme disparities and shows land doesn't vote - some hyper red counties in rural TX and NE are outvoted by single precincts in somewhere like Dane County WI.

I think the most interesting feature of this map is that it shows Republicans are a party heavily still heavily dependent on suburbs, exurbs, and smaller-midsized cities. This is especially true in southern states like NC, TX, and GA, and may explain why these states have shifted left compared to states like PA and OH where the GOP's vote nets are more spread out throughout dense rural counties. I think the GOP's hope is that these types of places are growing faster than they're shifting left, because if the GOP starts losing places like Forsyth County, it becomes really hard to win elections.

This map also shows why Florida is so unique - it's really the only state that has large GOP vote netting counties throughout.

I also like this map because it shows the difference between cities that get outvoted by their own suburbs/exurbs vs cities that don't really have conservative suburbs/exurbs. One can see places like Salt Lake City, Houston, Pittsburg, Cinci, and St. Louis struggle to outvote their surroundings whereas places like Madison, Travis, DC, and Denver really lack substantial Republican suburbs.

Another thing is that in these big counties, even relatively small shifts can have huge impacts on the net vote total. Take a place like Maricopa County AZ - "only" swung 5 points left from 2016 to 2020 but went from netting Trump nearly 50k votes to Biden 50k votes which is huge and was able to swing the state. Another example could be Miami-Dade; if Trump narrowly wins it in 2024 nearly 100k net votes for Biden are erased.

One final thing is within rural areas, there is pretty large variation in how much they actually net for the GOP. In rural parts of the farm belt, there are many counties that are like Trump + 80 but netted him less than 1k votes due to such a small population, whereas in PA and OH, Republicans actually net substantial amounts out of many rural counties.

[TDAS04]

Upstate South Carolina looks like it nets quite a few votes for the GOP, along with Horry County.

I was expecting Tennessee to appear more notable on the map, since that state provided Trump with largest amount of net votes (surpassing even Texas in 2020).

[ProgressiveModerate]

Upstate South Carolina looks like it nets quite a few votes for the GOP, along with Horry County.

I was expecting Tennessee to appear more notable on the map, since that state provided Trump with largest amount of net votes (surpassing even Texas in 2020).

With TN, the Nasheville suburbs and eastern Appalachian parts of the state netted Trump quite a bit, but there's no one standout county that nets the GOP a ton, and neither Shelby or Davidson netted Biden that much, at least compared to other similar sized urban counties.

[King of Kensington]

Illinois is perhaps the best example of "land doesn't vote." On the map it looks deep Republican red but it went D by 17 points because something like 70% of the population lives in a few counties in the northeast corner of the state.

[GAinDC]

Very cool analysis! Thanks for the insight

[pikachu]

Always surprised by how populated the non-big city Florida counties are.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Always surprised by how populated the non-big city Florida counties are.

FL has it's own kind of sprawl that is a bit hard to categorize. Sort of like suburban sprawl but not necessarily based around a central city/downtown.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Always surprised by how populated the non-big city Florida counties are.

FL has it's own kind of sprawl that is a bit hard to categorize. Sort of like suburban sprawl but not necessarily based around a central city/downtown.

They're basically exurbs. They just developed before the areas near to the urban areas finished developing.

Like the area between Tampa and Orlando is pretty developed and populated but doesn't have any real urban centers in it (unless you count Lakeland but that too didn't really develop heavily until recent years.) This isn't really uncommon for cases where you have two major metros close to each other, but the percentage of people who live between them is no doubt a much higher percentage of the population of the entire amalgamation than of the population who live between Milwaukee and Chicago is to that entire area.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Always surprised by how populated the non-big city Florida counties are.

FL has it's own kind of sprawl that is a bit hard to categorize. Sort of like suburban sprawl but not necessarily based around a central city/downtown.

They're basically exurbs. They just developed before the areas near to the urban areas finished developing.

Like the area between Tampa and Orlando is pretty developed and populated but doesn't have any real urban centers in it (unless you count Lakeland but that too didn't really develop heavily until recent years.) This isn't really uncommon for cases where you have two major metros close to each other, but the percentage of people who live between them is no doubt a much higher percentage of the population of the entire amalgamation than of the population who live between Milwaukee and Chicago is to that entire area.

Yeah that's a good way of putting it - these communities just feel too dense to be called exurbs. They're like suburban exurbs.