Look at some results from the national elections and it is easy to consider the United States as a 50/50 nation overall, divided into the middle between republican red and democratic blue. But it is not reality in the vast and growing expanses of the country, where political competitiveness at the local level is replaced by the loyalty of landslides to a single party.
Throughout the country, the margins of 20 points in the counties that the Republicans won at the turn of the century have been transformed into margins of 50 points or more in recent years. Meanwhile, the number of counties that switched from one party to another during each presidential election has shrunk.
Data compiled by the NBC News political unit showed the demographic trends who organized our current political coalitions. But geographic trends also help to show how reorganization has gathered according to community lines during the last quarter of a century. If some people speak as if they had never had political conversations with people who do not agree with them, it could be because it is more possible than ever in the politically gathered United States today.
Looking at Blowout County victories
The victory of the electoral college of George W. Bush in 2000 was famous as a razor. But its average victory through the 3,100 counties and more of the country was around 17 points. The advantage of democrats in the dense urban nuclei of the population strengthens their election of popular voting after the elections. But the advantage of the Republicans in rural counties was an essential element of the republican game book, with victories in small counties with margins of 50 points or more, a little by little, to a substantial coalition. These are the counties where each candidate won more than 50 margin points during the 2000 elections:
Bush won major victories in the plains states and through the West mountain, while Al Gore has accumulated margins of 50 points and more in the densely populated boroughs of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and certain rural areas dispersed with large black populations.
But more than two decades later, President Donald Trump considerably increased the number of victory counties.
Trump has cultivated republican political advantages east of the ancient gop pombs and captured the Appalachians, which was once a democratic region reliably, continuing to raise the margins in rural America. The average size of a Trump Blowout County was around 10,000 voters last year. On the other hand, the Democrats have developed their advantages in the dense cities and suburbs of the population, with the region of the Bay of San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; And Seattle emerging on this map like highly democratic areas. The average size of an eruption county for Kamala Harris was 210,000 voters.
Some of the most important political coalitions for democrats emerge on this map, in particular compared to 2000. The 2024 card shows the birth of democratic voting powerhouses in the counties mainly-Black Dekalb and Clayton in Georgia and in the county of Dane of Wisconsin, the house of Madison and the University of Wisconsin, with its population of degrees of highly white diploma and academic. The two coalitions are essential to democratic victories in these states during the last elections.
Overall, there are four times more counties of the eruption today than at the beginning of the century.
The counties turned
A consequence of the sharp increase in the counties of the eruption: a precipitated drop in swing counties.
At the time of the 2004 elections, 227 counties went from one party to another compared to the elections of 2000. But last fall, only 89 changed their party preferences compared to the 2020 elections.
The total number of returned counties fell during the century. The biggest peaks took place during the Barack Obama elections in 2008 of Barack Obama and in the 2016 Trump elections in Trump – moments when the party coalitions have changed spectacularly.
The reversal of the 89 counties of Trump in this last election was in fact an increase compared to the 80 counties who overthrew the victory of Joe Biden in 2020. The last election was also statistically remarkable for another reason: Harris became the first candidate this century who did not overthrow a single county compared to the previous elections.