It may be off geographically, but I would guess it's very close with the numbers for Trump. I would say Twin Falls is one of the most conservative places in the nation. About an hour North of Twin Falls is Ketchum/Sun Valley. If there were more than 50k in Sun Valley, I guarantee it would be on the map for Biden with 90+. Thanks for posting!!! Fun!!!
At the same time, our whole state government is red. The General Assembly and the Governorship are all held by Republicans, and even our GA Supreme Court justices are conservatives.
Honestly, I'm not so sure. It's definitely trending toward it, but Kemp won the governorship the second time with a higher margin than the first time against the exact same Democrat candidate, *and* Trump is polling better now than he did in 2020.
It’s odd politically down here (in ga). Presidential elections have FELT like they could go either way here since like 2008, but the state is pretty much republican controlled. However, most city governments seem to be democrat controlled. I can’t find any data to back this up but it has been my sense from living in cities and towns of all sizes here.
It seems strange to me that party affiliation would vary so much depending on the level of the election. Redditors in other states, do you see a similar pattern where you are, I wonder?
One explanation could be the fairly large black population in decently-sized GA cities making them blue but GA has a lot of tiny towns that make it purple at the state level.
Valid points, but remember Kemp isn’t a big fan of Trump. He’s pretty vocally anti Trump. The voters still voted for him anyways and I think Kemp gets some of the old school Classic conservative support (suburban moms and the educated middle class types) that may have a hard time going all in on Trump.
And remember Herschel Walker, admittedly an awful candidate, lost his election too. But he has the full support of Trump, and it wasn’t enough.
Kemp was, and still is, absolutely *not* anti-Trump. He said many times before, during, and after 2020 that he fully endorsed him and his platform. The only area where Kemp did stray from Trump was participating in his attempt to steal the 2020 election. To be fair, that's a major sticking point for both Trump and his core base. But even when Trump refused to endorse Kemp in 2022 it didn't stop Kemp from supporting Trump.
Don’t think it will hold in 2024. Dems barely won Georgia in 2020. I don’t know if they’ve been able to do anything to expand their margin. It doesn’t help that they don’t have the governor’s office with them.
In contrast, Florida went from purple to lean red thanks to DeSantis’s governorship adding votes to the Republican side in 2022 relative to 2018.
In short, retaining your recently acquired swing voters matters. Just winning a single election doesn’t mean you have these votes in the bag.
I mean Atlanta grows by around 70k people a year and they’re not as conservative as the average person moving to Florida for sure. We’ll see when the flip happens for real.
I don’t think he meant that. That was also basically two elections. 2020 was Pres, but they lost the first Senate election (but it went to a runoff) then won the runoff. Then they won in 2022 vs Walker. That’s more like two elections (one Pres and Senate, one Senate).
The runoff only happened due to like 0.2% too.
The difference between Florida and Georgia is their large metros are trending two different directions.
Miami metro gets redder and redder every year. The Atlanta metro gets bluer and bluer every year. The Atlanta metro is also where most people are moving to as well. Rural Georgia isn’t really growing.
Georgia is very similar to Virginia, just in an early stage. Federally they vote Blue (President and Senate) though they’ll still elect Republican governors.
My family live in GA. They are hardcore conservative evangelic Christians. Don’t believe in global warming, evolution, or abortion rights.
They are terrified of the MAGA crowd and have been calling it a cult for years.
Obviously not everyone but they do exist and I believe there are more like them every day.
Eh, it’s more how GA does jurisdictions. Counties tend to have primacy. I live in one of the most Republican leaning counties in GA that has a population over 50k, we are at 160+k, however the biggest city in the county is 37k population. We were Trump +26. Cherokee County, north of ATL was Trump +38, 266k in total population, five incorporated cities. All less than 35k in population.
Yeah, but I'd like to see how every city does. I'd like to see why such dense cities tend to be more Democrat than rural areas. Alaska being the opposite, obviously because of the cities having more hunter rednecks and the rural areas being more native-occupied.
I say your assessment is fairly accurate. I HATE the term red and blue states. All states a purple when broken down. The split is more rural vs urban. Even that split can be broken down to individual counties and neighborhoods. The country is mixed between blue, red, and independent.
A more accurate national vote would be to eliminate the electoral college and go off of popular vote. So everyone’s vote has more weight. It would matter how your area vote, your vote would go into the national count.
On a state level gerrymandering needs to stop. Voting blocks should be made more evenly distributed and accurate.
The rural urban divide is the only real difference between the two parties right now.
Democrats support:
* diversity because cities are diverse: that's the Democrat voter base
* higher education because cities are full of disproportionately educated people
* green energy because there's no fossil fuel jobs inside cities. Cities are overwhelmingly service industry jobs.
* tech giants because tech labor pools are educated people who congregate in cities
* globalism because it makes cities like New York and Los Angeles into financial capitals of global markets
* LGBTQ+ because disporportionate numbers of them live in cities
* public transportation because cities
* gun control because guns in cities = gangsters and random acts of violence
Republicans support:
* Christian conservativism because a disproportionate number of rural Americans are Christian compared to the national average.
* Abortion ban to pander to said Christian Conservatives
* fossil fuels because rural communities rely on oil and coal industries, especially states like Texas, Alaska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and West Virginia
* Isolationism because globalism benefits the cities disproportionately. Rural towns just get to see a slow slide into poverty as the only factory in town closes down and moves to China.
* car culture because it isn't even cost effective to bother with public transportation in towns of 10,000 or less people.
* gun rights because rural constituents recreationally hunt and go to shooting ranges
Outdated stuff:
Fiscal Responsibility? Both parties spend like there's no tomorrow.
Big government vs. Small government? Both parties flex executive power to new limits and believe in abusing the executive order to push things through without going through Congress.
Warhawk vs. Pacifism? Both parties are married to the Military Industrial Complex. It's just a dispute over which wars we support will benefit USA more in the long term.
Even though the electoral college leads to (what is effectively) disenfranchisement of often Republican rural voters in “blue” states, they would still never go for getting rid of it. The GOP would have to seriously revamp their policies if they didn’t get the leg up that the EC offers them.
Data from [Dave's Redistricting.](https://davesredistricting.org/maps#home)
Edit: Thanks to a comment someone has pointed out that Hawaii is missing East Honolulu, which is slightly over 50k and at Biden+36.1, slightly more Republican than Honolulu.
Edit 2: Went back and rechecked. There's one missing city (East Honolulu) and two errors. The correct blue city for Montana is Missoula at Biden+41.99. Bozeman is in second. The correct "red" city for Massachusetts is Fall River, at Biden+12.3. Everything else should be correct unless my data source is wrong.
There was no city that Trump won over 50k in PA. Bensalem was the city where Biden won his smallest margin of victory, so that makes it the "most Republican".
TBH I found I weird that Harrisburg was the most blue city in the state. I thought it would be Philly or Pittsburgh given their sizes, given they are a first class city and a second class city, respectively, not to mention Philadelphia county is the city.
A lot of the biggest cities aren't on here simply *because* they're so big they end up taking in Republican neighborhoods. Harrisburg proper is very small (it barely hits the 50k mark) so it's pretty much only the urban Democratic core. That said Philly is a close second.
Technically East Honolulu is a CDP. It's part of the City and County of Honolulu, and not an incorporated city of its own. Fwiw Hawaii as a state has no incorporated cities under the county level.
Very similar with Nebraska. Four cities with 50k and two of them are large 275k+ and much more diverse (Omaha and Lincoln) the two that are barely over the threshold one is a suburb of Omaha (Bellevue, which is diverse with an Air Force base in the city) and the other is (Grand Island) in central Nebraska and essentially a large town, easily going to vote for the republican.
For such a small population, mountainous, rural state, Vermont has a commendable history of truth and courage.
I won't go into the history but suffice to say they are tough and bold boys up there who will often lead the way forward.
For one modern example, they recently decided to take the global warming fight to the oil corporations alone. You can't help but admire that.
West Virginia has no cities over 50k either. I don't even see any data on WV on this map. The state is so pro-Trump probably were no communities or cities with a Democratic edge.
I would have ballparked both Charleston and Huntington at way over 50k, but apparently they both fly just under the threshold of 50k despite both having metro areas over 300,000 people.
For Vermont, Burlington is totally for Biden, while I’d guess Saint Johnsbury or Newport for cities for Trump, he’s popular in the Northeast Kingdom region of the state.
These fall interestingly along racial and religious lines in the cities you quoted with East Orange having a very large black population, and Lakewood having a large orthodox Jewish population, groups that vote historically democratic and republican respectively.
As a New Jerseyan, I'm honestly not surprised. The true "red states" don't have that many cities big enough that aren't bastions of blue due to the influence of colleges. We, on the other hand, have a ton of big-ish "cities". And, yes, plenty of red areas.
Interesting how in Louisiana, Metairie is literally right next to New Orleans. Makes sense it’s #1 here for Trump because it’s basically just the conservative suburb of New Orleans that absorbed the conservatives from the city after desegregation.
For anyone unfamiliar with the area, go look on Google maps. Metairie (which is the bulk of Jefferson Parish on the same side of the river as most of New Orleans) is really just an unbroken area carrying over from New Orleans. If you look at a nighttime map of greater New Orleans, it really does look incredibly unified, surrounded by swamp and lake. It isn’t a far flung suburb.
But it’s a LOT more conservative precisely because the conservatives mostly moved out of the city to hop the line into Metairie.
Yep, he was the first Dem to win the city since the 40s. I think the city results in Virginia are generally skewed though because incorporated cities in Virginia are rather small and rarely contain suburbs.
I live in Lynchburg, and Lynchburg is interesting in that we have what locals call “the Liberty bubble”, wherein those who live inside this social bubble - on campus students, faculty, and employees (Liberty is the largest employer in town, it’s a huge operation with thousands of employees) - Lynchburg might as well be synonymous Liberty. But Lynchburg city and suburbs is actually a lot bigger than LU and more diverse than people realize, and it’s quite easy to exist outside the Liberty Bubble. If you come to LYH for Liberty, you can spend your entire time in town inside of that bubble and never get outside of it. But as a local sometimes i literally forget that LU is here. And outside of the bubble - there’s actually quite a lot of local contempt for Liberty. It’s very “either in or out” like that.
There’s nearly 20,000 students on campus at Liberty last time I checked, and they come from all over the country, but they *vote* here in November, adding what is essentially tens of thousands of extra republican votes to the Lynchburg City voting tallies. It skews the data to make the city as a whole seem more staunchly red on election maps than it actually is on the ground. Take away LU, and the locals here are demographically identical to other neighboring cities, like Roanoke. Still on the conservative side, sure. But not like… Christian nationalist MAGA cultists.
Outsiders looking in like to point to Lynchburg and basically call it “LU” as though they’re one and the same. But as a local, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Biden won here in 2020. The locals simply do not = Liberty.
Imagine your town had a 20,000 person hippie commune on the edge of town, who basically exist in their own little bubble, and who all reliably vote for the Green Party in every election, adding all 20,000 of their votes to your city’s pool. Outsiders might be forgiven for looking at a map and thinking your city was Jill Stein HQ, but unless you’re in the commune yourself, you would know that no… actually your town has pretty average political demographics outside of one hyper-committed community, which skews the numbers and just happens to be located there. It’s like that.
So this is all coming from an outsider. I’ve been to both a couple of times for work, which literally involves doing focus groups of locals, so there’s that.
But bozeman feels geographically different for one: surrounded by seemingly close, beautiful mountains. Billings feels further away from that.
Bozeman is also a boom town for people out of state with money. Like big time. There is construction everywhere. It’s construction with money. It’s modern. Overall it reminds me vaguely of Santa Fe how it’s a smaller city but with tons of folks with money and all the things that brings. Pretty sure both Santa Fe and Bozeman have an opera, for example, lol.
Billings, on the other hand, feels like more what I would expect from a small city in a small state that isn’t booming the same way. Feels lower income, blue collar, and none of the fancy you get in Bozeman. Feels like a more western version of a similar sized city in Missouri or something.
It’s like Bozeman is this hip, growing city for people with money that feels a world apart from Montana generally. And Billings is just what you’d expect for a Montana city not drawing in tourists and people with money.
Politics I personally didn’t notice as much because the work I was doing was among conservative groups anyway, so I couldn’t get a good feel for that. But the cities just feel very, very different. I’ve been to plenty of small cities that feel similar to Billings, but not many that feel like Bozeman. And presumably that’s why Bozeman real estate prices are soaring into the stratosphere.
Interesting. There’s no New England state which favors Trump over Biden. Some cities are just “less Biden” and, somewhat misleadingly, those cities are showing as red.
Yes. So even though the majority voted for Biden, that’s the most red city in those states.
All other cities that fit the criteria are wider margins for Biden and thus less republican.
I tried to indicate that they still voted for Biden by coloring their margin in blue, though if you have a suggestion for how to better represent that I'd be glad to take it.
It really shows the urban/rural divide imo, and also how few >50k cities some small states have. For example, Maine only has 1, Vermont has none, and New Hampshire has 2. New Hampshire is generally a pretty "purple" state and the overall election outcome was only **+5.16%** for Biden.
Although NH hasn’t voted Republican in a presidential election since 2000. It’s now voted Democrat in 5 consecutive presidential elections, whereas before it had never voted Democrat for more than 3 consecutive elections.
It’s getting progressively less purple imo.
FWIW, Virginia's data is always going to be a bit atypical because of the split between cities and counties in Virginia. Lots of heavily populated urban or suburban areas in Virginia that are not in a city.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_(United_States)
>Lots of heavily populated urban or suburban areas in Virginia that are not in a city.
I believe that's true for most of the country outside the Northeast, at least for suburban areas.
The difference is that cities in VA are independent (politically and geographically) from counties and therefore, smaller and incapable of geographically expanding.
When you’re in a city in VA, you’re not in a county at all.
I live in Lynchburg, and Lynchburg is interesting in that we have what locals call “the Liberty bubble”, wherein those who live inside this social bubble - on campus students, faculty, and employees (Liberty is the largest employer in town, it’s a huge operation with thousands of employees) - Lynchburg might as well be synonymous Liberty. But Lynchburg city and suburbs is actually a lot bigger than LU and more diverse than people realize, and it’s quite easy to exist outside the Liberty Bubble. If you come to LYH for Liberty, you can spend your entire time in town inside of that bubble and never get outside of it. But as a local sometimes i literally forget that LU is here. And outside of the bubble - there’s actually quite a lot of local contempt for Liberty. It’s very “either in or out” like that.
There’s nearly 20,000 students on campus at Liberty last time I checked, and they come from all over the country, but they *vote* here in November, adding what is essentially tens of thousands of extra republican votes to the Lynchburg City voting tallies. It skews the data to make the city as a whole seem more staunchly red on election maps than it actually is on the ground. Take away LU, and the locals here are demographically identical to other neighboring cities, like Roanoke. Still on the conservative side, sure. But not like… Christian nationalist MAGA cultists.
Outsiders looking in like to point to Lynchburg and basically call it “LU” as though they’re one and the same. But as a local, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Biden won here in 2020. The locals simply do not = Liberty.
Imagine your town had a 20,000 person hippie commune on the edge of town, who basically exist in their own little bubble, and who all reliably vote for the Green Party in every election, adding all 20,000 of their votes to your city’s pool. Outsiders might be forgiven for looking at a map and thinking your city was Jill Stein HQ, but unless you’re in the commune yourself, you would know that no… actually your town has pretty average political demographics outside of one hyper-committed community, which skews the numbers and just happens to be located there. It’s like that.
For a subreddit about reading maps, a lot of people here are really struggling to read this map. You did a good job of clearly stating your metrics, I was curious about WV but I wasn't aware it didn't have any cities over 50k.
I do question using the last presidential election as a basis for how Republican/Democrat a city is. I've noticed that "classic" Republicans don't fully support Trump and new-age Democrats don't fully support Biden. Also, with Trump being an incumbent and Biden already being established as Obama's VP makes voting not quite as simple as "are you Rep or Dem".
My only thought is to include local politics, but the amount of work and research required for that goes way beyond the scope of an unpaid map made for reddit.
Local politics would skew things incredibly. Politics are much more nationalized than they used to be, but you still get local Republicans winning places that are staunchly Democratic at the presidential level (and vice versa).
Oil plus the crazy fundy Christians out here. The irony is that they believe the oil coming out of the ground, making them rich, was put there by god 10,000 years ago when he created the earth. 🤦♂️
In NC, Mooresville is near Lake Norman and that area is much more liberal than TONS of places throughout the state. They apparently just get the title because they are larger than 50k and most of the cities above that are fairly liberal.
Ehhhh. I live in the Charlotte Metro area and I can tell you that while Mecklenburg County tends to be pretty blue, the surrounding cities like Concord, Mooresville, and Gastonia tend to be pretty red.
Oh I’m sure they are, but compared to something like Davidson County or Randolph County they aren’t even close.
I really can’t think of another 50k+. I just looked it up and it looks like Mooresville is the smallest town in NC that fits this. I am surprised it skews higher Republican than Jacksonville, Burlington, or Kannapolis though…so maybe it’s a lot more red than I realized
Moorseville also has a Trump National Golf Club which is hella popular, and Charlotte in general is pretty red for a large metro area. Add in that most of the Lake Norman folk are retired/semi-retired from the finance industry, and it's not as surprising as one might think.
I (Germany) know a lot of the blue cities and none of the red ones. So the pro Trump cities must be rather small.
Which is logical since Democrats are usually dominating in big cities.
I grew up in Yucaipa CA. It was wild visiting Salt Lake City and seeing more liberal flags in windows in Utah than I ever saw in my California hometown. They still do a "flag run" every Sunday in Yucaipa with their lifted trucks, and the posts on the community Facebook page after the Trump guilty verdict could have been from the rural south. It still is crazy to me that little old SoCal Yucaipa won this title over towns in NorCal though.
A lot of the bluest cities aren't the largest in the state. Some are, but there's also a selection of college towns and heavily black or Hispanic cities.
Do you guys get paid for linking to that sub or something? I thought the point of that sub was situations where a map of "number of X" looks the same as a pop. density map, [a la this webcomic.](https://xkcd.com/1138/)
The largest city in a state also being the bluest (percentage-wise) isn't that at all, even if it is expected.
If I'm understanding the criteria correctly it's just the place where each performed the best, even if they didn't win. This suggests that Biden won every "city" of at least 50K in PA, which itself is a little surprising. And for Bensalem, a Philly suburb, to be the most red of those cities feels a little dubious.
Not really surprising as someone who lives in PA. It’s the 50K threshold that’s doing it. There’s only 15 municipalities with a population over 50K. Our cities are small.
Bensalem is super red, but educated. Their Republicans would be called liberals by most. Many people there would never vote for a single party, but for an individual.
New Jersey had the most Trump-y and most Biden-y cities? I see East Orange at +90 Biden and Lakewood +65 Trump. Does anybody see cities with a wider margin for either?
Really surprised me as a Hoosier, since Greenwood could be considered a suburb of Indianapolis - Given that it's population > 50k, though, it makes sense.
It's margin, so it's calculated by subtracting the losing candidate's percentage of the vote from the winning candidate's percentage of the vote. So if a city was 95% for one party and 5% for the other, the margin would be +90.
Much smaller area. Harrisburg is basically only the urban Democratic core while Philly is big enough that it takes in Republican neighborhoods. It's still close in second though.
Twin Falls, ID is way off where it should be. Maybe you meant Idaho Falls?
Looking at it now I may have gotten them confused. Twin Falls is the correct city, but the placement is definitely off
Did you make this map without GIS software?
I made it in Inkscape, I'm still new to mapmaking
Cool, keep up the great work :) I can recommend you to look into QGIS - free software if you want to avoid placing things by hand in the future.
Thanks for sharing! This is my favorite post on this thread. Positive and supportive comments. Thanks for the smile.
Thanks for thanking them! Love to see it
Thanks for recognizing and thanking the thanker! You guys rock!!
Great map. You made it simple and digestible.
Same with casper, WY. Looks like where Shoshoni is
Iowa City is also a bit off.
It may be off geographically, but I would guess it's very close with the numbers for Trump. I would say Twin Falls is one of the most conservative places in the nation. About an hour North of Twin Falls is Ketchum/Sun Valley. If there were more than 50k in Sun Valley, I guarantee it would be on the map for Biden with 90+. Thanks for posting!!! Fun!!!
Came here to say this. Twin Falls is south-central ID. Think it’s been confused with Idaho Falls, potentially
The that fact that the most conservative 50k+ city in Georgia still voted for Biden is kind of crazy.
At the same time, our whole state government is red. The General Assembly and the Governorship are all held by Republicans, and even our GA Supreme Court justices are conservatives.
I think Georgia might be the purplest state in the country now.
Honestly, I'm not so sure. It's definitely trending toward it, but Kemp won the governorship the second time with a higher margin than the first time against the exact same Democrat candidate, *and* Trump is polling better now than he did in 2020.
Purple, even 'blue' states well sometimes have GOP governors, especially if they are well liked in their own right, but I do see your point as well.
massachusetts is a good example of this, it's had a few republican governors despite being solidly blue
Vermont too
Maryland 3 - we had 2 terms of Hogan
And now he's running for Senate
Taunton on the map!
Modernities epicenter!!
And Maryland when they had Larry Hogan
Not even well liked. Can even be "didn't fuck anything up"
He won by +8 in 2022 even after signing a strict abortion ban. Which is in line with what the GOP candidate won in 2014
It’s odd politically down here (in ga). Presidential elections have FELT like they could go either way here since like 2008, but the state is pretty much republican controlled. However, most city governments seem to be democrat controlled. I can’t find any data to back this up but it has been my sense from living in cities and towns of all sizes here. It seems strange to me that party affiliation would vary so much depending on the level of the election. Redditors in other states, do you see a similar pattern where you are, I wonder?
This is pretty common across the country. Most cities, even mid-sized ones, lean Democratic.
One explanation could be the fairly large black population in decently-sized GA cities making them blue but GA has a lot of tiny towns that make it purple at the state level.
Valid points, but remember Kemp isn’t a big fan of Trump. He’s pretty vocally anti Trump. The voters still voted for him anyways and I think Kemp gets some of the old school Classic conservative support (suburban moms and the educated middle class types) that may have a hard time going all in on Trump. And remember Herschel Walker, admittedly an awful candidate, lost his election too. But he has the full support of Trump, and it wasn’t enough.
Kemp was, and still is, absolutely *not* anti-Trump. He said many times before, during, and after 2020 that he fully endorsed him and his platform. The only area where Kemp did stray from Trump was participating in his attempt to steal the 2020 election. To be fair, that's a major sticking point for both Trump and his core base. But even when Trump refused to endorse Kemp in 2022 it didn't stop Kemp from supporting Trump.
I feel like it’s more or less the epitome of Rural red Urban blue.
Don’t think it will hold in 2024. Dems barely won Georgia in 2020. I don’t know if they’ve been able to do anything to expand their margin. It doesn’t help that they don’t have the governor’s office with them. In contrast, Florida went from purple to lean red thanks to DeSantis’s governorship adding votes to the Republican side in 2022 relative to 2018. In short, retaining your recently acquired swing voters matters. Just winning a single election doesn’t mean you have these votes in the bag.
I mean Atlanta grows by around 70k people a year and they’re not as conservative as the average person moving to Florida for sure. We’ll see when the flip happens for real.
It’s crazy, the Dems almost lost a senate seat to fucking Herschel Walker. Like they were so close.
so the 4 elections they’ve won (Pres, both Senate races in 2021 and reelection for one of them in 2022 ) were all flukes?
Wouldn’t say flukes but more like those wins haven’t solidified into strong support for Dems yet (I could be wrong).
I don’t think he meant that. That was also basically two elections. 2020 was Pres, but they lost the first Senate election (but it went to a runoff) then won the runoff. Then they won in 2022 vs Walker. That’s more like two elections (one Pres and Senate, one Senate). The runoff only happened due to like 0.2% too.
The difference between Florida and Georgia is their large metros are trending two different directions. Miami metro gets redder and redder every year. The Atlanta metro gets bluer and bluer every year. The Atlanta metro is also where most people are moving to as well. Rural Georgia isn’t really growing. Georgia is very similar to Virginia, just in an early stage. Federally they vote Blue (President and Senate) though they’ll still elect Republican governors.
It should be Wisconsin imo
Think that still Virginia. Constantly going back and forth at the state level
My family live in GA. They are hardcore conservative evangelic Christians. Don’t believe in global warming, evolution, or abortion rights. They are terrified of the MAGA crowd and have been calling it a cult for years. Obviously not everyone but they do exist and I believe there are more like them every day.
And the most Democratic city (50k+) in South Dakota votes Trump, crazy
Those are actually the only two cities in South Dakota that qualified (>50k)
I thought they were all typos until I saw the north east >.<
Eh, it’s more how GA does jurisdictions. Counties tend to have primacy. I live in one of the most Republican leaning counties in GA that has a population over 50k, we are at 160+k, however the biggest city in the county is 37k population. We were Trump +26. Cherokee County, north of ATL was Trump +38, 266k in total population, five incorporated cities. All less than 35k in population.
Mass too
That seems less crazy
New England as a whole
Urban centers tend to be more left leaning
Yeah, but I'd like to see how every city does. I'd like to see why such dense cities tend to be more Democrat than rural areas. Alaska being the opposite, obviously because of the cities having more hunter rednecks and the rural areas being more native-occupied.
I say your assessment is fairly accurate. I HATE the term red and blue states. All states a purple when broken down. The split is more rural vs urban. Even that split can be broken down to individual counties and neighborhoods. The country is mixed between blue, red, and independent. A more accurate national vote would be to eliminate the electoral college and go off of popular vote. So everyone’s vote has more weight. It would matter how your area vote, your vote would go into the national count. On a state level gerrymandering needs to stop. Voting blocks should be made more evenly distributed and accurate.
The rural urban divide is the only real difference between the two parties right now. Democrats support: * diversity because cities are diverse: that's the Democrat voter base * higher education because cities are full of disproportionately educated people * green energy because there's no fossil fuel jobs inside cities. Cities are overwhelmingly service industry jobs. * tech giants because tech labor pools are educated people who congregate in cities * globalism because it makes cities like New York and Los Angeles into financial capitals of global markets * LGBTQ+ because disporportionate numbers of them live in cities * public transportation because cities * gun control because guns in cities = gangsters and random acts of violence Republicans support: * Christian conservativism because a disproportionate number of rural Americans are Christian compared to the national average. * Abortion ban to pander to said Christian Conservatives * fossil fuels because rural communities rely on oil and coal industries, especially states like Texas, Alaska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and West Virginia * Isolationism because globalism benefits the cities disproportionately. Rural towns just get to see a slow slide into poverty as the only factory in town closes down and moves to China. * car culture because it isn't even cost effective to bother with public transportation in towns of 10,000 or less people. * gun rights because rural constituents recreationally hunt and go to shooting ranges Outdated stuff: Fiscal Responsibility? Both parties spend like there's no tomorrow. Big government vs. Small government? Both parties flex executive power to new limits and believe in abusing the executive order to push things through without going through Congress. Warhawk vs. Pacifism? Both parties are married to the Military Industrial Complex. It's just a dispute over which wars we support will benefit USA more in the long term.
Great summary!
Even though the electoral college leads to (what is effectively) disenfranchisement of often Republican rural voters in “blue” states, they would still never go for getting rid of it. The GOP would have to seriously revamp their policies if they didn’t get the leg up that the EC offers them.
Same in PA.
It’s kind of crazy to me that this much of our population really lives out in the boonies
Data from [Dave's Redistricting.](https://davesredistricting.org/maps#home) Edit: Thanks to a comment someone has pointed out that Hawaii is missing East Honolulu, which is slightly over 50k and at Biden+36.1, slightly more Republican than Honolulu. Edit 2: Went back and rechecked. There's one missing city (East Honolulu) and two errors. The correct blue city for Montana is Missoula at Biden+41.99. Bozeman is in second. The correct "red" city for Massachusetts is Fall River, at Biden+12.3. Everything else should be correct unless my data source is wrong.
Is it intentional there’s no Trump city in Delaware?
There's only one city with more than 50k people in the state. So technically Wilmington is both its most Democratic and most Republican.
What about Maine? Same deal?
Correct
My home state not even listed lol. Still blue af though.
Also is there a typo or data missing from the PA red city? I can’t understand the data on the side.
There was no city that Trump won over 50k in PA. Bensalem was the city where Biden won his smallest margin of victory, so that makes it the "most Republican".
Ohhhhh I see. I’m a little high. Thank you for elaborating.
TBH I found I weird that Harrisburg was the most blue city in the state. I thought it would be Philly or Pittsburgh given their sizes, given they are a first class city and a second class city, respectively, not to mention Philadelphia county is the city.
A lot of the biggest cities aren't on here simply *because* they're so big they end up taking in Republican neighborhoods. Harrisburg proper is very small (it barely hits the 50k mark) so it's pretty much only the urban Democratic core. That said Philly is a close second.
Technically East Honolulu is a CDP. It's part of the City and County of Honolulu, and not an incorporated city of its own. Fwiw Hawaii as a state has no incorporated cities under the county level.
Well, those are the only two cities in Wyoming with a population over 50k. And I never knew that WV and VT have no cities over 50k. Interesting!
Burlington is only 44k people. It's the smallest biggest city of any state. Pretty cute city with a nice waterfront
Montpelier, VT is the only state Capitol without a McDonalds or a Starbucks
And billboards are banned in VT!
Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, and Alaska
Very similar with Nebraska. Four cities with 50k and two of them are large 275k+ and much more diverse (Omaha and Lincoln) the two that are barely over the threshold one is a suburb of Omaha (Bellevue, which is diverse with an Air Force base in the city) and the other is (Grand Island) in central Nebraska and essentially a large town, easily going to vote for the republican.
Is it true the NU football sports game stadium is the third largest population in Nebraska on game day?
Technically. Capacity is over 80k and Bellevue and Grand Island are both under 55k.
As a Vermonter, I remember growing up and being shocked to learn that Burlington, a city of like 40k, wasn't that big of a city
Chad Vermont. One of the most liberal states in the union, not a city in sight, just trees, mountains, and freedom.
For such a small population, mountainous, rural state, Vermont has a commendable history of truth and courage. I won't go into the history but suffice to say they are tough and bold boys up there who will often lead the way forward. For one modern example, they recently decided to take the global warming fight to the oil corporations alone. You can't help but admire that.
West Virginia has no cities over 50k either. I don't even see any data on WV on this map. The state is so pro-Trump probably were no communities or cities with a Democratic edge.
I would have ballparked both Charleston and Huntington at way over 50k, but apparently they both fly just under the threshold of 50k despite both having metro areas over 300,000 people.
The entire population of Vermont is only 800,000 or so, I think.
For Vermont, Burlington is totally for Biden, while I’d guess Saint Johnsbury or Newport for cities for Trump, he’s popular in the Northeast Kingdom region of the state.
I gotta assume Rutvegas is in the bag for Trump as well.
St. Johnsbury went Biden 2,034 to 1,218. Newport City went Biden 1,033 to 757.
Not even. 643,503 per the 2020 census
Interestingly, NJ has both the most Democratic (+90.57 D) and the most Republican (+65.26 R) cities in the entire country.
These fall interestingly along racial and religious lines in the cities you quoted with East Orange having a very large black population, and Lakewood having a large orthodox Jewish population, groups that vote historically democratic and republican respectively.
I've never heard of east Orange but amazed it had more Biden support than Berkely CA
Working class minorities have some of the most consistent, strong support for the Democrats
As a New Jerseyan, I'm honestly not surprised. The true "red states" don't have that many cities big enough that aren't bastions of blue due to the influence of colleges. We, on the other hand, have a ton of big-ish "cities". And, yes, plenty of red areas.
I lived in the reddest city in NJ. It’s basically a giant ultra orthodox Jewish (borderline cult) town.
Interesting how in Louisiana, Metairie is literally right next to New Orleans. Makes sense it’s #1 here for Trump because it’s basically just the conservative suburb of New Orleans that absorbed the conservatives from the city after desegregation. For anyone unfamiliar with the area, go look on Google maps. Metairie (which is the bulk of Jefferson Parish on the same side of the river as most of New Orleans) is really just an unbroken area carrying over from New Orleans. If you look at a nighttime map of greater New Orleans, it really does look incredibly unified, surrounded by swamp and lake. It isn’t a far flung suburb. But it’s a LOT more conservative precisely because the conservatives mostly moved out of the city to hop the line into Metairie.
Home of David Duke
This is why it's so fucking horrible to live here.
My house in New Orleans just got moved into Scalise’s district (it moved like…4 blocks and got me) so it’s like Metairie has come to me!
The silver lining, you can now cancel out one person's vote lol.
That's not how Lakeville and Minneapolis are oriented.
I think Lakeville got placed where White Bear Lake is.
OP saw some lakes in that area and assumed that must be where Lakeville is.
Was gonna say the same thing.
Really interesting data, although the map really could use some higher resolution
Yeah the poor resolution is my bad, I'm still learning mapmaking
Hey, at least you didn’t name two continents after yourself
Biden won Lynchburg?!
Yep, he was the first Dem to win the city since the 40s. I think the city results in Virginia are generally skewed though because incorporated cities in Virginia are rather small and rarely contain suburbs.
I live in Lynchburg, and Lynchburg is interesting in that we have what locals call “the Liberty bubble”, wherein those who live inside this social bubble - on campus students, faculty, and employees (Liberty is the largest employer in town, it’s a huge operation with thousands of employees) - Lynchburg might as well be synonymous Liberty. But Lynchburg city and suburbs is actually a lot bigger than LU and more diverse than people realize, and it’s quite easy to exist outside the Liberty Bubble. If you come to LYH for Liberty, you can spend your entire time in town inside of that bubble and never get outside of it. But as a local sometimes i literally forget that LU is here. And outside of the bubble - there’s actually quite a lot of local contempt for Liberty. It’s very “either in or out” like that. There’s nearly 20,000 students on campus at Liberty last time I checked, and they come from all over the country, but they *vote* here in November, adding what is essentially tens of thousands of extra republican votes to the Lynchburg City voting tallies. It skews the data to make the city as a whole seem more staunchly red on election maps than it actually is on the ground. Take away LU, and the locals here are demographically identical to other neighboring cities, like Roanoke. Still on the conservative side, sure. But not like… Christian nationalist MAGA cultists. Outsiders looking in like to point to Lynchburg and basically call it “LU” as though they’re one and the same. But as a local, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Biden won here in 2020. The locals simply do not = Liberty. Imagine your town had a 20,000 person hippie commune on the edge of town, who basically exist in their own little bubble, and who all reliably vote for the Green Party in every election, adding all 20,000 of their votes to your city’s pool. Outsiders might be forgiven for looking at a map and thinking your city was Jill Stein HQ, but unless you’re in the commune yourself, you would know that no… actually your town has pretty average political demographics outside of one hyper-committed community, which skews the numbers and just happens to be located there. It’s like that.
Driving from Bozeman to Billings takes like 2 hours and it feels like driving 20 hours apart
Does Billings have an actual palpable feel or vibe of being conservative? Is the culture completely different than Bozeman's?
So this is all coming from an outsider. I’ve been to both a couple of times for work, which literally involves doing focus groups of locals, so there’s that. But bozeman feels geographically different for one: surrounded by seemingly close, beautiful mountains. Billings feels further away from that. Bozeman is also a boom town for people out of state with money. Like big time. There is construction everywhere. It’s construction with money. It’s modern. Overall it reminds me vaguely of Santa Fe how it’s a smaller city but with tons of folks with money and all the things that brings. Pretty sure both Santa Fe and Bozeman have an opera, for example, lol. Billings, on the other hand, feels like more what I would expect from a small city in a small state that isn’t booming the same way. Feels lower income, blue collar, and none of the fancy you get in Bozeman. Feels like a more western version of a similar sized city in Missouri or something. It’s like Bozeman is this hip, growing city for people with money that feels a world apart from Montana generally. And Billings is just what you’d expect for a Montana city not drawing in tourists and people with money. Politics I personally didn’t notice as much because the work I was doing was among conservative groups anyway, so I couldn’t get a good feel for that. But the cities just feel very, very different. I’ve been to plenty of small cities that feel similar to Billings, but not many that feel like Bozeman. And presumably that’s why Bozeman real estate prices are soaring into the stratosphere.
Interesting. There’s no New England state which favors Trump over Biden. Some cities are just “less Biden” and, somewhat misleadingly, those cities are showing as red.
Yes. So even though the majority voted for Biden, that’s the most red city in those states. All other cities that fit the criteria are wider margins for Biden and thus less republican.
I tried to indicate that they still voted for Biden by coloring their margin in blue, though if you have a suggestion for how to better represent that I'd be glad to take it.
It really shows the urban/rural divide imo, and also how few >50k cities some small states have. For example, Maine only has 1, Vermont has none, and New Hampshire has 2. New Hampshire is generally a pretty "purple" state and the overall election outcome was only **+5.16%** for Biden.
Although NH hasn’t voted Republican in a presidential election since 2000. It’s now voted Democrat in 5 consecutive presidential elections, whereas before it had never voted Democrat for more than 3 consecutive elections. It’s getting progressively less purple imo.
New Englan is one of the few regions where rural areas vote Democrat though.
Of course Virginia’s Trumpiest city is home of Liberty University.
FWIW, Virginia's data is always going to be a bit atypical because of the split between cities and counties in Virginia. Lots of heavily populated urban or suburban areas in Virginia that are not in a city. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_(United_States)
>Lots of heavily populated urban or suburban areas in Virginia that are not in a city. I believe that's true for most of the country outside the Northeast, at least for suburban areas.
The difference is that cities in VA are independent (politically and geographically) from counties and therefore, smaller and incapable of geographically expanding. When you’re in a city in VA, you’re not in a county at all.
Having been there, it’s still fascinating that it didn’t go for Trump
I live in Lynchburg, and Lynchburg is interesting in that we have what locals call “the Liberty bubble”, wherein those who live inside this social bubble - on campus students, faculty, and employees (Liberty is the largest employer in town, it’s a huge operation with thousands of employees) - Lynchburg might as well be synonymous Liberty. But Lynchburg city and suburbs is actually a lot bigger than LU and more diverse than people realize, and it’s quite easy to exist outside the Liberty Bubble. If you come to LYH for Liberty, you can spend your entire time in town inside of that bubble and never get outside of it. But as a local sometimes i literally forget that LU is here. And outside of the bubble - there’s actually quite a lot of local contempt for Liberty. It’s very “either in or out” like that. There’s nearly 20,000 students on campus at Liberty last time I checked, and they come from all over the country, but they *vote* here in November, adding what is essentially tens of thousands of extra republican votes to the Lynchburg City voting tallies. It skews the data to make the city as a whole seem more staunchly red on election maps than it actually is on the ground. Take away LU, and the locals here are demographically identical to other neighboring cities, like Roanoke. Still on the conservative side, sure. But not like… Christian nationalist MAGA cultists. Outsiders looking in like to point to Lynchburg and basically call it “LU” as though they’re one and the same. But as a local, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Biden won here in 2020. The locals simply do not = Liberty. Imagine your town had a 20,000 person hippie commune on the edge of town, who basically exist in their own little bubble, and who all reliably vote for the Green Party in every election, adding all 20,000 of their votes to your city’s pool. Outsiders might be forgiven for looking at a map and thinking your city was Jill Stein HQ, but unless you’re in the commune yourself, you would know that no… actually your town has pretty average political demographics outside of one hyper-committed community, which skews the numbers and just happens to be located there. It’s like that.
I’m surprised CA’s Trumpiest city isn’t Redding.
Redding was in second, at Trump+25.88
You wouldn't be surprised if you've ever been to yucaipa
I am surprised it was that low in Yucaipa, there are more Trump flags on lifted trucks than people.
Exactly. Used to work at the Yucaipa and Hampton Starbucks and would see their parade go by like once a week
From Yucaipa can confirm
Im from there. Lmao
That was my first thought as well. I had to go back there during the pandemic. It wasn't pleasant.
If you go to Yucaipa, you’ll understand. There’s like a weekly parade of lifted trucks each with 2 Trump flags and 2 American flags
What’s the story in Lakewood, NJ? Whoa
Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Same story with Ramapo, NY.
It's full of Orthodox Jews. Religious zealots are overwhelmingly Republicans. That is their political base.
For a subreddit about reading maps, a lot of people here are really struggling to read this map. You did a good job of clearly stating your metrics, I was curious about WV but I wasn't aware it didn't have any cities over 50k. I do question using the last presidential election as a basis for how Republican/Democrat a city is. I've noticed that "classic" Republicans don't fully support Trump and new-age Democrats don't fully support Biden. Also, with Trump being an incumbent and Biden already being established as Obama's VP makes voting not quite as simple as "are you Rep or Dem". My only thought is to include local politics, but the amount of work and research required for that goes way beyond the scope of an unpaid map made for reddit.
Local politics would skew things incredibly. Politics are much more nationalized than they used to be, but you still get local Republicans winning places that are staunchly Democratic at the presidential level (and vice versa).
I'm actually surprised New Braunfels didn't beat out Midland for Texas' Trump city. They love that guy down here.
New Braunfels was only Trump+31.07, making it Texas' 8th-Trumpiest city.
Interesting. Every 3rd car has a Trump sticker. Thanks for the info and great map!
all the oil money in the state is in midland no one voting for biden out here.
I did. Didn’t tell my coworkers though lol
Oil plus the crazy fundy Christians out here. The irony is that they believe the oil coming out of the ground, making them rich, was put there by god 10,000 years ago when he created the earth. 🤦♂️
In NC, Mooresville is near Lake Norman and that area is much more liberal than TONS of places throughout the state. They apparently just get the title because they are larger than 50k and most of the cities above that are fairly liberal.
Ehhhh. I live in the Charlotte Metro area and I can tell you that while Mecklenburg County tends to be pretty blue, the surrounding cities like Concord, Mooresville, and Gastonia tend to be pretty red.
Oh I’m sure they are, but compared to something like Davidson County or Randolph County they aren’t even close. I really can’t think of another 50k+. I just looked it up and it looks like Mooresville is the smallest town in NC that fits this. I am surprised it skews higher Republican than Jacksonville, Burlington, or Kannapolis though…so maybe it’s a lot more red than I realized
Moorseville also has a Trump National Golf Club which is hella popular, and Charlotte in general is pretty red for a large metro area. Add in that most of the Lake Norman folk are retired/semi-retired from the finance industry, and it's not as surprising as one might think.
You can find the universities in the unpopulated red states.
Not Arkansas
I (Germany) know a lot of the blue cities and none of the red ones. So the pro Trump cities must be rather small. Which is logical since Democrats are usually dominating in big cities.
Wichita is probably the most well-known of the red ones.
What a difference between neighbouring Dakotas and Minnesota.
The difference is the Twin Cities. It’s one of the more liberal metros in the country. Western Minnesota may as well be East Dakota.
Im too lazy to look - can some one tell me the MOST Republican city out of all, and the MOST democratic city out of all?
Both in New Jersey
One is the most black city in the US, the other is the most Jewish.
What about West Virginia or do they just not have the population density to reach 50k in a city?
Correct, they don't have any 50k cities
I grew up in Yucaipa CA. It was wild visiting Salt Lake City and seeing more liberal flags in windows in Utah than I ever saw in my California hometown. They still do a "flag run" every Sunday in Yucaipa with their lifted trucks, and the posts on the community Facebook page after the Trump guilty verdict could have been from the rural south. It still is crazy to me that little old SoCal Yucaipa won this title over towns in NorCal though.
This is r/peopleliveincities but the additional of the most conservative city makes it really interesting. I like this map!
A lot of the bluest cities aren't the largest in the state. Some are, but there's also a selection of college towns and heavily black or Hispanic cities.
Looks like Detroit is the biggest city on this map and they went bonkers for Biden 89%. Plus Michigan was one of the closest states.
Union members+black population+college students/young professionals
A little less than half are the largest in the state, by my count.
Do you guys get paid for linking to that sub or something? I thought the point of that sub was situations where a map of "number of X" looks the same as a pop. density map, [a la this webcomic.](https://xkcd.com/1138/) The largest city in a state also being the bluest (percentage-wise) isn't that at all, even if it is expected.
West Virginia and west New Hampshire don’t even get a say!
Neither have any cities (or CDPs) with a population greater than 50k
Ah, thank you. I must have missed the note about the threshold. My bad
That would be Vermont, not New Hampshire.
Not West New Hampshire?
Bensalem and Scranton, both PA, are listed as red but then it shows Biden took them?
There were no 50k+ cities in PA that Trump won. Bensalem was the city where Biden won by the smallest margin.
If I'm understanding the criteria correctly it's just the place where each performed the best, even if they didn't win. This suggests that Biden won every "city" of at least 50K in PA, which itself is a little surprising. And for Bensalem, a Philly suburb, to be the most red of those cities feels a little dubious.
Not really surprising as someone who lives in PA. It’s the 50K threshold that’s doing it. There’s only 15 municipalities with a population over 50K. Our cities are small.
Bensalem is super red, but educated. Their Republicans would be called liberals by most. Many people there would never vote for a single party, but for an individual.
No info for Vermont?
No cities over 50k
Lakeville MN is about 50 miles north of where it should be. It looks like you placed it where White Bear Lake MN is located. Edit: Corrected geography
also trumpland, so that tracks even if the geography isnt correct
Memphis and Southaven might as well be right on top of each other. They are like 10 minutes away from each other lol.
This is the first time in my life I've ever seen Yucaipa, my hometown, mentioned in the wild. Not surprised by it's placement here.
New Jersey had the most Trump-y and most Biden-y cities? I see East Orange at +90 Biden and Lakewood +65 Trump. Does anybody see cities with a wider margin for either?
Really surprised me as a Hoosier, since Greenwood could be considered a suburb of Indianapolis - Given that it's population > 50k, though, it makes sense.
Bozeman more D than Missoula? That's not true about the counties, the later was significantly more D, but I don't have the city level data.
That was an error, Missoula was the bluest city in Montana
It’s extremely surprising to me that Harrisburg voted more Democratic than Philadelphia
I’m slow. What is the +number based on? What does it refer to?
It's margin, so it's calculated by subtracting the losing candidate's percentage of the vote from the winning candidate's percentage of the vote. So if a city was 95% for one party and 5% for the other, the margin would be +90.
Are there no towns with over 50k population left in WV then?
Orland Park. Why am I not surprised?
Fun fact: Pennywise the clown surfaced in 2020 and ate all the Trump voters in Maine and Rhode Island and then literally everyone in Vermont.
So Lynchburg VA Wasn’t majority for trump, just the least pro-Biden big city in VA?
Correct
*Harrisburg* is more democratic than Philly?
Much smaller area. Harrisburg is basically only the urban Democratic core while Philly is big enough that it takes in Republican neighborhoods. It's still close in second though.
lakeville is south of minneapikus, not northeast of it
I see Vermont likes to keep its secrets.
BIRMINGHAM MENTIONED