The political landscape of the United States is often perceived as evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, particularly during national elections. However, a closer look at county-level election results reveals a stark reality: a growing number of counties are demonstrating overwhelming loyalty to a single party.
Over the past two decades, counties that once supported Republicans with margins of around 20 points are now leaning towards the GOP by 50 points or more. At the same time, the frequency of counties switching party allegiance during presidential elections has decreased significantly.
Data compiled by the NBC News Political Unit underscores both demographic and geographical trends that have reshaped the current political coalitions. Increasingly, communities across the United States are clustering along political lines, fostering environments where individuals may seldom engage in discussions with opposing viewpoints.
One notable example of this trend can be observed in George W. Bush’s 2000 Electoral College victory, which was characterized by a razor-thin margin overall. Nevertheless, his average win across the nation’s more than 3,100 counties was about 17 points. While Democrats consistently gain ground in urban areas, bolstering their popular vote through large metropolitan populations, Republicans maintain their strength in rural areas.
Bush’s campaign recorded significant wins in the Plains states and the Mountain West, while Al Gore secured major victories in densely populated areas such as New York City’s boroughs, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, along with select rural regions with substantial Black populations.
Fast forward more than two decades to President Donald Trump’s era, and we see an expansion of Republican advantages in once Democratic-leaning regions, such as Appalachia. Trump has cultivated an even larger list of counties that record blowout margins for Republican candidates, outpacing his predecessors in this trend.
In the most recent elections, the average size of a Trump blowout county was about 10,000 voters. Conversely, Democrats have solidified their advantages in populous urban centers, with places like the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland, and Seattle emerging as strongholds for the party. Kamala Harris’s average blowout county size was considerably larger, standing at approximately 210,000 voters.
Examining the changes since the turn of the century reveals a significant increase in the number of blowout counties. Statistics indicate that there are currently four times as many blowout counties as there were during that period, highlighting the widening political divide.
In addition to the rise of blowout counties, there has been a concerning decline in the number of swing counties — a phenomenon that points to diminishing electoral competitiveness. In the 2004 election, 227 counties flipped party loyalty compared to the 2000 elections. However, recent data from last fall shows that only 89 counties changed their party preferences after the 2020 election.
The overall trend indicates a steady decline in party-switching counties over the last century. Significant fluctuations occurred after the elections of Barack Obama in 2008 and Donald Trump in 2016, marking moments of dramatic change in party coalitions.
Interestingly, Trump managed to flip 89 counties in the 2024 election, a slight increase from the 80 counties that switched allegiance during Biden’s victory in 2020. Notably, this past election also marked a historical moment: Harris was the first candidate since the beginning of this century not to flip any counties compared to those from the previous election cycle.
As the United States heads towards the next election cycle, these trends suggest that the nation is moving away from the concept of a 50/50 political landscape, as rural areas increasingly solidify Republican control, while urban centers create a stronger Democratic presence.
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