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Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day for April 20, 2017
The Number of the Day columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
April 20, 2017: There are 2,226 counties across the United States won by Republican presidential candidates in each of the past three elections (see map below).
Yesterday's Number of the Day showed that there are 449 solidly Democratic counties that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and also for Hillary Clinton in 2016. And before that, we highlighted the 206 Pivot Counties that voted twice for President Obama but flipped to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 (see more research of Pivot Counties).
Solidly Republican counties are much smaller than solidly Democratic counties. The average solidly Republican county cast just 22,373 votes. That’s half the national per-county average. Solidly Democratic counties recorded seven times as many votes.[1]
As a result, there were 69.0 million votes cast in solidly Democratic counties and only 49.8 million cast in Republican counties. Clinton carried the Democratic counties by a margin of 20.0 million votes, while Trump carried the Republican counties by 16.1 million votes. Altogether, the solidly partisan counties accounted for 87 percent of all votes cast in Election 2016. In these partisan counties, Clinton ran up a significant popular vote margin.
However, outside of these solidly partisan counties, Trump won the popular vote by 1,029,638 votes. This includes the 206 Pivot Counties.
In the Republican counties, Trump earned 63.2 percent of the vote. That’s a larger share than John McCain won in 2008 (60.4 percent) and roughly the same as Mitt Romney in 2012 (62.9 percent).
However, in these Republican counties, Hillary Clinton racked up a much smaller share of the vote than Barack Obama. That mirrored the result in Democratic counties where Trump picked up less support than earlier GOP nominees. In both types of counties, there was a significant increase in third-party activity as voters rejected the opposing team’s candidate without supporting their party’s nominee. The increase in third-party support was nearly identical in both solidly Republican counties and solidly Democratic counties.
| 2,226 Republican counties | 2016 | 2012 | 2008 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic vote share | 30.90% | 35.40% | 38.20% |
| Republican vote share | 63.20% | 62.9%% | 60.40% |
| Third-party vote share | 5.80% | 1.70% | 1.40% |
| Source: Dave Leip of Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections | |||
- April 19, 2017 449 solid Democratic counties won by Obama twice and by Clinton; Clinton earned bigger margins but smaller share of vote
- April 18, 2017 70 billion dollars: Annual spending on federal regulatory agencies
- April 17, 2017 29.6 billion dollars spent annually on tax preparation fees and software
- April 14, 2017 70 years ago this weekend, Jackie Robinson broke the Major League color barrier
- To see other recent numbers, check out the archive.
Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day is published by Ballotpedia weekdays at 8:00 a.m. Eastern. Click here to check out the latest update.
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Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
Ballotpedia is the nonprofit, nonpartisan Encyclopedia of American Politics.
See also
- Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day
- Pivot Counties: The counties that voted Obama-Obama-Trump from 2008-2016
- Presidential election, 2016
Footnotes
- ↑ The raw data for this study was provided by Dave Leip of Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.
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