Democrats gained in nearly every battleground state, running up margins in cities

The nation’s major cities, often objects of Trump’s scorn, are turning away from him. Across the counties home to those cities and suburbs, Biden’s lead is already millions more than Hillary Clinton’s was four years ago, and is growing as final ballots are counted.

The large part of Biden’s big urban gain is coming from center-city areas, those dozens of counties at the core of metropolitan areas with populations of more than 1 million — places such as Michigan’s Wayne County, home to Detroit, and Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, where Democratic margins grew by tens of thousands of votes and helped flip the states for Biden.

Beyond the center cities, Trump is still winning across the suburban counties he carried four years ago, but he has lost ground there despite significantly higher overall turnout. Meanwhile, in the suburbs that went for Clinton four years ago, Democrats have added twice as many voters there as Republicans in the turnout surge. The Clinton counties in these suburbs tend to have higher incomes, education and racial diversity, and this time their vote margins are almost large enough to offset margins in Republican counties. 

Although Trump has strengthened his already wide margins in rural counties by less than one percentage point, those gains often don’t make up for shifts in more-populated areas.

The rising numbers of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and covid-19 deaths, as well as Trump’s management of the virus crisis, was a main theme of the Biden campaign. Counties that since the start of the pandemic have reported the most cases of the disease, on a population basis, are scattered mostly from Florida to Texas and up to the Dakotas and include many smaller counties. Trump won them overall four years ago by a large margin. Although virus concerns may have hurt Trump elsewhere, his margins here are wider.

Counties with the lowest coronavirus case rates are arrayed in a far different geographic pattern, concentrated around the upper Northeast, Colorado and Oregon. They also tend to have smaller populations, and Trump is winning again there, although by less.

The economy has been one of Trump’s dominant arguments, in 2016 and in this election. Worries about job declines motivated some of his base, and prospects for tax cuts, deregulation and economic stimulus motivated other supporters.

Hundreds of counties continued to shed jobs between 2016 and 2019, even before the coronavirus decimated the nation’s economic growth. These counties are scattered across the Southeast to Texas, and from there north through the nation’s Farm Belt to the Canadian border. They include counties touched by trade-war disruptions of farm and manufacturing exports, as well as those affected by other trends.

But job losses of more than 5 percent appeared to make no difference for Trump’s support there, and his winning margins grew. He also repeated his strong showings in counties with the most manufacturing jobs, and in the nation’s top soybean-producing counties. The Trump administration has paid billions of dollars to producers of soybeans and other farm commodities who have been hurt in the trade war with China. 

Trump also won among counties with the highest job gains in the same period, but by a thinner margin.

In 2016, votes for third-party candidates such as Gary Johnson surged in some areas. It was a sign of dissatisfaction with Clinton among some Democrats and helped contribute to Trump’s win. In the counties with the highest share of third-party votes then, that surge has been erased in 2020. This county group flipped for Trump in 2016 but in counts so far has flipped again, for Biden.

Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, is among Trump’s favorite targets. Romney symbolizes to some Trump supporters what Trump was not: an establishment Republican, interested in policy, and less able to generate strong emotions among supporters than Barack Obama or Trump himself. 

In 2016, Trump beat Romney’s 2012 votes in some counties by more than 25 percent, converting Democratic voters and motivating new ones. It happened in the upper Midwest, along Interstate 4 in Central Florida, along the Ohio River and in eastern Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna River. Trump is winning among these counties again.