The election revealed a chart of America's most pro-Trump counties
By Mark Fahey and Nicholas Wells
If you live in King County, Texas, only five of your neighbors voted for Hillary Clinton. That's a sparsely populated area, but it's some of the strongest pro-Trump country in the nation.
Counties that were staunch Trump supporters tended to be rural and suburban counties in Texas and the Midwest. King and the nearby Roberts counties, for example, each had a spread of 91 points in favor of Trump. Roberts went more for Trump than it did for Romney in 2012, and King slightly less.
Clinton, on the other hand, held sway in more populous areas like Washington, DC, the Bronx and New York County (the island of Manhattan). One percentage point of spread in those areas is worth much more than in a small county — for example, Clinton did about 5 points better in DC than President Obama did in 2012, which represents about 14,000 votes.
As CNBC reported after the election, demographic changes in the south and the west coast states likely helped Clinton, but not enough to tip any states to her. In Arizona, for example, four counties supported Clinton more strongly than they did President Obama in 2012. Around 22 percent of Arizona voters are Hispanic, according to the Pew Research Center, a population that likely helped Clinton.
As we've seen in previous elections, Democrats saw much more support in urban areas than Republicans did. Clinton may have secured even more support in large liberal metros and gained support in more traditionally conservative metro areas such as Orange County, California, and Houston, but that didn't help her win any additional states. Only one voting district in Manhattan went to Trump, and it has only 14 voters, according to data from DNAinfo. Clinton lost ground in the more crucial Detroit area.
But the idea that Trump won because of a major surge in rural support may not hold up. Exit poll data said 25 percent of Trump's supporters said they live in cities of more than 50,000 residents. Contrast that with Clinton, who got 42 percent of her votes from cities.
Looking at suburbs, Trump got 53 percent of his votes there, while Clinton got only 46 percent. And rural areas were responsible for 22 percent of Trump's votes, but just 12 percent of Clinton's.