How Metro Areas Voted in the 2020 Election
America’s economic geography is organized around its metropolitan areas. Presidential election results show how factors like class and density define their politics.
America’s political geography — exemplified by its anachronistic Electoral College system — is organized around states, but its economic geography is organized around metropolitan areas. Looking at the metro election provides important insights into America’s political and landscape and its divides.
An analysis of the 2020 election with my University of Toronto colleague Patrick Adler shows that Republicans continue to capture many more metros, while the Democratic vote is concentrated in the nation’s largest metros. Alongside its deepening density divide, America’s electoral geography is riven by class. This election cycle, at least as much as in the last several, Trump and the Republicans drew overwhelming support from White, working-class regions of the country, while the Democratic vote remains concentrated in smaller number of denser, more affluent, highly-educated coastal metros and college towns.