president-elect Donald Trump improved its 2020 performance in nearly every U.S. county in this year’s presidential race against Vice President Kamala Harrisbut there are still a few areas where he performed worse than his shows from four years earlier.
Trump will return to the White House in January after winning battleground states on Tuesday and taking back the White House after losing to the president Joe Biden four years earlier. Trump’s relatively strong performance among young and Hispanic voters helped propel him to victory.
He gained ground in almost every state this year, with the popular vote shifting several points to the right. States that tend to be solidly Democratic, such as Illinois and New Jersey, scored in the single digits this year, offering little good news for the Democrats.
Still, Harris performed well in some parts of the country, improving modestly over Biden’s 2020 performance in dozens of counties. She held strong among white voters, with Trump’s margin of victory among the demographic shrinking compared to four years earlier, according to CNN exit polls.
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They improved particularly among white voters with college degrees, ultimately helping some counties with a higher concentration of these voters shift to Democrats this year. However, these gains were offset Republican victories among rural white and Hispanic voters.
Newsweek contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns via email for comment.
With 74 percent of the votes counted, Utah appeared poised to be a state where Harris could match Biden’s performance. Utah is relatively suburban and well-educated, and it has always been Republican.
Many of the rural, mostly Republican counties have reported the bulk of their votes, with the remaining ballots largely concentrated in Salt Lake County, the state’s largest and Democratic-leaning, and Republican Party-leaning Utah County.
As of Friday afternoon, Harris is roughly tied with Biden’s vote share in Salt Lake County and slightly ahead of him in Utah County.
It’s still in the Republican column, in part because of its high concentration of Mormon voters, but Harris is on track to match Biden’s statewide performance. Trump leads by 20.5 points, essentially the same as his 20.6-point lead in 2020. This is because the national popular vote is expected to shift several points to the right when all ballots are counted.
Nate Silver noted in a Substack post Thursday that Utah voted 6.9 points left of where his model expected given the national environment. His model showed that Utah was Trump’s biggest underperformer nationwide.
“Utah is slowly turning more purple, between attracting tech workers and Mormons not always being so enthusiastic about Trump,” Silver wrote. “Is it going to be a swing state in 2028? No. But if you told me it was in 2040, I wouldn’t be shocked.”
Although Trump carried every swing state, there were pockets in some of them that shifted to the left — a potential bright spot for Democrats as they study the election results.
Atlanta’s suburbs are shifting left as the state returns to Trump
In Georgia, Atlanta’s suburbs continued to shift left, even as that trend was offset by rural areas zooming right. Democrats have relied on strong performances in suburban and exurban areas near Atlanta to close the gap in the state, allowing Biden to reverse it in 2020. Those counties gave Harris some of her strongest swings on Tuesday.
Harris lost Fayette County, south of Atlanta, by only about 3 percentage points. Trump won that province in 2020 by almost seven points. Harris won Henry County by about 30 points, although Biden won by just over 20 points four years earlier. Paulding County, a Republican stronghold, supported Trump by 24 points this year, up from 29 points in 2020.
The state still returned to it Republicanswith Trump winning by about 2 percentage points.
Harris is gaining ground in western North Carolina
Counties in western North Carolina, which were hit by Hurricane Helene in September, also shifted toward Harris.
Buncombe County, home to Asheville, backed Harris by 25 points this year, a slight improvement from Biden’s 21-point victory in 2020. Henderson County, just south of Buncombe, backed Trump by 15 points, a smaller margin than his victory by 19 points. in 2020.
North Carolina supported Trump by just over 3 percentage points.
Areas in Michigan, Maine and Indiana Shift to Harris
The Traverse City, Michigan area also shifted toward Harris. She won Leelanau County by 13 points after supporting Biden by only about 5 points in 2020. Trump won Grand Traverse County by less than 2 points this year, compared to a 3-point victory in 2020.
However, Harris lost ground in the Detroit area as Latin American and Arab voters turned away from Democrats. In the weeks leading up to Election Day, some Democrats worried that Arab voters would either vote for Trump or vote for Trump third candidates on the Biden administration’s handling of the Israeli conflict Hamas.
Michigan voted for Trump by about 1.4 points overall.
In Maine, which continued to lean Democratic this year, Sagadahoc County and Lincoln County, both north of Portland, also shifted slightly toward Harris.
While there were still outstanding ballots in Oregon and Washington, Silver noted that Harris was also poised to perform better in each of those states. His model showed that in the national context, Harris should have won Oregon by 8.2 points and Washington by 14.8 points. She leads these states by about 13 points and 19 points, respectively.
Silver also described New Mexico as a state that held up well for Harris. Even as she lost ground among Hispanic voters, a key demographic group there, she still won by about six points. However, Biden won New Mexico in 2020 by more than 10 points.
“On a night when Democrats received little good news, the fact that New Mexico remains solidly blue was a good sign: the state often does not follow the trends we see in other states with high Hispanic voters,” Silver wrote.
Harris also gained ground in some Indianapolis suburbs, such as Hancock County. Trump still won the county easily by a margin of almost 34 points. But he won it by more than 37 points in 2020.