I've seen this claim on social media that Biden underperformed Clinton's 2016 numbers everywhere but a few swing state cities, but here's an actual source for it. The source is Richard Baris of Big Data Poll. He's cited by another writer cited by this writer. It's hard to track things back given all the noise around this stuff.
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I extracted a bunch of quotes from the NYT county level analysis of several battleground states to a thread on AVI's site.
link - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/04/us/elections/florida-election-results-by-county.html (you can access other states from there)
My take on Baris's claim is that I'd really like to see the hard numbers (maybe they're in a Tweet somewhere?) but these quotes seem to be headed in the same general direction.
"Mr. Biden’s gains, however, were not enough to make up for votes he lost in populous Miami-Dade County, relative to Hillary Clinton’s returns four years ago. Mr. Biden underperformed in many precincts with a majority Hispanic population, particularly those in the Cuban-American communities of Miami-Dade County, which overwhelmingly supported Mr. Trump."
"Republicans have traditionally depended on big margins among white voters to overwhelm the large share of Democratic Black voters across the state (Georgia). But Mr. Biden made gains in counties that are predominantly white and in those where most white residents have no college degrees."
"Increased turnout in Detroit and its wealthy suburbs as well as shrinking support for President Trump among middle-class voters helped to propel Joseph R. Biden Jr. to victory in Michigan, a historically Democratic Midwestern battleground. Mr. Biden gained support in most of the counties won by Hillary Clinton. And about two-thirds of the counties that voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 swung left in 2020. These predominantly white counties saw voters shift their support to Mr. Biden — even as Mr. Trump won most of them."
"Mr. Biden’s largest vote margins were in dense population centers, including Philadelphia and its suburbs, and Allegheny County, which is home to Pittsburgh."
"Over all, Mr. Trump fared better in Philadelphia than he did in 2016, probably the result of further shifts to the right among white voters, but also shifts in his favor in neighborhoods where Hispanic people make up a majority of the population. Another possible factor: While Mr. Trump beat his 2016 vote totals, Mr. Biden appeared to garner fewer overall votes in Philadelphia than Mrs. Clinton did in 2016. With almost 11,000 mail ballots left to count Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Biden had received about 14,000 fewer votes than Mrs. Clinton’s final tally in the city of 584,025."
"A North Carolina victory was critical to President Trump’s re-election, and he fought to keep it red. Though the race was still too close to call on election night, results showed that many counties shifted right, including some predominantly Black and solidly Democratic ones. Mr. Trump appears to have gained traction in counties with a significant share of Black residents, a core group of supporters that Joseph R. Biden Jr. desperately needed to flip the state."
"The presidential race in Arizona remained too close to call on Tuesday evening, but Joseph R. Biden Jr. held a lead in the state’s biggest city. Phoenix and its suburbs swung to the left, making it possible that Mr. Biden wins Arizona, even as other areas shifted to President Trump. Within Maricopa County, Mr. Biden won in most precincts with a majority Hispanic population, though often with smaller margins than Democrats saw in 2016."
"Demographic changes and a suburban backlash did not stop President Trump from taking the Lone Star State, though he did so with a smaller margin than in 2016. Even as urban and suburban areas moved in large numbers toward Democrats, many Hispanic voters in the south abruptly exited the Democratic coalition. The Rio Grande Valley shifted decisively toward Mr. Trump, as heavily Hispanic areas along the border with Mexico, including Hidalgo, home to McAllen, delivered enough votes to help cancel the impact of white voters in urban and suburban areas."
I haven't seen much mention of it lately but the CDC remains committed to curing AIDS/HIV. There's a federal program for that. (What perceived problem lacks a federal program?) The feds are targeting 50 counties in the US, (including D.C. and Puerto Rico) with the highest infection rates, lowest ratio of tests/early diagnosis with late presentment, and highest death rates. They've published a map with black blotches of the HIV problem areas.
Very oddly, those counties map closely to the mapped voters who believe the federal government and Donald Trump and Tony Faluci have mishandled Covid-19. The areas (if not the individual voters) most threatened with AIDS voted most disproportionately for Biden.
Talk to us about co-founding co-factors now.
Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in every major metro area around the country, save for Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia.
I’d like to see the numbers myself, with charts and graphs and stuff. I did check out one major metro area and this is not true for Houston unless I’m misreading the data. If we look at Harris county which is a decent proxy for Houston, the numbers are:
2020:
918,193 Biden (56%)
702,630 Trump (42.7%)
2016:
706,477 Clinton (54.224%)
544,958 Trump (41.827%)
The numbers for Fort Bend county, which Houston also spills into, are similar: yes, Trump got more raw votes than he did in 2016 but Biden got more raw votes than Clinton. Ditto Montgomery county which has a bit of Houston and went over 70% for Trump in both 2016 (73.954%) and 2020 (71.3%).
So I’ll be very interested to see the raw data backing up this claim - perhaps I’ve missed something.
Sources:
https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/texas/
https://public.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/usa-2016-presidential-election-by-county/table/?disjunctive.state&refine.state=Texas
Elise
Here's a National Review article that purports to debunk the claim with the requested table of data.
Thank you.
Here's what I think. Was there some vote fiddling in some spots? I think so. Was it enough to change the outcome? I don't know. However, there are a lot of ways to "steal" an election and to the extent this one was stolen, I believe that happened in the run-up to it, through the news stories that voters did and didn't hear. I know there's a lot of chatter about how if voters had known the extent of Hunter Biden's dealings, the election would have come out differently. Maybe.
To me, though, the important story was the one that voters didn't hear about: the COVID-19 vaccine. Yes, Trump, was saying it was almost here but his claims were dismissed by the media and the Democrats. And now, after the election, here we are: 2 vaccines done and even the NYT is reporting that millions will be vaccinated by the end of the year. And this country has just failed to re-elect the person who is arguably most responsible for the vaccine getting done at, well, warp speed. That's ridiculous - and really, really stupid.
(Yes, this is somewhat off-topic so I'll understand it you delete it, Grim.)
Elise
Re: Mclaughlin's debunking
This is going to be a 'how you're slicing the data" issue.
If you look at the NYT quotes, there's a clear pattern of Biden doing better than Hillary in 2016 in 'predominately white' areas, even if Trump was still the county winner as in many locations in Michigan.
Mclaughlin is using county level data that often includes suburbs as well as the urban cores, as he notes.
Of the four often mentioned, Biden did do better than Hillary in Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Detroit, though he didn't post the impressive gains he made in white dominated cities/counties like Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis in the latter two.
Philadelphia really cuts against the claim, as well as Biden doing better in many other cities, but that county is pretty much exclusively the urban core of Philadelphia itself (I'm assuming Mclaughlin is using it), and doesn't include much if any suburban areas. Its population is 43 percent black. It's an interesting contrast to Fulton (assuming Mclaughlin is using that county for Atlanta). The racial make up of Fulton and Philadelphia counties are similar but Fulton appears to have swung hard for Biden while Philadelphia went narrowly for Trump.
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