2020 Presidential Election Results by Top 50 MSA
 

I figured this forum would appreciate this 6 hour time suck. With the caveat that some votes are still being counted (particularly in California, Illinois, and New York), here are the 2020 presidential election results as of today - 11/13/2020.

Biden has won 42 of the 50 largest metro areas in the country. Trump has won...7. Biden flipped 8(!) metros from 2016: Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Louisville, Phoenix, Saint Louis, and San Antonio. In Pittsburgh, Trump is clinging to a 51-49% lead that will likely stick, even if the gap closes marginally. In Tampa, Trump again has won with a 51-49% lead.

An incredible showing for Democrats all in all. They have nearly conquered the American city. Any surprises?

https://i.imgur.com/Hge94NC.jpg

I knew Cincinnati leaned conservative, but I didn't realize the metro was a double digit margin for Trump.

Excellent work! This is great stuff:cheers:

Hamilton County (home to Cincinnati) was 57% Biden (a 65,000 margin). But the suburbs are blood red. The three suburban Ohio counties that ring Hamilton each gave Trump a 40,000 vote margin.

So Cincinnati's +65k Biden margin gets wiped out by just Butler, Clermont, and Warren (+120k Trump). Then you have a death by 1,000 cuts of smaller Kentucky and Indiana counties, all of which voted Trump.

If you're walking through Over-the-Rhine, with rainbow flags and hipster shops, you'd never think you were walking through the 2nd most Trump-friendly metro among the Top 50, only behind Oklahoma City. Yet you are!

Very helpful, thanks for this.


Change in Democratic vote since 2016:

Atlanta +6
Baltimore +7
Boston +6
Chicago +2
Denver +9
Detroit +4
Houston +3
Los Angeles +1.5
Miami -4
Minneapolis +8
Philadelphia +3
Phoenix +6
San Diego +5
San Francisco +4
Seattle +7
Washington +5

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-2016-election

My numbers above are two-party vote share, so that link isn't the right analogue.

Here's a new chart where I've added in Clinton's % margin (two-party w/Trump) and the change between Clinton and Biden's % shares:

https://i.imgur.com/tOvjS70.jpg

Excellent.

Also, the best Biden improvements are interesting:
Denver +8.59%
Oklahoma City: +8.56%
Dallas: +7.80%
Atlanta: +7.32%
Indianapolis: +7.14%

Houston was only +1.90%, so the Dallas/Houston divergence definitely merits some analysis.

Miami of course is the worst one: -11.96%

Seems like the 2016 third party vote (whether Johnson/Weld, Jill Stein or that Egg McMuffin guy) went virtually all to Biden.

Even in deep-red Oklahoma Biden won within the city limits in both major cities Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Both metros still leaned toward Trump due to heavily Republican majorities in the suburbs.

Still a lot of outstanding votes in NYS.

Thank you for putting this together!

Looks like the top 10 biggest margins were:
SF +61.04
SJ +47.74
DC +46.70
Seattle +38.16
Boston +36.04
LA +35.78
Chicago +31.62
Portland +31.52
Philadelphia +29.82
Austin +27.30

Lowest 10 margins were:
OKC -17.14
Cincinnati -14.38
Jacksonville -13.02
Nashville -10.68
Tampa -2.60
Indianapolis -2.40
Pittsburgh -2.26
Louisville +0.08
Charlotte +0.40
Phoenix +0.60

Some observations. NYC's Biden margin is surprisingly low compared to other large, liberal metros. SF (and SJ) continues to cement its lead as the most liberal area in the US, although the margin of victory actually shrunk from 2016 to 2020. In fact, the only other places that got more Trumpy % wise than SF/SJ were LA at -5.53%, NYC at -8.13% and Miami and -11.96. Also, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, and Houston are still surprisingly Trumpy.

People are always talking about Nashville is this huge progressive/hipster mecca, with a dash of Hollywood. It's a deep red metro. I always got the sense it was extremely right wing overall.

Also, the Dems were a disaster in the rustiest part of the Rust Belt. We know about Youngstown, Akron and Canton. But how could they lose Pittsburgh? That metro is full of eds and meds.

And Cincy was an epic disaster. Wow, that's a conservative metro. The Dems are hopeless in Ohio in the near term, if they barely clear 40% in a major metro.

Yeah you would think Nashville would be more in line with Austin, since they're so often compared to each other. But it's not even like Charlotte, Phoenix, Houston, etc.

Pittsburgh is a very liberal and educated city but I guess it's a liberal island in a very culturally conservative, rusty, WWC metro.

Bob Casey remarked recently that both Trump and Biden were good fits for PA.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

Some of these margins are gonna be pretty different if the next election is a standard-issue GOP vs Dem, rather than a (perceived) populist vs. establishment race. I don't think the GOP runs up these margins in Eastern OH/Western PA, and they probably underperform relative to 2020 in the rural areas and among nonwhites. But the GOP metro share might grow in the Sunbelt.

Like others have mentioned, I suppose this list could be a good proxy for how far out into the suburbs from the central city you can find liberals. The ones with negative or low margins still likely have majority Biden supporters within city proper limits. But once you hit the suburbs it’s mostly conservatives.

Yes, though I think this is less a liberal/conservative thing that a populist/establishment thing.

Sprawly exurbs that went Biden are hardly liberal. And many Trumpy areas aren't by most measures conservative. Education is probably a strong proxy.

Pittsburgh metro is 86% white and only 32% of whites have college degrees.