Mapping How America's Metro Areas Voted

[Steely Dan]

^ look closer and you'll see that the faint outlines of metro DC and philly are their own independent shafts that are actually in front of the NYC shaft, but because they all line up so perfectly, it makes it look like it's all one big blue shaft.

and as mentioned earlier, boston is completely blocked out by NYC's mighty shaft.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Jeez, it's a literal who's who of america's best and biggest and denset and most urban cities.

Not that that's really surprising.

Also pretty much a list of the only US cities I'd be willing to live in ...

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ look closer and you'll see that the faint outlines of metro DC and philly are their own independent shafts that are actually in front of the NYC shaft, but because they all line up so perfectly, it makes it look like it's all one big blue shaft.

and as mentioned earlier, boston is completely blocked out by NYC's mighty shaft.

You're right, they're absolutely perfectly aligned AND of the exact same color to boot!!! (Had the shafts at the forefront been of a different shade, I'd probably have spotted that.)

[Buckeye Native 001]

I haven't yet seen a link or found anything on my own, but I'd be curious.to see how the City of Phoenix voted relative to the rest of Maricopa County. If I remember right, Obama won Phoenix in 2012 but Romney won the county.

And for what it's worth, Phoenix is a city of about 1.5 million, while Maricopa County's population is about 4.5 million. Trump only won Arizona a by four percentage points (I think Romney won the state 55% to Obama's 45%) and in more encouraging local news, Maricopa County voters ousted Sheriff Joe Arpaio...

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Buckeye Native 001

I haven't yet seen a link or found anything on my own, but I'd be curious.to see how the City of Phoenix voted relative to the rest of Maricopa County. If I remember right, Obama won Phoenix in 2012 but Romney won the county.

And for what it's worth, Phoenix is a city of about 1.5 million, while Maricopa County's population is about 4.5 million. Trump only won Arizona a by four percentage points (I think Romney won the state 55% to Obama's 45%) and in more encouraging local news, Maricopa County voters ousted Sheriff Joe Arpaio...

Trump won AZ 49% to 45.5% or 3.5%.

[dollaztx]

Originally Posted by lio45

The super-tall blue column on the east coast is located exactly on the site of Washington DC, but it seems to have the shape of NYC metro - I'm pretty sure I can easily distinguish Long Island on it - and its height would also tend to make it more likely to be NYC's column than DC's column... though it's still way too high even for NYC, IMO.

... did they merge the BosWash corridor all into that NYC column, then place that column at Wash DC?

That's my guess...

Yeah I noticed that as well. Found it odd that Florida is more populated than NY but if you were to stack all of Florida's metros on top of Miami's it wouldn't come close to NY's. Guess it's not meant to be exact.

[Ant131531]

I thought the tall blue shaft in the NE was supposed to represent the entire Bos-Wash corridor as it said in the article.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by dollaztx

Found it odd that Florida is more populated than NY but if you were to stack all of Florida's metros on top of Miami's it wouldn't come close to NY's.

the height of the columns doesn't represent population, rather:

"the height of the bars indicates the percent of the national vote cast in metros."

Originally Posted by Ant131531

I thought the tall blue shaft in the NE was supposed to represent the entire Bos-Wash corridor as it said in the article.

straight from the article:

"Look at the large blue columns for Clinton across the Boston-New York-Washington Corridor; in Miami, in Northern and Southern California, and in Chicago."

notice that the word columns was pluralized. each individual metro has its own column. as i said earlier, look closely at the east coast mega column and you can actually see the individual columns for DC and philly in front of NYC's column, but because they're all nearly the same exact color and align perfectly with each other, it just looks like one big massive blue column.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

Trump won AZ 49% to 45.5% or 3.5%.

Yeah, the margin of victory here in Arizona was slimmer than normal. Republican presidential candidates usually take this state by at least 7 to 8 percentage points (Clinton in 1996 being the lone exception).

I'm glad to see a slimmer margin of victory, but I'm not sure if it's an anomaly given the awfulness of both candidates or if the state's Latino population is finally starting to be a force to be reckoned with. There was a huge push to get Latino voters registered leading up to the general election, if only because this time around there was a decent chance of ousting Joe Arpaio as sheriff.

If only we could get some balance in the State Legislature (Republican dominated since 2010) in 2018, but I don't see that happening happening given how awful Democratic voter turnout is for midterm elections.

[Dudeski]

Just more confirmation of the absolute genius of the founding fathers creating the electoral college.

[L41A]

Originally Posted by cabasse

i'm still surprised how solidly metro atlanta went for clinton, considering how many others in its vicinity went the other way this time.

Metro Atlanta is the only GA metro that voted Democrat (Obama) in 2012 to go more solidly for Democrat (Clinton) in 2016.

Except for Augusta, the other GA metros that voted Democrat (Obama) in 2012 still went for Democrat (Clinton) in 2016 but less so. Metro Augusta actually flipped from the Democrat candidate (Obama) from 2012 to 2016.

However, the percentage difference in total votes between major parties decreased (i.e. the win was less). Georgia as a state voted less for Republican candidate in 2016 than it did it in 2012. The increase in vote for Democrat was greater than the increase for Republican in 2016.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Dudeski

Just more confirmation of the absolute genius of the founding fathers creating the electoral college.

It's not genius to ignore the vote of the american people. Trump has no mandate to govern at all and yet he is carrying on as if Americans support him.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by Dudeski

Just more confirmation of the absolute genius of the founding fathers creating the electoral college.

The results of this election actually shows how obsolete the electoral college has become.

[mhays]

Two recent presidential elections have gone against the will of the people due to the Electoral College.

I'm happy when the Seahawks win a game due to a bad call, but a fair system would be better.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by mhays

Two recent presidential elections have gone against the will of the people due to the Electoral College.

But those presidential elections have all gone according to the will of the States comprising this federation, which is how the system was designed.

If you want to explore alternative systems, you might want to note that a straight popular vote presidential voting system like France's would have kept the Clintons away from the White House, with Ross Perot getting eliminated in the first round.

Each system comes with its own features...

[lio45]

Originally Posted by dollaztx

Yeah I noticed that as well. Found it odd that Florida is more populated than NY but if you were to stack all of Florida's metros on top of Miami's it wouldn't come close to NY's. Guess it's not meant to be exact.

Well, as Steely Dan pointed, the Metro NYC's column isn't as high as it seems - there's the Philly column and there's the WashBalt column in front of it lining up perfectly with it. The base of the NYC column is where NYC is geographically on the map, which allows us to calculate its actual height.

And the columns show the total numbers of the votes for the winning option in each metro. So, given equal voting population, the more pale they are, the lower they'll be in height.

For example, Houston's column is approximately only half DFW's column. That's because these columns are measuring the number of votes for whoever won them (Trump in both cases) and even though the two metros are equal in population, the number of Trump votes were significantly higher in DFW than in Houston.

So, Florida's columns are lower in height than the population of the state would suggest because that Tampa is a Trump column of the lightest possible shade and Orlando is a Clinton column of the second lightest possible shade; NYC on the other hand is a column of the darkest possible shade.

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

... NYC's mighty shaft.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by dollaztx

Yeah I noticed that as well. Found it odd that Florida is more populated than NY but if you were to stack all of Florida's metros on top of Miami's it wouldn't come close to NY's. Guess it's not meant to be exact.

Most of the suburban NYC metro area isn't in NY State. So NY State's relative population is largely irrelevant.

The largest share of suburban NYC, by far, is in NJ. The entire state of NJ, excepting a few southern counties in the Philly metro, is the NYC metro.

NY and CT (and to a far lesser extent, PA) contribute smaller shares. If you wanted to compare Miami Metro to NYC metro in terms of proportion of state population, you would probably compare the tri-state area to FL, but that would give you a nearly CA-sized population compared to FL.

Is there another metro area in the U.S. where the primary city and bulk of suburban population are in different states? Probably not, and this accounts for some regional peculiarities.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by tdawg

So proud to be New Yorker. All I will say on this matter.

While I agree, NYC is probably unique among major U.S. cities in that there are hard-core urban neighborhoods that voted for Trump, because of the Orthodox/Hasidic Jewish population, which largely vote according to rabbi's edicts.

In this election they were told to vote Republican, and so Trump actually won some of the most urban census tracts in North America (such as South Williamsburg, home to Satmar Jews and much denser than anywhere in the U.S. outside of NYC).

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Is there another metro area in the U.S. where the primary city and bulk of suburban population are in different states?

DC, but it has its own peculiarities with the city being its own federal capital district with vast swaths of suburbia in both Maryland and Virginia

But outside of those two examples, I can't think of any other major US metro areas with a similar set up.