President Barack Obama beat senator McCain in 2008 in 815 counties in roughly 3037 counties in the USA, the highest for a Democrat nominee in 20 years. Vice President Al Gore won 689 against Bush 2000 & Senator John Kerry 537 counties against Bush in 2004. Mrs. Hillary Clinton won only 447 counties over President Trump in 2016. President Joe Biden won 479 counties in 2020 over President Trump. For the Democrat party, America voted for a president who twice as many as Mrs. Clinton did and Vice President Joe Biden. A Black candidate for President from the Democrat party wins close to twice as many counties than a white woman and white man in 20 years, should it not be a litmus test for acceptability of minority among the majority? According to the 2008 census, the total number of white voters, exceeded the total population of the all minorities combined. The only way, President Obama could have won the presidency twice is because a huge population of the white voters, ignored the color of the candidates skin. In majority of the counties in the USA, the majority are white, so a candidate like Senator Obama should not even have a fighting chance of getting past the primaries in an almost all white competition, let alone win the 2008 presidential election. How is President Obama's victory possible if the country is systemically racist?
Breaking down the counties in which President Obama won based on the demographic breakdown on race. 24% (195 out of the 815) of counties won by President Obama where in counties with white population of greater than 90% of the total population. Counties with 90+% formed his biggest contributor to this win. A close 2nd is the counties where the white population makes up 80%-90% of the population is at 20%(160). Again, how does this play out with the racist narrative?
Ouray(CO) before 2008 was a Republican with a white population at 92% according to census where President Obama carried this county by 9 points in 2008 and 5 points in 2012.
This highly educated (over 50% have college education) county is classified as recreational dependent, with 50+ being the population biggest group. Ouray(CO) has been Democrat ever since, even though number of Republican votes has been steadily increasing , but the Democrat votes have been also increasing by a bigger number. Mrs. Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Vice President Biden in 2020, were able to keep this county, blue but also were able to grow their numbers. This county would be a great candidate for further analysis, as it is extremely small (<5K population) with a specific demographic mix of white, educated, and older population and high participation rate of roughly 80% of the population voted. These could be the ideal Democrat voters also known as Obama coalition. The only problem is that only 22% of the population is college educated, which is an extremely small pool of the population. This is showing up with increase in Republican numbers in this county in 2016 and 2020 as compared to 2008. [Check out Is 2020 election a revenge against the nerds?]
Here are a sample list of counties that fall in similar Demographics & voting patterns as Ouray (CO). Only a single sample county was used, though there were a few more present that met the criteria. Can be verified on TFN's ELECTIONS DECISIVE DASHBOARD FOR YOU(EDDY)
- Cumberland (ME)
- Putnam (IL)
- Starke (IN)
- Elliot (KY)
- Clare (MI)
- Putnam (IL)
- Starke (IN)
- Elliot (KY)
- Lake (SD)
- Chittenden (VT)
- Clare (MI)
- Putnam (IL)
- Starke (IN)
- Elliot (KY)
- Clare (MI)
- Putnam (IL)
- Starke (IN)
- Elliot (KY)
- Knox (ME)
- Houston* (MN) [turned blue for Prez. Obama ONLY.]
- Ottawa* (OH) [turned blue for Prez. Obama ONLY.]
- Essex (VT)
- Braxton (WV)
- Barron (WI)
Howard(IO) until 2012 was a Democrat county with 98% white population where President Obama increased the winning margin in the mid 50's to 62% in 2008 & 60% in 2012. Again, the whitest county in the whitest state, voted by the highest percentage to a Black candidate for the Democrat party in 2008 and slightly less in 2012 but still for the same candidate. Howard (IO) classified as a farm county, with 50+ again forming the biggest voting with smaller college educated population. This county flipped Republican in 2016 where Mrs. Clinton lost quarter of the votes that President Obama had in 2008. In 2020, President Trump increased his margins from 2016 by 6 pct points making this county even more red, a 31 pct points flip since President Obama's massive victory. Just like Ouray(CO), it is a small county (<10K population) with a specific demographic mix white, less educated, older population. The observations for Howard(IO) is that the white, less educated have left the Democrat party, by 25 pct points in 2016 and never returned back in 2020. An additional 6 pct of the same demographic people left the Democrat party in 2020.
Here are a sample list of counties that fall in similar Demographics & voting patterns as Howard(IO). Only a single sample county was used, though there were a few more present that met the criteria. Can be verified on TFN's ELECTIONS DECISIVE DASHBOARD FOR YOU(EDDY)
In majority of these above 15 counties, President Obama already started to see dips among this population group. Most of the gains, he had in 2008, seem in some of the counties.
In this analysis of only the 90+% white populated counties. The observation is that a Black presidential candidate did better than the Caucasian male or female candidate from that party in 20 years. This flies against the narrative of US white population being racist. The same trend tends to be observed in the counties where the white population is 70% that was analyzed, which was left out of this report for the sake of brevity.
However, the 2 white Democrat candidates that ran after President Obama, did poorly compared to in these predominantly white counties, one has to wonder if the platform that they were running on could be unpopular with this demography. Also, 2016 was the launch and rise of the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party, who identify as a Democratic Socialist, which may be the reason that the party could be losing its popularity among this demographic group of white, older and under-educated. But this could be a challenge for the Democrats as there are 1037 counties (roughly 1/3 of the country) that have a white population of 90%. Another troubling factor is that the party is hemorrhaging white voters who have not returned to the party since 2012 and they are losing more every election cycle. If race was important for this group of voters, the numbers should improve for these 2 candidates, but it does not.
These counties demographic make up has not changed and is exactly as it was in 2000 and 2004 elections, when some of these 15 counties voted Democrat. They voted for President Obama in 2008 helping him win by a big margin. Then in 2016 and 2020 completely flipped these counties to Republican. This is another reason, the problem could be with the direction of the Democrat party.
Therefore, could it assumed it is extremely difficult to make the case for racism in elections, for the poor performance of the Democrat party and the march of these white voters towards President Trump's version of the Republican party.
Note: There may be a margin of error of <5% in the demographics data from the census.gov website and every attempt was made to validate the data from the government websites for election data and other major news reporting operations.
