Hillary Clinton Just Got Killed In the Rural Areas

Since I had a "Twitter discussion" about this last week (which consists of me stating facts and someone just replying "false") I thought I would do a little confirmation of my position that Hillary Clinton just got killed in rural areas in 2016.

This fact is confirmed by the counties listed here:  https://ballotpedia.org/Pivot_Counties:_The_counties_that_voted_Obama-Obama-Trump_from_2008-2016 who went Obama-Obama-Trump.  206 counties, almost all of which are rural counties.  Just amazing, for example, that Hillary could not only lose voters in the counties where Obama won by 5-10-20%, but Hillary managed to outright LOSE a majority vote in these counties to Trump.

Now, think about this for a second - counties in Iowa, Minnesota, upstate NY -- happy to vote twice for the black guy.  Could not stand Hillary Clinton.  Rural Iowa voters gave their votes to Barack Obama, crazy black Kenyan communist.  But not Hillary Clinton.


If you review the big city votes in the key Obama states that Hillary lost, the states and city counties are as follows (I will name the city, not its county but I am using county totals):

Pennsylvanis (Philly and Pittsburgh) -- Hillary outperformed Obama

Iowa (Des Moines) -- Hillary underperformed by 6,000 differential (almost statistically insignificant)

Michigan (Detroit) -- Obama did much better (91K differential better)

Florida (Miami and Palm Beach County) - Hillary did better (82K better differential)

Wisconsin (Madison and Milwaukee) -- basically a push.



It is worth mentioning that in 2016 the cities saw a shitload of 3rd party votes (Pittsburgh 30K, Des Moines 18K, Detroit 12K, Florida cities 48K, Milwaukee 26K).  It is hard to say whether these were potential Republican voters who hated Trump or whether they were Dem voters who hated Hillary.  In any event, while she blew it in Detroit, she did better in Florida, so the cities didn't cost her the election as a whole.

What is really remarkable is the northern states bloodbath that Hillary suffered in county after county.  See, for example, this map:  https://www.cnbc.com/heres-a-map-of-the-us-counties-that-flipped-to-trump-from-democrats/  Again, this is someone polling 5-10-20% worse than Barack Obama (supposedly the divisive candidate).

Look at Mower County, Minnesota -- it went from 60-37% Obama to 50-42% Trump.  And it could have been worse, as the county registered an 8% third-party vote.

Wisconsin Counties like Barron, Buffalo and Fond du Lac showed enormous vote differential swings to Trump and away from Obama's party (those 3 counties alone going +14,000 differential for Trump).


And even these results understate what a terrible candidate Hillary Clinton was in rural areas.  Many rural areas had 4-6-8% third party voting, where Obama's elections had seen far lower thrd-party figures.  The lesson there being that people either felt so disenchanted with both candidates that they punted, or they hated Hillary, or they hated Trump and Hillary should have actually lost by much MORE against a decent candidate.  Any of those scenarios is a nightmare for Hillary.

And by stating the counties which switched heavy to Trump, we ignore the counties which were already Republican strongholds and went even harder to Trump.  It is estimated Hillary lost rural America 3-1.   https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-rural-voters-trump-231266  I will concentrate on a rural part of the country with which I am most familiar - western NY.

Wyoming County is blood red Republican.  It generally goes 63-36 Republican.  Trump went 72-22%, gaining 3,500 votes in this tiny county.

Livingston County went from 54-44% county to a 58-36% county.  Plus 4,000 votes. 

Steuben County -- 57-41% to 64-30%, plus 5,000 votes.


In upstate NY, this won't matter since NYC is so huge and can carry the state for a Democrat barring some horrific collapse.     But the point here is this.  Obama was at least maintaining a traditional Democratic level of loss in these counties.  Hillary was venturing into McGovern 1972 territory.  She was just super distatsteful to rural voters.  And, again, it could have been FAR worse if the traditional GOP voter had all voted for Trump.  These rural counties were seeing 5% 3rd party voting.  Had that simply been split 60-40% Trump (doubtful it was that low) the bloodbath becomes even worse.


In short - Hillary just got killed in the rural areas, no matter what some idiot on Twitter tells you.