Rural areas that swung towards Clinton and/or trended Democrat?

[Technocracy Timmy]

Part of the reason why Trump performed better nationally among Hispanics than Romney came from the fact that Hispanics in rural areas voted more strongly for him than they did for Romney.


Were there any rural areas that did the opposite though? I'm talking about rural areas that swung for Clinton and/or trended Democrat.

[AN63093]

Is there something specific you're looking for?

Because otherwise, there are too many examples to narrow this down.  Lots of rural areas swung D, though you'll find most in the West.  Look for almost all of UT (all but one county swung D), eastern ID and western WY had dramatic trends... look at southern AZ and NM, parts of western CO (up in the mountains), southwestern KS, lots of counties in south/western TX, some counties in eastern WA.

East of the Missouri River, it's much more uncommon.  Mid-West states swung hard R in rural areas (IA- all counties but two, MN- all counties outside the Twin Cities, MO- all counties except 3, OH- every county outside of Cincy and Columbus), and it's the same the farther east you go (AR- all counties but 4, WV- every single county (!), ME- every single county (!!), VT- all counties but 1, RI- all counties, NY- every county but 3)... the list goes on and on.  Even states like VA and MD, almost all the rural areas swung R.


So basically- in the eastern US, practically no counties... Trump really ran the table.  I even checked the Black Belt and pretty much everywhere swung R, so you're looking for needles in a haystack.

The Western US is a different story, and you can find lots of examples.

[Webnicz]

In Arizona
Coconino County(albeit already an already liberal county) trended 3.4% to Clinton
Yuma County swayed 11.5% towards Clinton and was decided by just over 1% of the vote. Romney carried this county by 12 points

Others:
Teton County, Wyoming trended trended 15% to the Dems
Teton County, Idaho (many eastern counties in Idaho should be included) Clinton made up the 11.5 point margin and lost by just .1%, large thanks to Mcmuffin

[AN63093]

Going through western TX, some of these results are interesting.  Obviously Trump won most counties, but he actually did a little worse than Romney, believe it or not.  Through the Panhandle, many more counties swung D in '16 than '12.  Some of these counties are sparsely populated, so how much this is telling us is questionable... but on the other hand, both Potter and Randall Counties (Amarillo) and Lubbock both swung and trended D.  This could just be a bounce back from the GOP maxing out the area.. some of the margins had gotten a little ridiculous, over 70% R, or even 80 in a couple instances.

Speaking of Western TX.. not a rural area, but just thought I'd throw it out there- El Paso had a pretty decent D swing this time around... D+10.45.  So while Trump may have done nationally better among Hispanics, El Paso is one place where he must not have.

Along those lines- consider Seward County, KS (42% Hispanic and where the town of Liberal is).  The major employer there is a meat packing plant.  Seward swung D+10.7.  Nearby Finney County also swung D (47% Hispanic).  The major employer there is a Tyson plant.

[Hydera]

If you look in the precint map tree are some rural places that swung toward Hillary but they were obviously outnumbered by the reverse.

https://decisiondeskhq.com/data-dives/creating-a-national-precinct-map/

She swung a few eastern kentucky precints and the most prominent swing was in rural Kansas which attribute to brownback's unpopularity.

[VPH]

If you look in the precint map tree are some rural places that swung toward Hillary but they were obviously outnumbered by the reverse.

https://decisiondeskhq.com/data-dives/creating-a-national-precinct-map/

She swung a few eastern kentucky precints and the most prominent swing was in rural Kansas which attribute to brownback's unpopularity.

That's part of it but in Western Kansas I think it's probably a function of rising Hispanic population

[nclib]

In the West, a lot of Dem-swinging counties are sizably Hispanic and/or Mormon (though there are still a good number aside from those). Even if McMullin's numbers are added to Trump's, there is still a Dem swing as Romney overperformed with Mormons in 2012.

West Texas, the Texas panhandle, and western Kansas already have sizeable Hispanic populations, already Republican Hispanics, and very Republican whites, so there's not much more room to swing (even if Trump improved upon Romney's numbers nationally with rural Hispanics). It is already easy to draw a couple McCain Hispanic CDs in Texas by avoiding the border and urban areas.

In the states bordering or east of the Mississippi, only the following could arguably be considered rural, that are not on the fringe of a sizeable metro area, and do not have a college town:

East Carroll, LA (though majority black)
Leelanau, MI
Habersham, GA
Lumpkin, GA
Leslie, KY
Perry, KY
Dukes, MA
Nantucket, MA
Chittenden, VT

[Coraxion]

In Arizona
Coconino County(albeit already an already liberal county) trended 3.4% to Clinton
Yuma County swayed 11.5% towards Clinton and was decided by just over 1% of the vote. Romney carried this county by 12 points

Are those rural counties, though? A bit over half of the population of Coconino live in Flagstaff, and the same thing for Yuma County with Yuma (the city) and San Luis.