How Did Division I-A College Football Cities Vote in 2016?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

4.) Again Ohio State would be interesting to compare against 2012 election results, to see what net total vote margins and percentage margins shifted between '12 and '16....

HRC bagging an 8k+ vote margin over Trump in OSU precincts looks pretty impressive, but how did these numbers shift between '08>'12>16, especially in a State which one would typically expect to be close in a Presidential election?

This is pure speculation (I don't have the wherewithal to do any of this analysis myself so I thank you for doing it), but I would guess that Columbus has swung more D since 2000 than the rest of the state. In fact, it may be the only area of the state (other than Cleveland and Cincinatti suburbs maybe) that is trending D right now because it's the fastest growing metro area and becoming one of the economic engines of the state.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

lol @ Evanston having literally less than 150 Trump voters. I expect that the combination of A) having many voters/students from out of state and B) Illinois being a Democratic lock motivated many people to vote in their home state (e.g., I was working in Chicagoland last fall, not as a student, and opted to mail in a ballot in my home state rather than waste my vote). For what it's worth Evanston is the only college town I've visited in the last 18 months with more Hillary bumper stickers than Bernie ones.

My (rather uninformed) guess for UIUC having stronger Hillary-support than UW/UMN: I'd guess that the sheer size of the Chicagoland area relative to the Twin Cities/Madison-Milwaukee areas means that a higher proportion of students at UIUC come from an educated, solidly/upper middle class background than the other schools. Additionally, my experience with Chicago-area Republicans is that they are much more in the Rockefeller-mold than in the Trump mold, meaning that a number of children of Republican households may have voted for Clinton anyway. That's a total guess, and there are other explanations (e.g., Minnesota has a lot more private liberal arts schools that could bleed away well-off voters). It could also be something random, like a really bad Trump campaign organizer in Champaigne or a really good one in Madison.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

lol @ Evanston having literally less than 150 Trump voters. I expect that the combination of A) having many voters/students from out of state and B) Illinois being a Democratic lock motivated many people to vote in their home state (e.g., I was working in Chicagoland last fall, not as a student, and opted to mail in a ballot in my home state rather than waste my vote). For what it's worth Evanston is the only college town I've visited in the last 18 months with more Hillary bumper stickers than Bernie ones.

My (rather uninformed) guess for UIUC having stronger Hillary-support than UW/UMN: I'd guess that the sheer size of the Chicagoland area relative to the Twin Cities/Madison-Milwaukee areas means that a higher proportion of students at UIUC come from an educated, solidly/upper middle class background than the other schools. Additionally, my experience with Chicago-area Republicans is that they are much more in the Rockefeller-mold than in the Trump mold, meaning that a number of children of Republican households may have voted for Clinton anyway. That's a total guess, and there are other explanations (e.g., Minnesota has a lot more private liberal arts schools that could bleed away well-off voters). It could also be something random, like a really bad Trump campaign organizer in Champaigne or a really good one in Madison.

Thanks peenie weenie!

I was wondering that about Northwestern, since it's one of the Universities on the list, that really I know very little about. So, a huge chunk of the Undergrad population are from out of State, compared to many State Universities, which would explain the relatively low amount of votes within the Campus/Dorm precincts I'm assuming?

When I went to College in Ohio in the early 1990s, I voted absentee in Oregon simply for a mixture of tactical reasons and convenience at that time, and I'm pretty sure that particularly with Private schools, you are going to see a higher proportion of out-of-state students than at Public Universities for obvious reasons.

Regarding UILC, your thoughts are fairly similar to mine, especially when looking at the Trump brand of Republicanism, which was most heavily rejected in larger sprawling Metro Areas throughout the United States, including among many traditionally Upper-Middle-Class Republican suburban voters in places as diverse as the suburbs of Nashville and Atlanta, to Columbus and Indianapolis, and even in what was left of the Republican rump in cities like Portland, Seattle, Bay Area California down to Southern California.

Still, the relative weakness of the Democratic candidate in 2016 in places like the University precincts of Madison and Minneapolis, and now recent numbers indicate the University of Iowa as well, tells a countervailing narrative, considering these were all cities that were strongholds of the New Left during the Civil Rights Movement and War in Vietnam, through the "Alternative Movement" of the 1970s, and even throughout the heyday of the Reagan Administration in the '80s.

I guess the key question here, is to what extent if any did Millennial undergrad college students coming from rural and small town backgrounds swing significantly towards Trump in 2016, compared to how they voted (Or their peers four years older did in 2012)?

One of the main reasons that I started this project wasn't just because I happen to like watching College Ball games, but since unfortunately other than national exit polls, we really don't have a very good method to obtain actual verifiable precinct level results for Millennial Voters, since Military Base precincts are even sketchier to look at when it comes to *where* military voters actually vote (Which is really the only place other than College/University precincts where you'll see a massive concentration of voters aged 18-25).

At some point, I'm hoping to pull the 2012 precinct numbers for these same communities to see what shifts if any there were in terms of turnout levels, voting patterns and margins, to at least give us some actual comparative data points to use when trying to discuss Millennial voters.

Northwestern's a small (relative to the rest of the Big 10) private school which maybe will explain some of its anomalous features. Its undergrad student body is less than 10K, and I imagine it attracts a lot more wealthy students (and out-of-staters) than your average Big 10 flagship state school. I haven't spent as much time in other Big 10 towns so I can't draw reliable comparisons, but Evanston is incredibly cosmopolitan and diverse (although somewhat segregated), probably has a large liberal/urban influence from neighboring Chicago, and has a very large educated population (and it's not just an educated population associated with the University -- lots of people who live there work white-collar jobs in the city).

I should have been more explicit about Illinois Republicans -- in my experience, these aren't just Clinton-voting Republicans, but were likely Obama voters in 2012 and/or 2008, which I doubt suburban voters outside Minneapolis or Milwaukee (or Nashville, Houston, etc.).

It is an interesting project and I appreciate you doing it! Re: your last point about trends in students from small-towns, unfortunately I don't have great anecdotes to contribute here (I wasn't on a college campus for the election and most people I worked with were not student age or were from upper-middle class backgrounds). I'm looking forward to reading what you found!