What happened/is happening in Shelby County, TN?

[Adam Griffin]

Just noticed these numbers:

2012:
Total Votes: 371,616
Barack Obama: 232,443 (62.55%)
Mitt Romney: 135,649 (36.50%)

2016:
Total Votes: 337,383
Hillary Clinton: 208,992 (61.95%)
Donald Trump: 116,344 (34.48%)

Turnout dropped by 10%. This is a heavily-black county, but the numbers above suggest that this wasn't just a case of black voters skipping the election because Obama was no longer on the ballot. Proportionally, there was just as much drop-off on the GOP side in raw vote as there was on the Democratic side.

What happened here? Is this a case of both sides being immensely unenthusiastic about the candidates and just staying home? Was there an immense drop-off in black voters, with a roughly equivalent number of Romney voters defecting to Clinton? This seems very odd and unlike any other metro county in Tennessee or even the South - what happened?

Another interesting thing: this follows a near 10% drop between 08-12, from 404k to 372k. In 2004, turnout was 370k. Even in 2000, it was 336k: almost identical to the 2016 total.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

This reminds me of the Mississippi votes. Someone made a thread about that topic.
Raw numbers decreased by over 10% on both sides, even thought one might think that MS white voters loved Trump.

[Adam Griffin]

This reminds me of the Mississippi votes. Someone made a thread about that topic.
Raw numbers decreased by over 10% on both sides, even thought one might think that MS white voters loved Trump.

Related to this: I also checked out DeSoto County, MS (across the state line from Shelby County). Turnout barely increased there, while both candidates barely lost vote share. This is the biggest county (and probably the fastest-growing in raw numbers) in the Memphis area. I also took a look at Tipton and Fayette counties: modest GOP increases in votes with Dem losses but nothing major.

There doesn't appear to be any other surrounding counties growing in size rapidly that would be draining people from Memphis, so this is really quite perplexing.

These numbers make Memphis basically look like Detroit.

[Tekken_Guy]

This reminds me of the Mississippi votes. Someone made a thread about that topic.
Raw numbers decreased by over 10% on both sides, even thought one might think that MS white voters loved Trump.

Related to this: I also checked out DeSoto County, MS (across the state line from Shelby County). Turnout barely increased there, while both candidates barely lost vote share. This is the biggest county (and probably the fastest-growing in raw numbers) in the Memphis area. I also took a look at Tipton and Fayette counties: modest GOP increases in votes with Dem losses but nothing major.

There doesn't appear to be any other surrounding counties growing in size rapidly that would be draining people from Memphis, so this is really quite perplexing.

These numbers make Memphis basically look like Detroit.

It's the Shelby suburbs doing the draining. Germantown, Collierville, and Bartlett have all been growing fast.

[Del Tachi]

Just noticed these numbers:

2012:
Total Votes: 371,616
Barack Obama: 232,443 (62.55%)
Mitt Romney: 135,649 (36.50%)

2016:
Total Votes: 337,383
Hillary Clinton: 208,992 (61.95%)
Donald Trump: 116,344 (34.48%)

Turnout dropped by 10%. This is a heavily-black county, but the numbers above suggest that this wasn't just a case of black voters skipping the election because Obama was no longer on the ballot. Proportionally, there was just as much drop-off on the GOP side in raw vote as there was on the Democratic side.

What happened here? Is this a case of both sides being immensely unenthusiastic about the candidates and just staying home? Was there an immense drop-off in black voters, with a roughly equivalent number of Romney voters defecting to Clinton? This seems very odd and unlike any other metro county in Tennessee or even the South - what happened?

Another interesting thing: this follows a near 10% drop between 08-12, from 404k to 372k. In 2004, turnout was 370k. Even in 2000, it was 336k: almost identical to the 2016 total.

Memphis has been losing population since the 1980s, the loss has recently become so severe that Shelby County as a whole started to bleed in 2012. 

Anytime you're losing raw population, voter turnout metrics can get a bit wonky.  Couple that with the fact that the county is 52% Black and the White suburban population (especially inside I-240) being unenthused to vote for Trump and a 10% decrease in votes seems pretty likely.

[Adam Griffin]

It's the Shelby suburbs doing the draining. Germantown, Collierville, and Bartlett have all been growing fast.

Sorry, I should have been clearer there: Shelby County (as opposed to Memphis proper) looks like Detroit. AFAIK, all of those suburbs are in the county.

Memphis has been losing population since the 1980s, the loss has recently become so severe that Shelby County as a whole started to bleed in 2012. 

Anytime you're losing raw population, voter turnout metrics can get a bit wonky.  Couple that with the fact that the county is 52% Black and the White suburban population (especially inside I-240) being unenthused to vote for Trump and a 10% decrease in votes seems pretty likely.

I guess it's a pretty big deviation when compared to other Southern metro counties, but the drop in population in recent years was basically a rounding error; only about 2000 people in a county of nearly one million. It'd be nice to run some analysis on this and see how much of a drop occurred in each comparable county controlled for population increases/decreases. It still seems like a huge drop-off to me, even considering all of that.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

All of the main Memphis suburbs in Tennessee are in Shelby County, rather than a surrounding area, so it easily could be a combination of a decrease in black turnout and some Romney-Clinton suburban voters.

[NOVA Green]

Tennessee is one of the best states in the country when it comes to centralized reporting of election results, including precinct level results....

https://sos.tn.gov/products/elections/election-results

God bless Tennessee, metaphorically speaking....

Surely some entrepreneur on Atlas and briefly roll a compare and contrast map using the County precinct boundaries following the link below.

http://www.shelbycountytn.gov/DocumentCenter/View/21644

Next step would logically be to compare against US Census data to code various social demographics, and then we can see where exactly voter turnout decreased, and also partially isolate  swings among various demographics that appear at a national level to have voted in various directions.

https://statisticalatlas.com/county/Tennessee/Shelby-County/Overview

I would be a volunteer (Tennessee style) on behalf of the project, but unfortunately my current bandwidth is tapped out with work/life commitments, and limited time to deal with existing projects on the Political Geography of the Pacific Northwest.

I'm sure we have at least a few fellow Atlasians that could potentially dice the numbers using the raw data easily accessible via the links above....

Still the dramatic drop in '12>'16 voter numbers in Shelby is an extremely interesting topic, and I suspect the data will show that @ Extreme Republican provides potentially the best explanation provided thus far.

Crunching the numbers by precinct level coding data sets in '12 and '16 in the County, matched against US Census numbers, will likely help contribute some major data points as to exactly where voter turnout plunged...

It also might both support or challenge some of the stereotypical analysis of the '16 Pres GE, and certainly some of the CW on Atlas....

What if voter turnout in Shelby County plunged among both WWC and heavily AA regions alike?

What if voter turnout in Shelby barely increase in wealthy Anglo 'burbs that weren't that fond of HRC, but very few people that wanted to vote LBT?

Honestly, idk--- but there is definitely at least a minimal amount of raw data for someone to be able to run a '12>'16 precinct report, move and code/filter various precincts, and then match against Census Data to see if we can at least identify a correlation, regardless of evidence of causality.

[Adam Griffin]

*snip*

Well, TN does have a lot of raw data available, but unfortunately it is poorly-formatted.

Nevertheless, I extracted what I could and generated this. Shelby consolidated from 220 precincts in 2012 to 166 in 2016. Almost all of the mergers were clean-cut mergers, so it was easy enough to get the data. However, I did find a few precincts listed in the 2016 shapefile that were not listed as part of the merger prior to that; those are blackened out.

Anyway, here's the map (predominant racial group shown on right; 2010 Census).

Each shade is a 5-percent gradient shown as a share of 2012's vote (for instance, the lightest shade indicates turnout was more than 95 but less than 100% of 2012's turnout).

Here's the link to the interactive map.

[Adam Griffin]

FYI, I figured out that it was a naming issue that was screwing up the 30 or so precincts above; fixed that, updated the above post and now the map is complete (save for 5 precincts that I think are errors in the shapefile).

[NOVA Green]

FYI, I figured out that it was a naming issue that was screwing up the 30 or so precincts above; fixed that, updated the above post and now the map is complete (save for 5 precincts that I think are errors in the shapefile).

Wow!!!! A+++ for effort and stuff like this is part of the reason you are one of my favorite posters on Atlas!   

So definitely looking like the strongest correlation between dramatic decrease in voter turnout '12>'16 was among heavily AA precincts in the County....

Still, you also have that giant White finger coming from the SE part of the County, sticking itself into the heart of downtown that also appears to have experienced a noticeable drop-offs in voters, although not nearly as significant as the drop-off in heavily AA precincts....

I'm assuming the more Anglo parts of downtown that saw increase in voter turnout are going to tend to be younger, wealthier voters perhaps than the "knuckles of the Middle Finger" (For lack of a better description) that saw a drop-off in turnout?

So--- to what extent have these trends been observed in other large Southern Metro "anchor counties" with the dramatic drop-off in turnout?  Shelby County is only 52-40 (AA-Anglo) which actually isn't that impressive compared to larger cities like New Orleans, Atlanta, etc....

HRC and DJT were both unpopular candidates with massive UNFAVES, out here in Oregon we still generally tend to vote, but suddenly you see a huge spike in 3rd Party Voting as in '80/'92/'16.... Does voter turnout tend to drop dramatically in larger Metro parts of the South as an alternative means of expressing disapproval with the Candidates provided by the two Major parties?

Would also be interesting to look at an overlay of income/education/results/swings to see what might have caused what appears to be an extremely unusual drop in votes in '16 (First two for additional data to expand a profile of the areas that saw visible drops in turnout, latter two to see what the outcomes were as a result of the plunge in electoral participation.

Although it is virtually impossible to quantify, one phenomenon that we have observed in many parts of the Country, is that people that live and work in large Metro areas, regardless of Race/Ethnicity- Income-Occupations- Urban/Suburban/Exurban increasingly appear to be defining their identity as part of their Metro area, as opposed to the traditional City/Suburb/Exurb fault line of recent American politics....

For example if we look at the large Metro areas of the West Coast (Seattle-Tacoma, Portland, Bay Area Cali, SoCal), Metro Areas in the Mountain West like Denver, Phoenix, Vegas, we don't really see the same type of combative relationship that used to be the case only a Decade or so back.

Even if we look at the largest cities in Texas, the 'Burbs of DFW, Houston, and SA and then roll into Metro Atlanta, Charlotte, and Richmond, we're not really seeing the same type of dynamics a few short years back....

The strategy that some very recent Republican politicians have used rubs the wrong way in larger Metro areas, where although there are historical reasons for housing segregation (North and South alike), and especially in the South neighborhoods still tend to be much more racially stratified, despite the elimination of legal barriers to housing mobility, people of all occupational backgrounds still get up and go to work in restaurants, warehouses, manufacturing facilities, grocery stores, construction work crews, and even downtown high-rise office buildings, where they spend most of their day after a few hours of time with the family, to get up and do it again.

So--- with that concept, is it surprising that many working and Middle-Class Whites in Shelby County weren't that crazy about DJTs message, and many decided not to vote rather than vote Democrat for the first time, nor vote for the Orange Haired Clown?

Not an expert by any means on the politics of TN, but we do know that some of the wealthier and whiter parts of the state did swing heavily DEM in '16....

Likely not relevant to the topic at hand, since I didn't spend much time looking at Shelby County in particular, but still topical....

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=259050.msg5554407#msg5554407

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=259050.msg5555341#msg5555341

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=259050.msg5580099#msg5580099

#1 Wealthiest- Germantown- (Shelby County- MHI $ 109.7k/Yr- Pop 39.1k)

(83.8% White, 6.7% Asian, 5.1% African-American, 3.6% Latino)

2012: (21.5% D- 77.5 % R)          +56.0% R
2016: (29.8% D- 69.2% R)           +39.4 % R      (+17% Dem Swing)

Now--- TN is one of the few States in our Great Country that I've never spent much time in, but this whole thread, gave me a hankering to listen to Tennessee Jed for the first time in some 15 years sung by the legendary Grateful Dead...

"Tennessee, Tennessee, ain't no place I'd rather be.... Baby why don't you carry me back to Tennessee".

Would highly suggest anyone interested check out the official 10 Min jam with all of the respective musical voices, since really the lyrics alone don't do the song justice.... It's also a pretty cool song to have jamming in the background while wading through maps and precinct reports for 15+ Mins...

Official free version from '76

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWwicgg0SQI

Lyrics:

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&q=grateful+dead+tennessee+jed+lyrics&oq=grateful+dead+tennesse+&gs_l=psy-ab.1.2.0i10k1l4.1809.10070.0.13272.28.24.3.0.0.0.185.2680.9j15.24.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..1.27.2708.0..0j35i39k1j0i67k1j0i20k1j0i131i67k1.0vi3Hjpsdqs

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

How have y'all have been discussing my home county without me?

As Adam's maps illustrate, the biggest factor in the drop is lower enthusiasm in the African-American community, though this doesn't quite explain why there were even fewer votes in 2016 than 2004.

The thing that surprises me in Adam's turnout map is East Memphis experiencing a consistent drop - its more stable in population, but is also likely the part of town with the most angst about both candidates.

Speaking of angst, East Memphis, Cordova, and Germantown all had substantial Romney to Clinton swings as evidenced by this animation comparing 2012 and 2016 precinct results.

This map uses non-atlas colors.  Please wear appropriate eye protection.



You'll also note that in neighboring Tipton and Fayette counties the turnout dropped a bit despite significant population growth, while the GOP % went up.  These counties have AA populations that are declining rapidly while being replaced by white voters.

[NOVA Green]

How have y'all have been discussing my home county without me?

As Adam's maps illustrate, the biggest factor in the drop is lower enthusiasm in the African-American community, though this doesn't quite explain why there were even fewer votes in 2016 than 2004.

The thing that surprises me in Adam's turnout map is East Memphis experiencing a consistent drop - its more stable in population, but is also likely the part of town with the most angst about both candidates.

Speaking of angst, East Memphis, Cordova, and Germantown all had substantial Romney to Clinton swings as evidenced by this animation comparing 2012 and 2016 precinct results.

This map uses non-atlas colors.  Please wear appropriate eye protection.



You'll also note that in neighboring Tipton and Fayette counties the turnout dropped a bit despite significant population growth, while the GOP % went up.  These counties have AA populations that are declining rapidly while being replaced by white voters.

Thanks Bleeding Heart Conservative for finally checking in on the thread!!!

Will need to more time fully digest your data, but have to say I have a bottle of the best American Bourbon (Mfg in Tennessee) waiting on ice for your arrival, so my apologies for your late appearance at the party, but hey better late than never....