Where we stop reporting the county numbers and start arguing about what they mean. Every claim here still has to survive the data underneath it — and we say so when it does not.
In raw margin, 2,756 of 3,111 counties moved toward Republicans in 2024. Net of what the country did that year, only 526 did — and those 526 account for 69.3% of the entire national fall in Democratic votes.
Politigoat Data Desk
Across seven midterm cycles and 7,582 polls, the average bias in our file is D+0.36 and it changes sign at five of six steps. The national generic ballot is the one exception — D+2.62, leaning the same way in six of seven midterms — and it is also the only poll number most people ever see.
Politigoat Data Desk
The forty counties that moved furthest toward Republicans since 2000 did 49.1% of that moving by 2008 — the year the country swung 9.86 points the other way. Twenty-two of them flipped Republican in 2008. One flipped in 2016.
Politigoat Data Desk
Sort 3,103 counties into fifths by population change since 2000 and the partisan shift falls out in perfect order — which is why the story attached to it, that dying places turn right, is worth attacking. Inside the 1,354 counties that lost people, how much they lost predicts almost nothing.
Politigoat Data Desk
Salt Lake County's 34.84-point relative swing in 2016 is the largest move toward Democrats in 18,671 county-cycles. Democrats added 29,716 votes there. Republicans lost 85,768. Our own headline number is measuring the second thing and calling it the first.
Politigoat Data Desk
In 2020 the fourteen largest Republican swings in the country, measured against the nation, were all Texas counties. Two-thirds of the whole realignment landed in that one cycle. 2024 was the flip, not the move.
Politigoat Data Desk