President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has long maintained that there were thousands of new supporters in the country’s rural, red pockets, voting for the president when asked to come out.
On election day, he laid out some evidence.
With so many unpredictable races on the battlefield, the hefty election day increase in Trump’s election may not be enough to surpass the Democratic campaign that also turned his vote around. With the vote count still pending, the total turnout has already surpassed the 2016 level.
But the presidential race has shown the resilience of Trump’s appeal with the increasing polarization of rural, white voters and Trump with tight presidential races and unexpected democratic losses that could propel his leadership forward.
William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, said the Trump campaign strategy relies on growing support in places where people are losing population, while Democrats rely on growing cities and suburban groups.
“The clock is ticking,” Frey said. “But in this election we have found that he is not ticketing fast enough for the Democrats.”
Although the White House winner was unclear, Republicans had a win on Wednesday and whites, celebrating, to thank rural voters.
In Iowa, Democrats had hoped to take a Senate seat, but Trump won the state by hand on the strength of his rural vote, and the G.O.P. Sen. Johnny Ernst took his seat.
Democratic rip. Abby Finknauer lost her election bid in the eastern part of the state as Trump increased his margins in rural areas west of Dubuque, such as Buchanan County. Trump won in Grameen County, which is 96% white, up 1 point in 2015.
In North Carolina, Trump took 2,400 votes from his 2016 total in the small Columbus County, near the South Carolina border. He repeated the practice in the vast rural areas of the state, sparking a democratic upsurge in its urban base.
Democrats hoped to win a full state for Biden and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis was ousted as part of his efforts to win majority control of the chamber. Both races were too early to call on Wednesday.
To be sure, Democrats also mobilized their constituents to drive what could be a historic voting level. Those Democratic voters are more likely to vote early and by mail – meaning their vote count was slow. As the vote count grew, some major battlefields, including Wisconsin and Michigan, Biden began to win, and Trump’s leads narrowed in Pennsylvania and Georgia.
But the Associated Press analysis of the results found a strong turnout – so far – in favor of Trump. In the vote count, where the turnout was higher than in the last presidential election, Trump extended his term compared to his Democratic opponent, while the 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton’s vote was compared. While the differences were small – an average of 0.2 percentage points – that was enough to get thousands of additional voters.
Many of these were high-profile constituencies – with at least 140 million votes in the country, surpassing the 2016 total. The numbers are expected to continue to rise, with California slowly counting millions of additional ballots, a process that could take weeks. It will take a long time to determine the national voting rate.
Experts believe that before all women were given the right to vote in the 20th century, this election could have the highest turnout rate – the percentage of eligible population – voting.
One of the councils that surpassed his 2016 tally was Baler County, Pennsylvania, a suburb north of Pittsburgh and neighboring cities, where Trump won two-thirds of the vote and a 36,000-vote margin in 2016. Its margin was a little more than a hundred votes this year.
Trump held his final, largest campaign rallies in Butler, drawing an estimated 54,000 people two days before election day. State Republican, new GOP in the county. It will take months to sign up on registrants – the GOPA tracked 11,000 voters on deomprat after Trump’s 2016 election.
One of them is 20-year-old Anastasia Longo, who was excited to vote for president in her first election. “I believe Trump will win and I want to be a part of it,” she said in an interview with her best friend before going to the polls on election day.
Democrats also saw rising margins in significant parts of the country. In cities with a population of more than 10 million, Biden is improving by 1.5 percentage points over Clinton. But Republicans argue that Democrats have the upper hand among white, urban-educated voters in urban areas and its suburbs, a group that is already heavily involved in elections.
These educated voters, “you really can’t accept more of it,” said Republican data analyst Patrick Rufini. But white voters who did not graduate from college college – the mainstay of Trump’s support in these areas – vote at a lower rate, so more ground will always be obtained from them.
Going forward, Rufini said, “Republicans think it has an advantage.”
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