Some comparisons between 2020 and 2004
Margin swing
In 2004, the margin became more Republican (or less Democratic), relative to 2000, in 33 states, and more Democratic (or less Republican) in 17 states. All six of the largest states (California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Illinois) were amongst the 33 states in which the margin swung Republican. In 2020, the margin swung Republican relative to 2016 in only six states, and Democratic in 44. Three of the six states where the margin swung Republican were amongst the six largest states (California--the largest, of course--Florida, and Illinois).
Increase in vote share
In 2004, George W. Bush increased the Republican vote share in 47 states--all save North Carolina, South Dakota, and Vermont. He increased his vote share in all six of the largest states, and in every mega-state (state with 14 or more electoral votes) save North Carolina. In 2020, Trump increased the Republican vote share in only 33 states, amongst which were five of the six largest states (all save Texas). Along with Texas, there was one other mega-state where his vote share declined, Georgia (with 16 electoral votes). Trump's biggest increases were:
Utah (+12.59%)
Idaho (+4.59%)
Hawaii (+4.24%)
New Mexico (+3.46%)
California (+2.70%)
Florida (+2.20%)
Nevada (+2.17%)
North Dakota (+2.15%)
Bush's biggest increases in 2004 were:
Hawaii (+7.80%)
Rhode Island (+6.76%)
Alabama (+5.98%)
New Jersey (+5.95%)
Tennessee (+5.65%)
Connecticut (+5.51%)
Oklahoma (+5.26%)
Conversely, in 2004, Kerry was able to increase the Democratic vote share in only 26 states, which included only four of the six largest (not Florida or New York). In 2020, Biden increased the Democratic vote share in all 50 states, which is highly unusual, especially given that both 2016 and 2020 were (fairly) close. Under conditions of a much larger partisan swing, Romney did not increase the Republican vote share in every state in 2012, nor did Obama increase the Democratic vote share in every state in 2008, nor did Michael Dukakis increase the Democratic vote share in every state in 1988. The last time that a nominee increased his party's vote share in every single state was 2000 (when George W. Bush did so). That accompanied a rise in the GOP's national vote share of 7.2%.
In Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and West Virginia, the Democratic vote share had been in a decline for five straight elections as of October 2020 (that is, Al Gore got a lower vote share than Bill Clinton in '96; Kerry got a lower vote share than Al Gore, and so on through Hillary Clinton). In 2020, all those streaks were broken, as Biden improved on Hillary Clinton's vote share in each state (something, again, even Obama in '08 had been unable to do). Conversely, Trump posted the fourth straight decline in the GOP vote share in Maryland (where McCain had done worse than Bush in '04, Romney, worse than McCain, and so on)--now the longest run of continuous declines in one party's vote share in a particular state.
Republican vote share records for the 21st century by state
If we take the six elections from 2000 through 2020, and create maps of the states for which each election is responsible for the highest Republican vote share, they would look like this:
(Hence, for example, Alabama is coloured in red for 2004, because Bush's 62.46% vote share in Alabama is the highest of any Republican nominee's out of the last six elections.)
By comparison, these are the equivalent maps for the Democrats over the past six elections:
Just comparing the Republican maps amongst themselves, we can see that 2004 is still responsible for the highest Republican vote share in a majority of states (30/50), including all four of the largest states, and five of the six largest (all save Pennsylvania). They even include Wisconsin, one of the three Blue Wall states where Trump upset Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump did not exceed Bush's '04 vote share in any of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan in 2016, but in Pennsylvania and Michigan, he was able to do so in 2020, even though he failed to carry the states again. In Wisconsin, however, he still fell short.
2020 is responsible, by far, for the GOP's high-water mark this century in the second-largest number of states (ten), including the mega-states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. However, this is still far fewer than 2004.
Trump's initial election, in 2016, is also responsible for a curiously large number of state GOP high-water marks: Tennessee, Kentucky, Maine, and Rhode Island. This is curious because one would normally have expected most states in which Trump got the highest vote share of any Republican this century in 2016, to give Trump an even higher vote share in 2020--if he were winning or close to winning the national election. Tennessee and Kentucky lie in what Michael Barone called the 'Scots-Irish zone' in 2012, a group of states where the Republican Party has generally been on the ascent over the last six elections. Maine and Rhode Island are in the Northeast, a region where Trump did unexpectedly well in 2016. In 2016, Brandon Finnigan surmised that a Trump re-election would likely be accompanied by ‘some surprisingly close states in the Northeast: a four- or five-point loss in Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and a ten-point deficit in New York, certainly wouldn’t be off the mark here.’ Most of these almost certainly presupposed Trump setting a GOP high-water mark in these various states for this century (as did Finnigan's surmise that a Trump re-election would likely be accompanied by his carrying Maine), with the possible exception of New Jersey (where Bush got 46.24% in 2004).
Instead, however, Trump did worse, not only than himself in 2016, but than Bush in '04, in Rhode Island and Maine in 2020.
By comparison, Bush's initial election in 2000 is responsible for comparatively few GOP state high-water marks this century: just North Carolina and Vermont. North Carolina was a state that was trending towards becoming purple in the long run, and was also John Edwards' home state in 2004. Vermont was a state that had long been loyally Republican up to just twelve years prior, and was continuing its rapid shift away from the GOP and towards the Democracy, largely irrespective of the national trend (much like, in the opposite direction, the states for which Al Gore in 2000 remains responsible for the highest Democratic vote share this century). Neither was a state that had trended particularly hard towards Bush in 2000, or had been trending Republican in general in recent cycles. (North Carolina was 13.09% more Republican than the country in 1996; in 2000, it was 13.34% more Republican. It was not one of the 13 states where Bush got a higher vote share in 2000 than his father had gotten in 1988.)
Amongst all the Republican maps, 2004 seems to have a similar standing as 2008 does for the Democratic maps, although perhaps even more so: 2008 is responsible for the Democratic high-water mark this century in 29 states, but only one of the four biggest (Florida) and three of the six biggest (Florida, Pennsylvania, and Illinois). The 29 states all together are currently worth 248 electoral votes, whereas the 30 states where 2004 is still responsible for the highest GOP vote share this century are currently worth 371 electoral votes. More worrisome is that there shouldn't be a comparison at all: 2008 was a 'generic Democratic year', arguably the only generic year for either party this century. 2004 was a close election.
Biden set the Democratic high-water mark this century in eleven states, currently worth 186 electoral votes. This represents far more of a consolidation of the Democrats' new, and potential future, base, than the comparable 2020 map for the Republicans: Biden set the high-water mark in two of the three states that voted twice for Bush and then Democratic from 2008-2016, solidifying their status as safe blue states (Virginia and Colorado; the exception was Nevada); he of course set the high-water mark in the two states he was the first Democrat this century to carry (Arizona and Georgia); and he was set the high-water mark in Texas and Alaska, two red states that are no longer as securely red as they used to be. He also set the high-water mark in Utah, a still-solid red state but one that after 2016 looked like it could become a swing state in the very long run; Trump failed to do so in the somewhat analogous situation of Rhode Island. And he set the high-water mark in some states that had long been solidly blue, but that had been trending even bluer over recent elections (Washington, California, Maryland). Where he didn't, of course, this wasn't for lack of improving on Hillary Clinton's vote share; indeed, all this is that much more impressive given that, for Biden to set a high-water mark in a state, he had to exceed Obama in 2008. There is no comparable 'generic Republican year', out of the five elections prior to 2020, that Trump similarly had to top in any given state.
fornias
In 2004, Bush retained all his 'fornia' states from 2000 and added two more: Indiana and Alabama. (This was even as the national two-party vote rose from 96.25% to 99.00%.) In 2020 (when the two-party vote rose from 94.27% to 98.17%), Trump's 'fornia' lost three states (Montana, Nebraska, and Kansas), although it did gain one (Utah).
In general, one would have expected Trump to expand his 'fornia' if he were winning re-election (and at a minimum to have retained all the states from his original fornia). By definition, a state that was in Trump's fornia in 2016 but not in 2020 had a margin swing towards the Democrats. (Conversely, a state that was not in a president's original fornia, but becomes part of it in his re-election bid, had a margin swing towards his party.)
With the evaporation of the third-party vote in 2020, one might have expected a number of states to join Trump's fornia: long-solidly Republican states such as Utah (which did do so), Alaska, or Indiana; and/or states that have been becoming increasingly solidly Republican, such as Missouri. And one would certainly have expected no states to leave Trump's fornia--again, if he were winning, or close to winning, the election. Bush's 2000 vote share in Montana would not have been sufficient to make it still part of his fornia in 2004 if he had remained at that level, but he managed to keep Montana in his fornia all the same. And while Bush fell just short of making any state that voted for Bill Clinton twice part of his fornia in 2004, his making Alabama (which he carried against Gore by 14.92%) part of his '04 fornia was likely correlated with the relative ease wherewith he carried states that had been battleground states in 2000, such as West Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee. (Bush carried Kentucky in '04 by 19.86%.)
In contrast, 2020 left Montana, Kansas, and Nebraska looking permanently less solidly Republican than in the Bush years, to say nothing of Alaska, whereof the 2020 result did leave some talk of the possibility of the state's turning purple (presumably the still-relatively wide margin of 10.06%, and the state's small electoral weight, leave it largely overshadowed by states such as Texas).
On Dec. 2, 2020, Ed Kilgore wrote,
Some deep-red and deep-blue states are just getting redder and bluer. Biden won by 20 points or more in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, while Trump won by 20 points or more in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming.
But in fact, it's hard to say that Alabama, Idaho, Tennessee, and Utah are 'getting redder'. Trump set the GOP high-water mark this century in none of them in 2020, and his vote share declined relative to 2016 in Alabama and Tennessee. In Alabama, Idaho, and Utah, Trump never did as well, in either 2016 or 2020, as Bush in 2004. (Utah is an especially odd mention, as Trump's vote share was, by over 4%, the worst of any Republican's this century apart from his own in 2016, when very unusual circumstances obtained in the state.) But more importantly are some of the states Kilgore couldn't include (because Trump didn't win them by > 20%), such as states that have been thought of as deep-red but turned out not to be all that deep-red anymore (by Kilgore's standards)--such as, again, Alaska, Nebraska, Kansas, and Montana--or states that are getting redder but not fast enough to satisfy Kilgore's criteria, such as, again, Missouri, where Trump improved by a glacial 0.03% (from 56.77% to 56.80%). (Bush's 2000 vote share in Alabama [56.48%]--which he made a 'fornia' state in 2004--was lower than Trump's in Missouri in 2016.)
biggest vote trove
The largest state Kilgore mentions on Trump's side of the ledger is Tennessee, and in fact, it is the largest state he could have mentioned--it was the only state in Trump's fornia in either election with even a double-digit number of electoral votes. Meanwhile, on Biden's side, Kilgore was able to mention the country's largest and fourth-largest states (even though, again, as Finnigan alluded to after the 2016 election, a Trump reelection in 2020 should really have seen New York tighten up to no longer being a Democratic fornia state [as well as Connecticut and Rhode Island remaining non-fornia states, as they were not in 2016]).
Tennessee also historically supplanted Texas as the GOP's biggest vote trove in 2020. This would have been worrisome in any event, given that Tennessee is much smaller than Texas, but it was happening even as Trump's vote share receded in Tennessee. It might not necessarily have been surprising to see a state other than Texas take the title of biggest Republican vote trove in 2020, but, if Trump were doing well, one might have expected it to be another large state--say, Ohio.
In order for Trump's raw-vote margin out of Ohio to exceed his actual raw vote margin in Tennessee, he would have needed win Ohio by just 11.95%. If Trump had won Tennessee by the same 26.00% margin he won it by in 2016, he would have needed win Ohio by just 13.39%. These sound like large margins, but they are not that much larger than his 8.07% margin in the state in 2016. Had Trump won Ohio by, say, 14% (putting it safely ahead of Tennessee even if Trump's margin in Tennessee itself had not remained static but had--as one would expect if he were doing well nationally--expanded slightly), that would have represented a 73.5% increase in his margin in the state. By comparison, Bush expanded his margin in Missouri in 2004 by 115.57%, in West Virginia, by 103.5%, in Louisiana, by 88.9%, and in Arkansas, by 79.4%. Even in already-solidly-red Alabama, Bush increased his margin by 71.7% in 2004. (To use another comparison, Romney carried Texas, his best large state, by 15.79% in 2012 [Bush carried it by over 20% in both his elections].)
(Trump could also have made 29-EV Florida his best raw vote margin state if he had won it by a bit more than 6.4%, assuming his margin in Tennessee remained the same.)
The last time either party's biggest vote trove was a state with fewer than 14 electoral votes was 1984 (when it was Minnesota for Mondale). The last time a winning nominee's biggest vote trove was a state with fewer than 14 electoral votes was 1976 (when it was then-12-EV-Georgia for Carter)--and even then, it was a state with more electoral votes than Tennessee has now.
In terms of counties, the county giving Trump his biggest raw vote margin nationally was Montgomery County, Texas, the same as in 2016. In 2016, Montgomery County was the only county nationally that gave Trump a > 100,000-vote margin. However, Montgomery County also gave Hillary Clinton a higher vote share than it gave Obama in 2012, despite the Democratic vote share nationally dropping by 2.9% that year. It was already in 2016 a 'lowest-vote-share-since-1996' county for Trump (and was once again in 2020).
In 2020, Trump's top county vote margin remained Montgomery County, Texas; and it was joined by Utah County, Utah as the only two counties giving him a raw vote margin over 100,000 votes. Both counties were counties in which Hillary Clinton had done better than Obama in 2012 (and in which Biden did better than Hillary Clinton); Utah County had been a 'lowest-vote-share-since-1996' county for Trump in 2016, although, having given McMullin 30% in 2016, it wasn't in 2020 (however, Trump's 2020 vote share was the worst of any Republican's since 1992 apart from his own in 2016). Both were also counties that had given at least one previous nominee a > 100,000-vote margin: Montgomery, Romney in 2012; and Utah, Romney in 2012 and Bush in 2004. Since McKinley (the first Republican nominee to net over 100,000 votes out of a county), every Republican elected to two terms as president has netted over 100,000 votes out of a county that no Republican had before, at least in his second run. Nixon, for example, was the first Republican to net over 100,000 votes out of Orange, CA (as well as--in 1972--out of Dallas and Harris Counties, TX, San Diego County, CA, Maricopa County, AZ, and Broward and Pinellas Counties, FL, establishing the GOP as the party of the Sun Belt). Reagan became the first Republican to net over 100,000 votes out of Salt Lake County already in 1980, and added Tarrant and San Bernardino in 1984.
In 2000, George W. Bush netted over 100,000 votes out of only three counties, although one of them, Tarrant, TX, was one that his father had failed to net over 100,000 votes out of in 1988 (a much more Republican year). In 2004, however, Bush became the first Republican to net over 100,000 votes out of Utah County, UT and Collin County, TX.
The Republican Party, long typified as the party of the countryside, has always had a particularly iconic large county associated with it. In its first several decades, it was arguably Philadelphia County, which gave it its largest raw vote margin of any county seven elections in a row (from 1892 through 1916), still more than any county other than Orange, CA (which did so for eight elections in a row, from 1976 through 2004). Perhaps this had to do with Philadelphia's being a 'stronghold for abolitionist activities', dating back to the '17th century Quaker abolitionist movement'. Its place was taken by Nassau County (the county that gave the country Al D'Amato) in the Dewey and Eisenhower years--it was Dewey's largest county raw vote margin both times, and Eisenhower's largest outside the country's two largest counties both times, with the 'booming and prosperous suburbs of the Northeast [becoming] the epicenter of "modern" Eisenhower-brand Republicanism'. With Nixon and continuing with Reagan, it became Orange County, as Nixon became the 'candidate of the Sun Belt, of San Clemente and Key Biscayne'.
With George W. Bush and the growing influence of the religious right in the Republican Party, the party became more rural and less suburban, but, as Lawrence C. Levy pointed out in October 2000,
[S]outhern suburbanites are a different species; congressional districts outside Orlando, Charleston, S.C., Atlanta and many other cities below the Mason-Dixon line (northernized Miami is an exception) are more rural in voting pattern than northern counterparts. Religious conservatives, such as the Christian Coalition, are often especially dominant, and not just in primaries.
This turned out not to be so much the case of his case study, Orange County, FL (which was one of only two Dole-Gore counties nationally the following month), but Bush netted over 100,000 votes out of a county his father hadn't been able to in 1988, a much more Republican year: Tarrant County, Texas. (At the same time, he failed to net 100,000 votes out of the substantially larger Dallas County, which every Republican nominee in the 1980s had done. An uncited statement in Wikipedia says that Tarrant County has more Protestants than Catholics, whilst in Dallas County the reverse is true; the two counties' behaviour in the Bush elections would, in that case, align with Brian Williams' observation in 2004 that 'white Evangelical Protestants' were 'one of the key components of President Bush's base.') By 2017, Tarrant County had become noticed as an 'anomaly': 'Tarrant steadfastly emerged [in 2016] as America’s most conservative large urban county.' Tarrant never became Bush's best raw vote margin county; that remained the substantially larger Orange, CA, even as Gore became the first Democrat in 36 years to get over 40% of the vote there in 2000, and even as Bush finished his presidency as the first Republican president (including Ford) since William Howard Taft never to get over 60% of the county's vote. (Indeed, in his first go-round, in 2000, Bush netted a smaller number of raw votes out of Orange than Ford had in 1976.) After the 2004 election--amid observations that Kerry had alarmingly lost ground in Orange County--'Ben P' was already noting that this 'traditional bastion of New Right conservatism' had '"moderated" somewhat in recent years'.
No new large county came to the fore as the spiritual big-county heart of the GOP during Trump's term, even as Orange and Tarrant (where Trump did over five points worse than Romney in 2016) ebbed away. One county came forth as an obvious possibility: in 2016, Trump's second-largest county margin came from Ocean County, NJ, where his margin was not much short of 100,000. It was easily Trump's largest county margin in a county where he had improved on Romney (ahead of Lee County, FL). And, while Ocean County had long been traditionally Republican, Trump's substantial improvement on previous Republicans there (before 2016, it had never given a Republican so much as any of his ten biggest county margins) appears to have shown 'that Trump engaged with the blue-collar sections of the Shore in a way that neither Hillary Clinton nor 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney was able to'.
If Trump were winning re-election, one might have expected him to have been able to net 100,000 votes out of Ocean County (out of which he netted over 90,000 in 2016), thereby becoming the first Republican ever to do so. One might even have expected his raw-vote margin out of the county to overtake Montgomery, TX. He did not, and it did not. He came close, netting 98,274 votes out of it, but this is less impressive when one considers the vastly heightened turnout in 2020. Trump's vote share actually fell slightly in Ocean County in 2020. If he had simply managed to stay at his 2016 level--and assuming Biden was still able to improve on Hillary Clinton--then Trump would have won the county by just over 100,000 votes (by about 102,139, to be more precise), even though even this would have been a surprisingly desultory outcome for a hypothetically triumphantly re-elected Trump.
Suffolk County, NY would have been another candidate to become the headline 'big red county' in the Trump years. Suffolk was one of only three 'large-sized county econom[ies]' to vote for Trump in 2016 (along with Tarrant and Maricopa), and it was the only one in which he had improved over Romney (not only that, but it was a turnover county, and had voted for Gore and Kerry). This county, unlike Ocean County, had often given Republicans > 100,000-vote margins in the past, but it had never given a Republican nominee his biggest margin in the country. (And there had been a 32-year hiatus, as of 2020, when Suffolk County had not given any Republican a > 100,000-vote margin.) Given that Suffolk County is much larger than Ocean, NJ or Montgomery, TX, Trump would have needed win it by just a bit over 15.42% in 2020 in order to net more votes out of it than out of Montgomery County, TX--a not unreasonable expansion of his 2016 6.84% margin to expect, if he were winning re-election. Instead, he barely held onto the county (presumably his only 'large-sized county economy' in 2020), winning it by 0.03% or 232 raw votes.
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