less one day

I realised I haven't made a list of Trump's breakthrough counties.  In his December 2016 article 'Pssst...Trump: You Won By Running to Clinton's Left' , Jud Lounsbury wrote that 'Trump’s “historic victory” came by winning Dem strongholds within what was supposed to be Clinton’s firewall in Rust Belt state[s].' He then detailed a number of counties that had voted Democratic in every election since at least 1992. The least-longstandingly-blue counties he mentioned were Northampton and Luzerne, PA:  Pennsylvania’s Erie has been Democratic since 1988. Luzerne and Northampton counties have voted Democrat[ic] since 1992. All of these counties moved from blue to red in 2016, costing the Clinton camp approximately the same number of votes as the 66,000 Trump margin of victory statewide. I would distinguish between counties that have voted Democratic from 1992 on, and those that have voted Democratic from 1988, or any point before that, on. As David Jarman wrote ...

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was on the ballot in all the slave states north of the Missouri Compromise Line (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri). These were his vote shares in those states: Delaware: 23.72% Missouri: 10.28% Maryland: 2.48% Virginia: 1.13% Kentucky: 0.93% (In 1856, John Frémont had been on the ballot in the two cis-Potomac slave states, and got 2.12% in Delaware and 0.33% in Maryland.) Lincoln carried only two counties in the slave states : Gasconade and St Louis Counties, Missouri ( 'both dominated by Germans' ). We have some information about the nominees' vote shares at the county level for Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. Delaware According to Wikipedia, these were Lincoln's vote shares in Delaware's three counties: New Castle (28.12%) Kent (26.75%) Sussex (14.27%) Breckinridge won every county by double digits. I am somewhat surprised at Lincoln's strength in Kent and Sussex Counties.  Maryland Megan McNish has created a map...

These are lists of the major county margins (margins amounting to at least 0.1% of the national popular vote) won by each major nominee in the close elections of the 20th and 21st centuries. This, perhaps, is a more context-sensitive metric of depth of candidate support in the country's large counties than looking at how many counties each candidate carried by a certain fixed number ( such as 100,000 votes ). For 1948, 1960, 1968, 1976, 2000, 2004, and 2012, I additionally listed the dodrant-major county margins for both nominees ( i.e. , counties carried by 0.075% of the national popular vote, or by 3/4 of what would constitute a major margin). By 2016 and 2020, there are so many major Democratic county margins that I listed only the fully major Democratic county margins, but the dodrant-major Republican county margins (otherwise, as will be seen, there would be no counties to list for the Republican at all). In instances where I listed both major and dodrant-major county margins...