^ Visit the link for interactive visualizations with text descriptions. Screenshots below:
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| US counties by GDP and winning party in 2020 presidential election | US counties by GDP and winning party in 2020 presidential election - bubble version | US counties by weighted GDP - each county's GDP weighted by its D/R vote share |
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| US counties by GDP per capita and winning party | Distribution of GDP per capita among blue and red counties |
(Please note that data is not available for all counties.)
Counties won by each major party
d: 512
r: 2550
Proportion of GDP accounted for by counties won by each major party
d: 0.699
r: 0.283
^ Brookings found that "Biden-voting counties equal 70% of America’s economy". They note that "2020 figures reflect unofficial results from 99% of counties. Figures for 2020 represent results from 100% of counties for which 2018 GDP data are available."
Proportion of GDP accounted for by counties won by each major party, but weighting each county's GDP by its D/R vote share
d: 0.498
r: 0.359
GDP per capita across counties won by each major party
d_median: 53.47
r_median: 41.16
d_mean: 60.66
r_mean: 61.87
d_standard_deviation: 40.89
r_standard_deviation: 554.82
^ The distributions of GDP per capita among blue and red counties are different. From these figures, we would expect both distributions to be right-skewed, with a heavier skew for red counties, which is what the histogram shows. Additionally, based on the standard deviations, we would expect a wider distribution for red counties, which is also apparent in the histogram.
Data from some counties is missing. Data available for only 3063 counties.
Via BEA - GDP by County, Metro, and Other Areas. From this page, I downloaded the dataset "CAGDP1: GDP Summary by County and MSA". Used 2019 data because 2020 data not available yet. County data was used in this analysis, and GDP is in current-dollar GDP (thousands of current dollars).
Population estimates from this page: "Datasets" > "Population, Population Change, and Estimated Components of Population Change: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2019 (CO-EST2019-alldata)"
County-level election returns via MIT Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL)
MIT Election Data and Science Lab, 2018, "County Presidential Election Returns 2000-2020", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VOQCHQ, Harvard Dataverse, V9, UNF:6:qSwUYo7FKxI6vd/3Xev2Ng== [fileUNF]