I just ran the numbers to see the difference between 2016 and 2020.
They are...curious, to say the least.
There were 2,008 more votes cast for President in 2020 than in 2016.
There were 690 fewer votes cast for 3rd party candidates in 2020, meaning most of those voters went to either Trump or Biden, because the total Trump or Biden /Clinton voters increased by 2,698 votes in 2020.
Here's how the actual votes broke down:
2016: Trump: 7,239 (48.6% of all votes including 3rd party) Clinton: 6,774 (45.49% of all votes including 3rd party)
2020: Trump: 7,916 (46.8% of all votes including 3rd party) Biden: 8,795 (52.0% of all votes including 3rd party)
There's a lot of ways we could break this down, and the fairest is to admit that the 3rd party voters didn't like Trump back then, so ALL 690 of them went to Biden in 2020, AND Biden won 70% of the 2,008 new voters, too.
Seems really far fetched, though.
Let's try another way:
All the third party voters from 2016 who switched to a main party candidate went to Trump (+690), which is about right.
But 100% of new voters (2,000 of them) went to Biden...
Another way to look at it: of the 2,700 voters this cycle that did not cast a ballot for Trump or Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden won them 74% to 26%.
No matter how anyone slices this, there's no way either of these scenarios happened in a county that voted straight ticket 55-45 for Trump.
I just ran the numbers to see the difference between 2016 and 2020.
They are...curious, to say the least.
There were 2,008 more votes cast for President in 2020 than in 2016.
There were 690 fewer votes cast for 3rd party candidates in 2020, meaning most of those voters went to either Trump or Biden, because the total Trump or Biden /Clinton voters increased by 2,698 votes in 2020.
Here's how the actual votes broke down:
2016: Trump: 7,239 (48.6% of all votes including 3rd party) Clinton: 6,774 (45.49% of all votes including 3rd party)
2020: Trump: 7,916 (46.8% of all votes including 3rd party) Biden: 8,795 (52.0% of all votes including 3rd party)
There's a lot of ways we could break this down, and the fairest is to admit that the 3rd party voters didn't like Trump back then, so ALL 690 of them went to Biden in 2020, AND Biden won 70% of the 2,008 new voters, too.
Seems really far fetched, though.
Let's try another way:
All the third party voters from 2016 who switched to a main party candidate went to Trump (+690), which is about right.
But 100% of new voters (2,000 of them) went to Biden...
Either way you slice this, there's no way either of these scenarios happened in a county that voted straight ticket 55-45 for Trump.