President Trump Releases Aspirational County Map for 2020

Earlier this month, President Trump tweeted out a county-by-county electoral map of the 2016 Presidential Election with the phrase “Try to impeach this” written across the middle of the country.  The map showed a lot of red with pockets of blue in the urban areas, college towns, and/or areas with high minority populations; making the argument that President Trump’s impeachment and removal from office would nullify the will of a massive amount of Americans across the country. However, perhaps unbeknownst to President Trump, the map does not accurately reflect the final county-level results of the 2016 Presidential Election.  I have included maps of both the actual county-level results and the county-level results portrayed in the map tweeted out by President Trump.  It should become quite obvious that the map of the actual county-level results came out much better than the map tweeted out by President Trump. 

Not surprisingly, the fact checkers took glee in reporting that the map overstated President Trump’s performance in 2016.  CNN actually had a point in reporting that “the map the Trumps tweeted inaccurately displays multiple blue counties won by Hillary Clinton as red counties won by Trump.” However, President Trump and his daughter-in-law Lara, who sent out the map before, did not create the map themselves.  It comes from an article in The Huffington Post that has since gone offline.

While the map does not accurately reflect what does not took place in 2016, it actually serves as a nice aspirational map for President Trump to achieve in 2020. After all, picking up the handful of counties incorrectly colored in red in the map President Trump tweeted out may not only come in handy in helping President Trump win key swing states that he either failed to win in 2016 or only narrowly won but may also come as a big help in Republicans’ efforts to retake the House and maintain control of the Senate. Let’s take a look at what winning some of the counties may mean for President Trump and Republican Congressional candidates in 2020.  Before I go through the counties one-by-one, I want to provide some data as to how the counties performed in 2016 compared to the statewide performance of President Trump. All of the data on margins of victory in the counties comes from Dave Leip’s Election Atlas while all of the data about Congressional districts comes from The Daily Kos.

County	Republican Vote Deficit in 2016	Republican Statewide Vote Deficit in 2016	Key Congressional Districts	Clinton Vote Share in 2016	Trump Vote Share in 2016	Key Senate Race
Fresno, CA	-17,292	-4,269,978	16, 21	49.24	43.21	No
Orange, CA	-102,813	-4,269,978	39, 45, 48	50.94	42.35	No
Riverside, CA	-40,452	-4,269,978	36	49.73	44.35	No
Carlton, MN	-300	-44,593	N/A	46.46	44.81	Yes
Lake, MN	-145	-44,593	N/A	47.19	44.96	Yes
Gallatin, MT	-444	101,531	N/A	45.05	44.23	No
Washoe, NV	-2,621	-27,202	N/A	46.39	45.14	No
Merrimack, NH	-2,524	-2,736	1, 2	48.06	45.04	Yes
Sandoval, NM	-1,802	-65,567	N/A	44.91	41.99	Yes
Whitman, WA	-743	-520,971	N/A	45.19	41.06	No
Total Vote Deficit	-169,136

Fresno, California: President Trump lost Fresno County, based in the Central Valley, by a margin of about six percentage points and about 17,000 votes. It seems unlikely that a win in Fresno County would enable President Trump to win statewide in but a win there may help a handful of Republican Congressional candidates. California’s 21^st Congressional District contains a portion of Fresno County, where President Trump performed poorly. While President Trump did not even manage to win 40 percent of the vote in CA-21 in 2016, Republican David Valadao won re-election to the seat by double digits.  Valadao narrowly lost his seat last year but a strong performance in Fresno County by President Trump could help him make a comeback, which he has already announced.  Much of Fresno County lies in California’s 16^th Congressional District, which Republicans have targeted in the past.  President Trump performed poorly there in 2016 and lost by a margin of 2-1 in the portion of the district containing Fresno County. 

Orange, California: President Trump became the first Republican to lose the heavily populated Southern California county since the 1930s.  The Republican woes in Orange County continued into 2018; when Republicans ended up losing four seats that lied at least partially in Orange County. Winning Orange County in 2020 will do little to help President Trump’s chances of winning California’s 55 electoral votes.  However, it may help the Republican candidates in California’s 39^th, 45^th, and 48^th Congressional Districts; where most or all of the voters reside in Orange County.  Despite the fact that a small portion of the district lies in Orange County, a win in Orange County will likely have little impact on Republicans and President Trump’s ability to win in California’s 49^th Congressional District.  After all, President Trump won the portion of the district located in Orange County in 2016.  He ended up losing the district because of a poor showing in San Diego County.

Riverside, California: President Trump lost Riverside County, based in the “Inland Empire” in the southern part of the state, by a smaller margin…Once again, winning this county will likely reduce the Democratic candidate’s margin of victory in the state but it will not enable President Trump to win it.  As for House races, California’s 36^th Congressional District, located entirely in Riverside County, could come into play if President Trump has a strong showing in the county.  Republicans only lost CA-36 by nine points in 2016. That may seem like a lot but compared to Republicans’ performance in many of the other Democratic-held Congressional districts in the 2016 Presidential Election, the GOP actually did well in the 36^th district.  Republicans held the district as recently as 2012.

Carlton, Minnesota: President Trump only lost Carlton County by a margin of 300 votes four years after President Obama carried the county with more than 60 percent of the vote. President Trump lost statewide by a margin of roughly 44,000 votes.  While winning Carlton County alone may not push President Trump over the top, it will definitely help him make up for losses in other parts of the state; especially in the heavily populous and extremely liberal Twin Cities area.

Lake, Minnesota: President Trump lost Lake County by a margin of 145 votes in 2016, with spoiler candidate Evan McMuffin taking 93 votes. If most or all of McMuffin’s supporters, in addition to those who supported other right-leaning third-party candidates such as Gary Johnson or Darrell Castle end up voting Republican in 2020, Lake County could very well come into play. 

Washoe, Nevada: Winning Washoe County in 2020 may help President Trump win the state of Nevada’s six electoral votes. After all, the most recent Republican to win a statewide national election in the state, recently ousted Senator Dean Heller, won in 2012 while winning Washoe County and losing the heavily populated, Las Vegas-based Clark County.  As the second most populous county in Nevada, the Reno-based Washoe has an enormous effect on the outcome of statewide races.  While winning Washoe County may help President Trump win Nevada’s six electoral votes, it will have little impact down the ballot because of Washoe County’s location in the already Republican-held 2^nd Congressional District.  The two competitive Congressional districts that Republicans hope to pick up in 2020 both lie fully or partly in Clark County.  It seems like the path of least resistance to ensure that President Trump wins Washoe County and Nevada as a whole involves convincing the people who supported “None of these Candidates” in 2016 to support the President.  More than 28,000 Nevadans selected that unconventional option on their ballots in 2016; slightly higher than Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory, which amounted to slightly more than 27,000 votes.  In Washoe County, the number of Nevada voters supporting “None of these Candidates” equaled more than double Clinton’s margin of victory in the county. 

Merrimack, New Hampshire: President Trump only lost the state of New Hampshire by a margin of 2,736 votes.  He lost Merrimack County, home to the state capital of Concord, by a margin of 2,524 votes.  Winning Merrimack County could go a long way in helping the President capture New Hampshire’s four electoral votes.  In addition, a victory in Merrimack County may help Republicans win the Senate race in New Hampshire as well as the two Congressional races; since both of the state’s two Congressional districts contain a portion of the county.

Sandoval, New Mexico: President Trump has his work cut out for him if he wants to win the state of New Mexico’s five electoral votes but winning Sandoval County, the state’s fourth-most populous, may help him pull off an upset victory in a state that has not gone Republican since 2004. Native son Gary Johnson’s absence from the ballot in 2020 may also end up working in President Trump’s favor. 

Winning the remaining two counties listed in the table above, Gallatin, Montana, and Whitman, Washington will likely have no impact on President Trump’s ability to win those respective states.  After all, Montana will almost certainly vote Republican no matter what happens in Gallatin County and Washington will more likely than not vote Democratic regardless of what takes place in Whitman County.  Both counties reside in Congressional districts represented by Republicans.  However, making up vote deficits in both counties could help President Trump when it comes to winning the popular vote nationwide; thereby taking away a key argument from the Democrats.  However, Democrats must accept the fact that America does not select its Presidents by nationwide popular vote; it selects Presidents based on the Electoral College. The nationwide popular vote certainly makes for interesting reading but it has just as much impact on the outcome of a Presidential election as county-level results; in other words: none.

Many other counties on the incorrect map tweeted out by President Trump that should have been colored blue but were actually colored red could end up voting red for real in 2020. However, because I do not have the option to zoom in further, I do not want to take the risk of incorrectly labelling a county red; when it in fact voted blue; even on the incorrect map. Based on a quick glance, it looks like the map incorrectly categorizes a few counties in Michigan and Wisconsin that actually supported Hillary Clinton as Trump counties. If President Trump actually won those counties for real in 2020, it would definitely help him win those two states again because the Republican path to victory in those states requires winning the rest of the respective states by a large margin in order to offset the Democratic strength in the urban areas. 

While the website 270towin has an interactive map that enables users to create their own electoral maps and maps of Congressional districts for the 2020 election; it does not have such a map for counties.  Considering the fact that interactive county maps do not exist, at least to my knowledge, President Trump should seek to make the incorrect 2016 county map he tweeted out a reality in 2020. Doing so will probably help him build on the Electoral College majority that he built in 2020, build on the Senate majority, and recapture the House of Representatives.