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I've been thinking a lot about why Trump outperformed his 2016 returns in counties hit hard by covid. Well, I took a look at his performance by the racial makeup of those counties and here's what I found
He outperforms 2016 in non-white counties, and UNDER performs in mostly-white counties. That's consistent w/ covid hitting non-white counties much harder in terms of registration, long-lines, and lower VBM rates.
@Nate_Cohn had been wondering about this I believe.
HUGE thanks to @shmcminn for sharing the data from his awesome piece here: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/06/930897912/many-places-hard-hit-by-covid-19-leaned-more-toward-trump-in-2020-than-2016
This is county-level data and it's correlational so there are other potential confounds here--and btw I see a similar pattern for urban v rural population makeup in each county
A lot of people are asking what could possibly explain this? A few hypotheticals to consider:
1. COVID might keep young people & nonwhites from in person registration drives, in person campaigning. They also VBM at lower rates and may have longer lines on E-day
1. COVID might keep young people & nonwhites from in person registration drives, in person campaigning. They also VBM at lower rates and may have longer lines on E-day
2. So unlike in white areas where it looks like there may be the long hypothesized COVID-penalty, non-whites have higher but not crazy high turnout.
3. At the same time, (mostly white) Trump supporters in hard hit in COVID areas may be pissed about schools closing and lockdowns and may be more motivated to vote like crazy, and perhaps also after seeing BLM protests.
Another plausible hypothetical: https://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/status/1329173535680585732?s=20
A few people suggested something more like this, adding to the thread for posterity:
