Economic data shows a storm brewing for some must-win Trump counties, stronger footing in others
In 2016, 206 counties that had voted twice for Obama swung in favor of Donald Trump. Trump’s average margin of victory across all such counties was 11.25 percent, dipping lower in purple and even red-leaning states (across pivot counties in Georgia and Florida, for example, Trump won by an average of just 5 percent). Considering that dozens of these counties swung for Obama by 20 points or more in 2008 and 2012, they are very much in play for the upcoming November 2020 election. In a particular subset, economic data may indicate some positive signs for Biden that are not captured by just looking at public opinion.
Using a helpful Ballotpedia summary, we can see that many of the pivot counties are, unsurprisingly, in the Midwest — between Iowa (31 pivot counties), Wisconsin (23), Minnesota (19), Michigan (12), Illinois (11), and Ohio (9), more than half (51 percent) of the nation’s Obama-Obama-Trump counties are in the region. Still, other areas are notable as well: Florida had four pivot counties in 2016, Georgia had five, North Carolina had six, and New York State had 18. Combined, New York’s pivot counties account for 19 percent of the Empire State’s population and 29 percent of its counties.
A map from Ballotpedia shows their full geographic distribution:
It is worth focusing in particular on the pivot counties in purple states — after all, these are states in which a few local-level results can tip the allocation of electors. Taken in aggregate, even just a few of the states above could decide the 2020 race for Trump or Biden, so clawing back a few jurisdictions in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania can meaningfully move the contest towards a Biden victory. But pivot counties are not the only jurisdictions that matter — counties that Trump won by a small margin, even those that had not previously voted twice for Obama, are also important. (Proof of this is in the gains Democrats made in purple-leaning red areas such as suburban Virginia and the area around Chicago in the 2018 midterm elections.)
Indeed, many of these districts are in famously purple states like Virginia and North Carolina. There are a few in New England as well, where Democrats held on in 2016 but did give up a Maine electoral college vote for the first time since 1988. There are many such small-margin jurisdictions in the same states that also have large counts of pivot counties — the Midwestern bunch (Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin), Pennsylvania, New York, and Florida are a few of the standouts. In these states, there were between two and seven counties that Trump won by no more than 5.45 percent; with Joe Biden’s RealClearPolitics polling average lead at +5.3 percent these are not low-hanging but still attainable fruit. They are especially attainable because data indicates signs of growing economic struggles that might be exacerbated by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
In a forthcoming piece, I write at length about prediction models that rely on leading economic indicators (LEIs) to predict outcomes in presidential elections, so I will avoid droning on here. A few things to note: Among the most well-known of these are the ‘time for a change’ model from Emory’s Alan Abramowitz and a model crafted by fellow political scientists Christopher Wlezien and Robert Erikson. The ‘long story short’ here is that these economic models hold significant predictive power by looking at unemployment rates, people’s earnings, manufacturing activity, and retail sales— basically, aggregate measures that shed light into the individual economic conditions of Americans. Especially for someone like Donald Trump, whose favorability polling has been relatively low but remarkably consistent throughout his presidency, looking at data with a bit more variability can be illuminating.
Towards the end of April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released economic data on the country’s metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), including year-over-year changes in unemployment rate, average weekly earnings, and changes in raw employment numbers. Looking quickly at the BLS data, we see a picture that Trump and his reelection team is almost certainly already looking at: Across the areas most in-play for the 2020 election — that is, areas with pivot counties and low-margin counties — we see a varied spectrum of economic conditions. Wisconsin, Minnesota, and most of New England are seeing relatively constant joblessness between March 2019 and March 2020, with unemployment growing by no more than 0.3 percentage points and even shrinking in some areas. (Wages largely follow a similar trend.) Michigan, meanwhile, paints an even rosier picture for the POTUS — here, every MSA except for the Detroit-Dearborn-Warren area saw unemployment decrease by 0.4 percentage points or more.
But lest it seem like economic conditions are pointing to a walk in the park for a Trump reelection, the situation is almost completely reversed in Florida and Pennsylvania. Across Florida, unemployment grew by 1.1 percentage point YoY in March 2020, climbing as high as +1.7 pp in areas like Homosassa Springs and Sebring. In fact, none of the pivot counties in Florida — a state Trump won by an average of just 3.85 percent in 2016 — are even near areas with less than a one percentage point increase in unemployment. Pennsylvania presents an even larger question mark for Trump’s reelection: In many parts of the state, unemployment grew by two points or more between March 2019 and March 2020. Erie County, which swung for Trump by just 1.56 percent in 2016, saw a 2.2 percentage point increase in unemployment — don’t be surprised to see a Trump rally there when the pandemic (hopefully) subsides.
To be sure, economic conditions capture only so much of what comes into play on election day or whenever the mail-in ballot is being filled out. Voters are bringing a slough of considerations into their decisions, which includes factors less directly related to their financial situation (e.g., social issues, personal assessments of the President’s character, etc.). But with an incumbent who has so neatly polarized the country and adopted such a constantly defined approach as chief executive, the 2020 race may come down to pocketbook issues in a small set of swing districts.
