Political lean descriptive
How a city's county voted in the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, and which way it is moving.
Definition
Political lean describes how the county a city sits in has voted in recent presidential elections. It averages the vote margin in the 2020 and 2024 elections and places it on a five-step meter from deep blue to deep red. An arrow shows which way the county moved between the two elections.
The margin is the Republican share of all presidential votes minus the Democratic share, in percentage points: R+10 means the Republican candidate won by 10 points, D+10 the Democratic candidate.
Meter bands
| Band | Average margin, 2020 and 2024 |
|---|---|
| Deep blue | D+15 or more |
| Leaning blue | D+5 to D+15 |
| Neutral | Within 5 points either way |
| Leaning red | R+5 to R+15 |
| Deep red | R+15 or more |
The trend arrow points red or blue when the margin moved 2 points or more between 2020 and 2024; a smaller move reads as steady.
County level
Votes are reported by precinct, and no precinct dataset covering every state is licensed for commercial use. Until one is, each city carries the voting pattern of its county. A city in more than one county gets a blend weighted by how many of its 2020 residents live in each.
So every city in a county shares one reading, and in a large county with very different towns the reading can differ a lot from how the city itself voted. Virginia's independent cities, and consolidated city-counties such as San Francisco, Denver and Nashville, report their own results, so their readings are exactly the city's.
Display policy: descriptive
How this indicator may be used
- It is descriptive. A red or blue lean does not make a place better or worse, so it is never ranked, never given a peer percentile and never part of any CityCites score.
- It describes how a county's voters voted as a group, not the views of any resident.
- Political affiliation is a protected characteristic in housing in some places, including Washington, DC and Seattle. Partners may not use this indicator to steer, target, include or exclude anyone in housing, lending, insurance, employment or advertising.
- Every API response marks it
display_policy: "descriptive"andgeography: "county".
Example
Political lean descriptive
County-level voting pattern: every city in a county shares its reading. Cities in more than one county are weighted by 2020 population.
Sources
- MIT Election Data and Science Lab, County Presidential Election Returns 2000-2024 (Harvard Dataverse, doi:10.7910/DVN/VOQCHQ, CC0)
- U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census P.L. 94-171 block populations
Limitations
- County, not city: see above.
- Presidential elections only. Local races are nonpartisan in most cities, and congressional races are often uncontested.
- Two elections show a direction, not a long-run trend.
- Alaska reports results by state legislative district, not by borough, so Alaska cities have no reading.