President-elect Donald Trump improved on his 2020 performance in nearly every county across the United States in this year's presidential race against Vice President Kamala Harris, but there are still a few areas where he underperformed his showing from four years earlier.
Trump is set to return to the White House in January after sweeping the battleground states on Tuesday, taking back the White House after losing to President Joe Biden four years earlier. Trump's relatively strong performance among young and Hispanic voters helped carry him to victory.
He gained ground in nearly every state this year, with the popular vote shifting several points to the right. States that are usually solidly Democratic, like Illinois and New Jersey, were in the single digits this year, offering little good news for Democrats.
Still, Harris performed well in some parts of the country, modestly improving on Biden's 2020 performance in dozens of counties. She held her own with white voters, with Trump's margin of victory among the demographic narrowing compared to four years earlier, according to CNN exit polls.
She notably improved among white voters with college degrees, so some counties with a higher concentration of these voters ended up shifting toward Democrats this year. Those gains, however, were offset with Republican victories among rural white and Hispanic voters.
Newsweek reached out to the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email.
With 74 percent of its ballots counted, Utah appeared poised to be one state where Harris could match Biden's performance. Utah is relatively suburban and well-educated, and it has been reliably Republican.
Many of the rural, mostly Republican counties have reported most of their votes, with remaining ballots largely being concentrated in Salt Lake County, which is the largest in the state and leans Democratic, and GOP-leaning Utah County.
Harris is running roughly even with Biden's vote total in Salt Lake County and slightly ahead of him in Utah County as of Friday afternoon.
It still remains in the Republican column, due in part to its high concentration of Mormon voters, but Harris is on track to essentially match Biden's performance statewide. Trump leads by 20.5 points, essentially the same as his 20.6-point edge in 2020. This comes as the national popular vote is expected to shift several points to the right when all ballots are counted.
Nate Silver, in a Substack post on Thursday, noted that Utah voted 6.9 points to the left of where his model would have expected given the national environment. His model showed Utah as Trump's largest underperformance across the country.
"Utah has gradually been getting more purple, between attracting a tech-sector workforce and Mormons not always being so keen on Trump," Silver wrote. "Is it going to be a swing state in 2028? No. But if you told me it was by 2040, I wouldn't be shocked."
Although Trump carried each swing state, there were pockets in some that shifted left—a potential silver lining for Democrats as they study the election results.
Atlanta Suburbs Shift Left as State Returns to Trump
In Georgia, suburbs of Atlanta continued shifting left, even though that trend was canceled out by the rural areas zooming to the right. Democrats have relied on strong performances in suburban and exurban areas near Atlanta to close the gap in the state, helping Biden flip it in 2020. Those counties gave Harris some of her strongest swings on Tuesday.
Harris lost Fayette County, south of Atlanta, by only about 3 percentage points. Trump carried that county by nearly 7 points in 2020. Harris won Henry County by about 30 points, though Biden won it by just over 20 four years earlier. Paulding County, a Republican stronghold, backed Trump by 24 points this year, compared to 29 points in 2020.
The state still flipped back to Republicans, with Trump winning it by about 2 percentage points.
Harris Gains Ground in western North Carolina
Counties in western North Carolina, which was struck by Hurricane Helene in September, also shifted toward Harris.
Buncombe County, home to Asheville, backed Harris by 25 points this year, a slight improvement over Biden's 21-point win in 2020. Henderson County, just south of Buncombe, backed Trump by 15 points, a smaller margin than his 19-point win in 2020.
North Carolina backed Trump by just over 3 percentage points.
Areas in Michigan, Maine and Indiana Shift to Harris
The Traverse City, Michigan, area also shifted toward Harris. She won Leelanau County by 13 points after it backed Biden by only about 5 points in 2020. Trump won Grand Traverse County by less than 2 points this year, down from a 3-point victory in 2020.
However, Harris lost ground in the Detroit area, as Hispanic and Arab voters shifted away from Democrats. In the weeks leading to Election Day, some Democrats were concerned that Arab voters would either vote for Trump or third-party candidates over the Biden administration's handling of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Michigan overall voted for Trump by about 1.4 points.
In Maine, which continued to lean toward Democrats this year, Sagadahoc County and Lincoln County, both north of Portland, also shifted slightly to Harris.
Although there were still outstanding ballots in Oregon and Washington, Silver noted that Harris was poised to overperform in each of those states, as well. His model showed that in the national environment, Harris should have won Oregon by 8.2 points and Washington by 14.8 points. She is leading those states by about 13 points and 19 points, respectively.
Silver also described New Mexico as a state that held up well for Harris. Even as she lost ground with Hispanic voters, a key demographic there, she still won it by about 6 points. Biden, however, won New Mexico by more than 10 points in 2020.
"On a night where Democrats got little good news, however, the fact that New Mexico remains solidly blue was a favorable sign: the state often doesn't follow the trends we see from other states with lots of Hispanic voters," Silver wrote.
Harris also gained ground in some Indianapolis suburbs, such as Hancock County. Trump still easily won the county by nearly a 34-point margin. But he won it by more than 37 points in 2020.
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