The political geography of the United States during 2020 elections
Type de matériel :
12
In the 2020 United States elections, while Democratic candidate Joe Biden won a decisive victory in the Electoral College over incumbent Republican Donald Trump, Republicans fared comparably better in the congressional elections, gaining 13 seats in the House of Representatives. Why did voters move one branch of government, the presidency, into the blue column while at the same time pushing Congress in the red direction? In this essay, we answer this question by analyzing electoral trends over the past decade in American politics, looking not just at the widely reported Electoral College counts and congressional seat totals but at the underlying vote shares in both branches. We explore these vote shares by congressional districts through a series of maps and analyze how these districts shifted from 2016 to 2020 at both levels of government. Our analysis focuses on the fact that the Republican electoral gains in the 2020 House elections only partially counterbalanced the exceptionally strong Democratic performance in 2018, causing us to consider why Republican candidates fared worse than they did in 2016 and why they were not able to recapture control of Congress. We find that in 2020, it was in key suburban areas and districts with diverse populations that Donald Trump and especially congressional Republicans performed poorly, leaving control of both branches at least temporarily in Democratic hands.
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