Re: Biden-voting counties equal 70% of America's economy.

 wrote

>  Editor's Note:
> 
> This post was updated on February 26, 2021 with new data. 
> 
> 
> Biden-voting counties equal 70% of America’s economy.
> 
> 
> Even with a new president and political party soon in charge of the
> White House, the nation’s economic standoff continues. Notwithstanding 
> President-elect Joe Biden’s solid popular vote victory, last week’s 
> election failed to deliver the kind of transformative reorientation of
> the nation’s political-economic map that Democrats (and some
> Republicans) had hoped for. The data confirms that the election
> sharpened the striking geographic divide between red and blue America,
> instead of dispelling it. 
> 
> Most notably, the stark economic rift that Brookings Metro documented 
> after Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 victory has grown even wider. In
> 2016, we wrote that the 2,584 counties that Trump won generated just 36%
> of the country’s economic output, whereas the 472 counties Hillary
> Clinton carried equated to almost two-thirds of the nation’s aggregate
> economy. 
> 
> A similar analysis for last week’s election shows these trends
> continuing, albeit with a different political outcome. This time,
> Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s
> economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties
> represents just 29% of the economy. (Votes are still outstanding in 28
> mostly low-output counties, and this piece will be updated as new data
> is reported.) Table 1. Candidates’ counties won and share of GDP in 2016
> and 2020 Year      Candidate      Counties won      Total votes     
> Aggregate share of US GDP
> 
> 
> 2016      Hillary Clinton      472      65,853,625      64%
> Donald Trump      2,584      62,985,106      36%
> 2020      Joe Biden      520      81,283,098      71%
> Donald Trump      2,564      74,222,958      29%
> 
> Note: 2020 figures reflect unofficial results from 99% of counties. 
> Figures for 2020 represent results from 100% of counties for which 2018 
> GDP data are available. Some county equivalents have been consolidated 
> into counties to match the geography of BEA GDP data.
> 
> Source: Brookings analysis of data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis,
> Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, The New York Times,
> and Moody’s Analytics
> 
> Fig1
> 
> So, while the election’s winner may have changed, the nation’s economic 
> geography remains rigidly divided. Biden captured virtually all of the 
> counties with the biggest economies in the country (depicted by the 
> largest blue tiles in the nearby graphic), including flipping the few
> that Clinton did not win in 2016.
> 
> By contrast, Trump won thousands of counties in small-town and rural 
> communities with correspondingly tiny economies (depicted by the red 
> tiles). Biden’s counties tended to be far more diverse, educated, and 
> white-collar professional, with their aggregate nonwhite and college-
> educated shares of the economy running to 35% and 36%, respectively, 
> compared to 16% and 25% in counties that voted for Trump.
> 
> In short, 2020’s map continues to reflect a striking split between the 
> large, dense, metropolitan counties that voted Democratic and the mostly
> exurban, small-town, or rural counties that voted Republican.  Blue and 
> red America reflect two very different economies: one oriented to
> diverse, often college-educated workers in professional and digital
> services occupations, and the other whiter, less-educated, and more
> dependent on “traditional” industries.
> 
> With that said, it would be wrong to describe this as a completely
> static map. While the metropolitan/ nonmetropolitan dichotomy remained
> starkly persistent, 2020 election returns produced nontrivial movement,
> as Biden added modestly to the Democrats’ metropolitan base and
> significantly to its vote base. Most notably, Biden flipped six of the
> nation’s 100 highest-output counties, strengthening the link between
> these core economic hubs and the Democratic Party. More specifically,
> Biden flipped half of the 10 most economically significant counties
> Trump won in 2016, including Phoenix’s Maricopa County; Dallas-Fort
> Worth’s Tarrant County; Jacksonville, Fla.’s Duval County; Morris County
> in New Jersey; and Tampa- St. Petersburg, Fla.’s Pinellas County.
> 
> Altogether, those losses shaved about 3 percentage points’ worth of GDP 
> off the economic base of Trump counties. That reduced the share of the 
> nation’s GDP produced by Republican-voting counties to a new low in
> recent times.
> 
> Why does this matter? This economic rift that persists in dividing the 
> nation is a problem because it underscores the near-certainty of both 
> continued clashes between the political parties and continued alienation
> and misunderstandings.
> 
> To start with, the 2020’s sharpened economic divide forecasts gridlock
> in Congress and between the White House and Senate on the most important
> issues of economic policy. The problem—as we have witnessed over the
> past decade and are likely to continue seeing—is not only that Democrats
> and Republicans disagree on issues of culture, identity, and power, but
> that they represent radically different swaths of the economy. Democrats
> represent voters who overwhelmingly reside in the nation’s diverse 
> economic centers, and thus tend to prioritize housing affordability, an 
> improved social safety net, transportation infrastructure, and racial 
> justice. Jobs in blue America also disproportionately rely on national
> R&D investment, technology leadership, and services exports.
> 
> By contrast, Republicans represent an economic base situated in the 
> nation’s struggling small towns and rural areas. Prosperity there
> remains out of reach for many, and the party sees no reason to consider
> the priorities and needs of the nation’s metropolitan centers. That is
> not a scenario for economic consensus or achievement.
> 
> At the same time, the results from last week’s election likely
> underscore fundamental problems of economic alienation and estrangement.
> Specifically, Trump’s anti-establishment appeal suggests that a sizable 
> portion of the country continues to feel little connection to the
> nation’s core economic enterprises, and chose to channel that animosity
> into a candidate who promised not to build up all parts of the country,
> but rather to vilify groups who didn’t resemble his base.
> 
> If this pattern continues—with one party aiming to confront the
> challenges at top of mind for a majority of Americans, and the other
> continuing to stoke the hostility and indignation held by a significant
> minority—it will be a recipe not only for more gridlock and ineffective
> governance, but also for economic harm to nearly all people and places.
> In light of the desperate need for a broad, historic recovery from the
> economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic, a continuation of the patterns
> we’ve seen play out over the past decade would be a particularly
> unsustainable situation for Americans in communities of all sizes.
> 
> 
> https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/11/09/biden-voting-
> counties-equal-70-of-americas-economy-what-does-this-mean-for-the-
nations
> - political-economic-divide/
> 

We know who the real commies are.  The Trumplings.