The Democrats’ problems run deep, nearly everywhere. This is where voters shifted toward President Trump in each of the last three elections.
And this is where voters shifted toward Democrats.
How Donald Trump Has Remade America’s Political Landscape
Donald J. Trump’s victory in 2024 was not an outlier.
It was the culmination of continuous gains by Republicans in much of the country each time he has run for president, a sea of red that amounts to a flashing warning sign for a Democratic Party out of power and hoping for a comeback.
The steady march to the right at the county level reveals not just the extent of the nation’s transformation in the Trump era but also the degree to which the United States now resembles two countries charging in opposite directions.
Republicans are overwhelmingly making gains in working-class counties.
Democrats are improving almost exclusively in wealthier areas. Democrats are gaining ground in a small sliver of the best-educated enclaves.
It is the same story by education: Republicans are running up the score in counties where fewer people have attended college.
Triple-trending counties that shifted furthest to the left from 2012 to 2024
| County | 2012 result | 2024 result | Shift size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Henry, Ga. | R+3 | D+30 | D+33 |
| Rockdale, Ga. | D+17 | D+48 | D+31 |
| Forsyth, Ga. | R+63 | R+33 | D+30 |
| Hamilton, Ind. | R+34 | R+6 | D+28 |
| Fayette, Ga. | R+31 | R+3 | D+28 |
| Douglas, Ga. | D+4 | D+31 | D+28 |
| Cobb, Ga. | R+12 | D+15 | D+27 |
| Los Alamos, N.M. | D+4 | D+30 | D+27 |
| Johnson, Kan. | R+17 | D+8 | D+26 |
| Broomfield, Colo. | D+6 | D+29 | D+23 |
Just nine counties voted more Democratic in each of the presidential elections since 2012 and shifted by a total of more than 25 percentage points.
Six of those nine counties surround Atlanta.
The other three are upscale suburbs of Indianapolis and Kansas City, and the postage-stamp-size county in New Mexico that houses the Los Alamos National Laboratory, an outpost of highly educated and highly paid workers.
On the other hand, 535 counties shifted toward the Republicans in all three presidential elections and by a total of at least 25 percentage points. They were spread across 36 states, from diverse Democratic strongholds like the Bronx in New York City, where the Black and Latino population tops 80 percent, to overwhelmingly white and rural counties.
Triple-trending counties that shifted furthest to the right from 2012 to 2024
| County | 2012 result | 2024 result | Shift size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starr, Texas | D+73 | R+16 | R+89 |
| Maverick, Texas | D+58 | R+18 | R+77 |
| Zapata, Texas | D+43 | R+22 | R+66 |
| Elliott, Ky. | D+3 | R+62 | R+64 |
| Duval, Texas | D+54 | R+10 | R+64 |
| Webb, Texas | D+54 | R+2 | R+56 |
| Pike, Ohio | R+0 | R+54 | R+54 |
| Reeves, Texas | D+16 | R+37 | R+53 |
| Zavala, Texas | D+68 | D+14 | R+53 |
| Howard, Iowa | D+21 | R+32 | R+53 |
Some Democrats have taken comfort from how narrowly Mr. Trump won the popular vote in 2024, or from how closely the battleground states were contested, or from the expectation that the voters who will turn out in the 2026 midterms — who tend to be wealthier and more educated — will lean Democratic.
But many others worry about the future of a party that is hemorrhaging vital support from what were once among its most rock-solid constituencies.
“The majority of Americans now believe that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elites,” lamented Ken Martin, who took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee this year.
Reversing that view, he said in an interview, was one of his top priorities.
Texas and New York tell the tale.
The story of the country’s political trajectory can be told through a closer look at two of America’s biggest states, one red and one blue: Texas and New York.
In Texas, Mr. Trump made successive gains in 124 of its 254 counties, from rural, nearly all-white places to diverse counties along the southern border where he achieved many of his greatest increases in vote share in the entire country.
Where voters consecutively shifted in one direction in the last three elections
Of Texas’ 126 counties that shifted consecutively in one direction over the last three elections, only two shifted to the left.
The biggest swing in the nation since 2012, moving 89 percentage points in Mr. Trump’s favor, occurred in Starr County, which includes Rio Grande City and borders Mexico. It is also the nation’s most predominantly Latino county, with a 96 percent Hispanic voting-age population.
All told, Mr. Trump steadily improved his vote share over the three campaigns by more than 50 percentage points in seven heavily Hispanic counties in South Texas.
The parts of the state where Democrats most improved in the Trump era are concentrated in wealthy, well-educated suburbs. Four of the five counties where Democrats gained the most ground in 2024 compared with 2012 were outside Dallas, including the only Texas county that steadily voted more Democratic over that time, Ellis County.
“This may sound crazy to you: Maybe this had to happen for the Democratic Party to wake up and stop taking people for granted based on the color of their skin, or their country of national origin, or where they live in the state,” said Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman who has run unsuccessfully for president and for the Senate. “If we don’t do that, we will continue to lose.”
Where voters consecutively shifted in one direction in the last three elections in New York
The results were echoed in New York, where 43 of the state’s 62 counties voted more Republican by at least 10 percentage points in 2024 compared with in 2012. The overall margin of victory for Democrats statewide was slashed in half.
The lone New York county to trend continuously toward the Democrats was Tompkins County, home to Ithaca, an overwhelmingly progressive university town where nearly 60 percent of residents have a college degree.
Yet counties that have shifted three times toward Mr. Trump include not only far-upstate counties, like St. Lawrence and Lewis, with vanishingly small nonwhite populations, but also some of the nation’s most diverse areas, like the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn.
“We could be entering a world where the greatest predictor of voting behavior is no longer race,” said Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from the Bronx. “Donald Trump’s greatest achievement — his greatest electoral achievement — lies not in breaking the blue wall in the industrial Midwest, but in beginning to break the blue walls in states like New York, and in counties like the Bronx.”