Since November, we’ve seen a lot of breakdowns in Presidential results by county and by Congressional district. These are useful tools but also useful is to see a breakdown by Census Bureau designated Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).
So we have broken that down here. MSA’s give us a greater picture as to how a region votes and debunks the general “urban v rural” narrative that seems to be lazily circulating in the media.
Florida has many exurban areas and medium-sized urban ones, and it’s instructive to see how well Donald Trump did in some of these areas, as well as outlying areas of urban communities where Joe Biden won.
The reality is this – if Biden swept urban and subruban areas and Trump only won rural ones and small towns, Biden would have won Florida. He didn’t win Florida, and seeing that Trump won 17 of 21 Census Bureau-designated metro areas in the state underlines the basic problem Democrats have winning voters outside southeast Florida, the Orlando area and college towns.
The below breakdown is a two-party vote one, meaning we excluded minor parties. It’s sorted by overall population of each MSA.
Total populations are as of the 2017 Census Bureau estimate.
- Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach
Total population 6,158,824 (US rank #7)
Trump 1,200,953 (41.9%) Biden 1,670,188 (58.1%)
2. Tampa/St Petersburg/Clearwater
Total population: 3,091,399 (US rank #18)
Trump 853,840 (51.3%) Biden 810,409 (48.7%)
3. Orlando/Kissimmee/Sanford
Total population: 2,509,831 (US rank #23)
Trump 569,978 (44.6%) Biden 708,344 (55.4%)
4. Jacksonville
Total population: 1,504,980 (US rank #40)
Trump 483,915 (56.5%) Biden 372,054 (43.5%)
5. Northport/Sarasota/Bradenton
Total population: 804, 690 (US rank #72)
Trump 273,357 (56.6%) Biden 210,276 (43.4%)
6. Cape Coral/Fort Myers
Total population: 737,224 (US rank #77)
Trump 128,950 (62.4%) Biden 77,621 (37.6%)
7. Lakeland/Winter Haven
Total population: 686,483 (US rank #82)
Trump: 194,586 (57.2%) Biden 145,049 (42.8%)
8. Deltona/Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach
Total population: 649,202 (US rank #87)
Trump 173,821 (57.1%) Biden 130,575 (42.9%)
9. Palm Bay/Melbourne/Titusville
Total population: 589,162 (US rank #94)
Trump 207,883 (58.3%) Biden 148,549 (41.7%)
10. Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent
Total population: 487,784 (US rank #109)
Trump 174,059 (63.9%) Biden 98,541 (36.1%)
11. Port St Lucie
Total population: 474,429 (US rank #111)
Trump 147,999 (54.9%) Biden 121,030 (45.1%)
12. Tallahassee
Total population: 382,627 (US rank #139)
Trump 82,271 (38.9%) Biden 128,918 (61.1%)
13. Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island
Total population: 372,880 (US rank #144)
Trump 128,950 (62.4%) Biden 77,621 (37.6%)
14. Ocala
Total population: 354,353 (US rank #148)
Trump 127,826 (63.1%) Biden 74,858 (36.9%)
15. Gainesville
Total population: 287,667 (US tank #168)
Trump 58,867 (39.1%) Biden 91,404 (60.9%)
16. Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin
Total population: 271,346 (US tank #177)
Trump 112,743 (71.7%) Biden 44,586 (28.3%)
17. Panama City
Total population: 199,723 (US rank #221)
Trump 66,210 (70.6%) Biden 27,599 (29.4%)
18. Punta Gorda
Total population 182,033 (US rank #232)
Trump 81,743 (63.7%) Biden 46,536 (36.3%)
19. Sebastian-Vero Beach
Total population: 154,383 (US rank #265)
Trump 58,872 (60.9%) Biden 37,844 (39.1%)
20. Homosassa Springs
Total population: 145,647 (US rank #286)
Trump 65,352 (70.7%) Biden 27,092 (29.3%)
21. Sebring
Total population: 102,883 (US rank #348)
Trump 34,873 (67.3%) Biden 16,938 (32.7%)
The Florida Squeeze 
We know how to do it in Tallahassee!!!
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Matt Taibbi in his book Hate Inc. says – What’s the Matter With Kansas? Was a prescient portrait of a Democrat Party that was transforming into what Thomas Frank would later term a “party of the professional class” — urban, obsessed with its own smartness, worshipful of meritocracy and credentialing, and exquisitely vulnerable to accusations of elitism.
Thomas Piketty, in his book Capital and Ideology, says that the old “social democratic” parties in Europe, and the Democratic Party the US, which was not quite social democratic, have become parties of the Brahmin Left. An elitist political grouping supporting identarian politics. Others have noted a similar process of what once were “left” parties dropping class and economic interests for cultural and social interests and developing a moral tone in the process.
Taibbi notes that a University of California professor named Joan Williams says the following:
Williams wrote a piece for the Harvard Business Review called What Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class that among other things took Democrats and their proxies in media to task for being clueless when it came to addressing the legitimate concerns of a sector of society that was losing job security and the dignity that came with it. She says the “intelligentsia of the professional, managerial elite” seems remarkably blind to the fact that working class Americans are paying attention to how our political and financial pie is being divvied up. They know, she says, that Opportunity has been incredibly more concentrated in a small dense metropolitan area”, and they are angry about it.
He says further, The worship of urban experts is so out of control that asking rich city folks what’s good for the not-rich is normal practice.
And then, Politicians and journalists alike have absolved themselves of any responsibility for what’s gone wrong, settling instead for endless finger pointing at people who are irredeemably stupid and racist – just have bad souls, as Frank puts it. This convenient catchall explanation makes the op-ed page the place where upscale readers go to be reassured they never have to change or examine past policy mistakes, even if it means continuing to lose elections.
For those surprised or unnerved by recent events I would suggest you would be less so had you read Hate Inc. as well as Winner Take All Politics by Anand Giridharadas, Dream Hoarders by Richard V. Reeves, The Tyranny of Merit by Michael L. Sandel, Listen Liberal and The People No by Thomas Frank.
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