Deep in the Heart of Trumpland

The seven counties in Texas of the ten that gave that gave Donald Trump the highest percentages of his vote in the 2020 election. Map by the author.

Welcome to the Heart of Trumpland! The map shows seven of the ten counties in the US that gave Donald Trump the highest percentages of his vote in the 2020 election. Support for Trump ranged from 97% to 92% in these seven countes. From north to south these counties are Roberts, Wheeler, Armstrong, Motley, King, Borden, and Glasscock.

These are huge ‘empty’ counties in or near the Texas Panhandle. All the counties are about the same size territory, around 920 square miles, each almost the size of Rhode Island. But Little Rhodie has more than a million people, not 272 people like King County.

We’ll look first at the combined demographic characteristics of these seven counties and then get into more detail about their geographic setting. We realize that these seven reflect the larger red region of Texas that supported Trump, shown on the map, below.

Texas counties by percentage of vote for Donald Trump. Map from thetexan.news

These huge counties have tiny populations — an average of 1,620 people, although there is a lot of variation ranging from the 272 in King to a little more than 5,000 people in Wheeler. It’s an area of out-migration, so, as we would expect, it’s a region of elderly population because areas with out-migration tend to lose their youngest people, leaving the older folks behind. Almost 22% of the population is of age 65 or older compared to 16.5% of the American population as a whole.

By far, this is an area of predominantly white population, 92% to 96% white — pretty much matching the Trump vote! These are some of the whitest counties in the United States. Only about 2% of the population is Black or African American. Imagine King County with one Black person (actually .9 of a person — probably a statistical artifact), but if there is one Black person in King County, we have all seen him or her. Here’s a storyline for a reporter or blogger: What is it like to be the only minority person, or one of only a couple of minority families in an entire county, as is the case in several of these counties?

This is Texas, so we do have a Hispanic population averaging about 22% of the combined populations of the seven counties, but only Glasscock County has a large number of…