Deep in the Heart of Trumpland
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.
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…
