Distribution of county swings relative to the national swing, by cycle pair. Bars are 2-point bins; the shaded band marks counties within ±5 points of the national swing. Press play, or pick a cycle below.
1972 → 1976
How to read it: the x-axis is each county's swing in two-party margin minus the vote-weighted national swing for that pair, in percentage points; positive values mean the county moved more Democratic than the country did. The y-axis is the share of matched counties in each 2-point bin, on a fixed scale across all panels. Tails beyond ±50 are clipped into the end bins. Hover any bar for counts. Alaska excluded throughout.
Swing dispersion and county flips, 1976–2024
Each point is a cycle pair, plotted at the later year. Hover for details.
Left axis (teal): unweighted standard deviation of county two-party-margin swings, percentage points. Right axis (gray, dashed): counties whose two-party winner changed between the two cycles.
The pivot counties pivoted once
Mean two-party margin of the 208 Obama–Obama–Trump counties, 2008–2024 (unweighted). Hover the dots.
Margin is Democratic minus Republican share of the two-party vote, in percentage points. Pivot counties defined on two-party margins; Ballotpedia's raw-plurality count is 206.
Where the votes live: landslide counties vs. competitive counties
Share of all votes cast in counties decided by 20+ points, and in counties decided by less than 5 points, 1972–2024.
Two-party margin thresholds. The dashed verticals mark the twin near-tie elections: 1976 (Carter +1.8 two-party) and 2024 (Trump +1.5). Hover for values.
Before and after: the county swing, mapped
1972 → 1976
Swing SD 26.0 pts · 20.9% of counties within 5 pts of the national swing
2020 → 2024
Swing SD 3.3 pts · 86.8% within 5 pts
swing toward Republicans no swing swing toward Democrats no matched data
Change in two-party margin (Democratic minus Republican), percentage points; the color scale is clamped at twenty-five points either way for display. Counties joined on as-reported FIPS; unmatched counties in gray. Alaska excluded (it reports election districts, not counties). Hover any county.