How Trumpy is your town?

President Donald Trump’s victory touched fault lines and upended expectations in American politics.

There were some signs of that in Maine. For instance, many areas that voted for raising the minimum wage also chose Trump. So did towns that approved legalizing marijuana. (Trump and both measures won in 49 towns, and one or the other won in 90 towns. See all of those towns here.)

Those dynamics and the geography of support for the president may guide longer-term political strategizing, after Maine split its electoral votes for the first time in recent history. Reuters reported Friday it seems resistance to the presidency that kicked off with massive international protests will continue.

In the short-term, the figures give a chance to peer over the fence at the neighbors and see which towns voted like others, at least in terms of support for Trump.

We plotted those figures in context with the whole voting population below.

Most prominently, the plot highlights what an outlier Portland is, in terms of size and uniform opposition to Trump. Fewer than one in five Portland votes went to the president, which was only bested for anti-Trump votes by voters abroad, Monhegan Island and a few tiny townships.

While counties aren’t the unit of measure for winning the election, more towns in Penobscot County voted for Trump than any other.

Click a county to highlight only those towns below. 

The plots get at part of a question explored by a Washington Post analysis of precinct data in California, which found more than a quarter of that state’s voters live in precincts where 3 of every 4 votes went to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The findings align with survey data and a general sense (check your Facebook) that higher levels of partisanship are pushing politicians and average citizens into their respective corners.

But outside of Portland, November’s results show Maine towns are not as lopsided in their opposition to the president as California precincts (and if you lined up all California precincts and all Maine towns by population, the middle of both would be about the same size, at about 650 votes).

Including blank ballots, about 39 percent of Maine voters (302,955) live in areas where Clinton received more than half of the vote. About 32 percent (247,371) live in areas where Trump received more than half of the vote.

The numbers summarize the race and an urban-rural divide apparent when the results came in and that blank ballots and third-party candidates put more than 220,000 voters in areas where neither Democrat or Republican got 50 percent or more of the vote.

A closer level of detail shows which towns voted most like each other, and what share of the population lives in such areas.

For example, at the bottom of the bar chart, you can see about 38,577 people, about 5 percent of voters, live where Trump got 18 percent of the vote (that’s just Portland).

Darren Fishell

About Darren Fishell

Darren is a Portland-based reporter for the Bangor Daily News writing about the Maine economy and business. He's interested in putting economic data in context and finding the stories behind the numbers.