Pivot counties are the 206 counties nationwide Ballotpedia identified as having voted for Barack Obama (D) in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections and Donald Trump (R) in 2016. Media and political observers sometimes refer to these counties as swing counties.
Trump won 179 pivot counties in all three of his presidential runs and won 175 of them by a larger margin in 2024 than in 2020. Harris won by a smaller margin than Biden in seven of the nine pivot counties they each won. Overall, pivot counties favored Trump by an additional 4.2 percentage points on average over nonpivot counties in 2024.
Highlights
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Trump won 195 pivot counties in 2024 by an average margin of 18.5 percentage points.
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Kamala Harris (D) won 11 pivot counties by an average margin of 3.8 percentage points.
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Pivot counties favored Trump by 11 percentage points on average—nonpivot counties favored Trump by an average of 2.5 percentage points.
Overview
See also: Presidential election, 2024
Trump won 195 pivot counties across 31 states in 2024 with a larger average margin of victory than any previous pivot county winner since 2008, including his first two candidacies. Harris won 11 pivot counties across eight states with a larger average margin of victory than Biden in 2020, and smaller than all of Obama’s and Trump’s.
Margin of Victory Analysis
Of the 179 pivot counties Trump won in 2020 and 2024, his margin of victory increased in 175 and decreased in four. In the nine pivot counties Biden won in 2020 and Harris won in 2024, Harris had a smaller margin of victory than Biden in seven of them. Of the 11 total pivot counties Harris won in 2024, she had a smaller margin of victory in eight of them than Obama in 2012.
A 16-year Pivot County Overview
This table provides an overview of the 2024 presidential election results in the 206 pivot counties. The first section shows an overview of those counties following the 2024 presidential election—including the number of pivot counties that Donald Trump (R) and Kamala Harris (D) won as well as both candidates’ respective average and median margins of victory in each county. It also shows an overview of those counties following the 2020 presidential election. The second section shows the average and median margins of victory in these 206 counties from 2008 to 2016.
The table below highlights the counties that the 2024 candidates won by a smaller margin than the 2020 candidate of the same party.
Map of Pivot Counties
As of Nov. 12, 2024, there were:
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179 pivot counties across 30 states that voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024
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Two pivot counties that voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and Harris in 2024
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16 pivot counties across 12 states that voted for Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Trump in 2024
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Nine Pivot Counties across eight states that voted for Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Harris in 2024
Comparison to Nonpivot Counties
On average, Trump performed 4.2 percentage points better in pivot counties than nonpivot counties in 2024. As of 3 p.m. EST on Nov. 8, Trump had won 55.5% of the vote in pivot counties to Harris’ 44.5%, for a margin of 11 percentage points. In nonpivot counties, Trump won 51.3% of the vote to Harris’ 48.7%, or 2.6 percentage points. The overall popular vote margin was three percentage points.
Average Margins of Victory
Trump received 6.1% of his votes from pivot counties, and Harris received 5.2% of her votes from pivot counties. Trump and Harris both earned more votes from Suffolk County, New York than any other pivot county, each receiving 9% of their total pivot county votes there.
List of Pivot Counties
This table lists all 206 pivot counties as well as the winner of those counties following the 2024 election. Additional information includes the margins of victory from 2008 to 2020.
Background
Ballotpedia identified 206 counties that voted for Trump in 2016 after voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012. The counties span 34 states and cast 7.5 million votes in 2016, or 5.5 percent of all votes that year. In 2024, they cast 8 million votes, representing 5.6% of the total popular vote.
Iowa has the most pivot counties, with 31. Maine has the highest percentage of pivot counties, with 50 percent of the state’s total counties being pivot counties. Click here to read the 2016 analysis.
In 2020, Trump retained 181 pivot counties. Trump’s margin of victory decreased in 68 and increased in 113. The other 25 pivot counties boomeranged back to Biden. Click here to read the 2020 analysis.
This story was produced by Ballotpedia and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
