placestats

Republican share of the two-party vote, 2020 and Robbery rate

A county is not a voter. Read either way, this says one thing and no more. Counties that voted more Republican also tend to differ on the other measure, and counties that voted less Republican tend to differ the other way. It does not follow that the people who voted that way are the people with the different score. Making that leap is called the ecological fallacy: reading a pattern across places as a fact about individual people. It is the most common misuse of exactly this data. How a county votes also goes so closely with its density, age and education that much of what looks political here is really those. That is what the adjusted figures are for. The vote shares run from 2000 to 2024, and the links here are measured in 2023.

Where Republican share of the two-party vote, 2020 is higher, Robbery rate tends to be lower. The link is weak: -0.34 across 2,274 counties, on a scale from −1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). That figure compares places with the same population density, income and education, so those differences can't explain it. It holds inside states too. Measured separately within each of 36 states, the middle value of the link is -0.60.

Holds after adjusting

Every place, plotted

One dot for each place reporting both measures. Hover over or tap a dot to see its name and values. The thin line is the straight line that best fits the dots. The bold line, shown for counties, is the link after adjusting for density, income and education. A dot far from the lines is a place that does not follow the pattern.

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What each measure is

Republican share of the two-party vote, 2020

The Republican share of the votes for the two main parties in the 2020 presidential election. It is shown with 2016 and 2024 so you can see which way a county is moving, not only where it stands.

MIT Election Data and Science Lab · MIT county presidential returns

Robbery rate

Robberies in the year, per 100,000 residents, from the FBI. A robbery is taking something from a person by force or by threat, such as a mugging. It counts only crimes reported to police or found by them, so crimes nobody reports are missing. For a state, the figure is the FBI's estimate, which fills in for police agencies that did not report. For a county, it is only what the agencies reported, and it is shown only where agencies that reported for all 12 months serve at least 90% of the people who live there.

FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program (Crime Data Explorer) · FBI Crime Data Explorer: states, estimated_crimes robbery; counties, Return A master file, actual offenses

Highest and lowest

Where each measure is highest and lowest among the places reporting both (2023), with the other measure beside it. This is shown for every size of place where both are published. Metro-area values are added up from their counties. A measure that cannot be added up across counties, such as a middle value (median), has no metro figure. Counts are shown per 1,000 residents, since raw totals would only list the largest places. Cities and towns and ZIP codes are shown where the Census survey or the CDC publishes them; most other sources stop at the county. They are shown for places of 5,000 residents or more, and only where the survey’s margin of error is small enough for the figure to be usable. The CDC publishes its health estimates for cities in a version adjusted for age, so places with older or younger people can be compared fairly, but not for ZIP codes.

Counties

By republican share of the two-party vote, 2020

By robbery rate

States — Republican share of the two-party vote, 2020 is not published for states

By robbery rate

Republican share of the two-party vote, 2020Robbery rate
Highest
District of Columbia—607
Maryland—131
California—128
Illinois—110
New York—105
Lowest
Idaho—9.39
West Virginia—11.4
Wyoming—11.6
Maine—11.7
Vermont—14.6
Metro areas

By republican share of the two-party vote, 2020

Republican share of the two-party vote, 2020Robbery rate
Highest
Gillette, WY89.84.25
Pampa, TX89.74.6
Cullman, AL89.29.45
Vernal, UT88.95.3
Borger, TX88.80
Lowest
Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA19.184.2
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA19.6235
Vineyard Haven, MA219.48
Boulder, CO21.125.7
Santa Fe, NM22.751

By robbery rate

Republican share of the two-party vote, 2020Robbery rate
Highest
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA19.6235
Memphis, TN-MS-AR43.3234
Stockton-Lodi, CA42.9194
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD35178
Pueblo, CO49.1166
Lowest
Zapata, TX52.70
Yankton, SD62.10
Waterloo-Cedar Falls, IA49.60
Warren, PA70.10
Urbana, OH74.20

Counties furthest from the pattern

Compared with the straight line that best fits all 2,282 counties: the five with far more robbery rate than their republican share of the two-party vote, 2020 would suggest, and the five with far less.

Republican share of the two-party vote, 2020Robbery rate
Above the line
District of Columbia, DC5.53625
Baltimore city, MD10.9584
Alameda County, CA18.1371
San Francisco County, CA13361
Philadelphia County, PA18339
Below the line
Menominee County, WI17.60
Greene County, AL18.40
San Miguel County, CO22.50
San Juan County, WA23.90
Sioux County, ND24.30

Two series, one county

Both measures over time for a county you pick. The two charts are stacked, so they share only the years along the bottom. You can pick from the thirty largest counties reporting both. This panel covers 2010–2024, and a measure published only once shows as a single dot.

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Every version of the link

Each row measures the same link, from −1 to +1, in a different way. If the rows mostly agree, the link does not depend on one choice of method.

Before adjusting for anything-0.5192,274 counties reporting both
After adjusting for density, income and education-0.342the part of the link that is not just how urban, rich and educated a place is
Also adjusting for population size-0.322size taken out as well as density
Also comparing only within each state-0.324each county is compared only with others in its own state, so this is no longer a comparison between states
Giving bigger counties more weight-0.497the adjusted link for the average resident rather than the average county. With this weighting, the data counts for about 226 equally weighted counties
Middle value inside single states-0.601the link worked out inside each of 36 states with at least 20 counties reporting
Using ranks, after adjusting-0.330uses each county’s rank, not its value, so a few extreme counties cannot create the link

How much to believe it

Could it be chance?

The p-value is the chance of seeing a link this strong if there were really none. A value of 0.05 or less means the link is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 3.1e-16 means 0.00000000000000031, and the bigger the number after “e-”, the smaller the value. Treating every county as a separate case gives p = 2.3e-63. But counties in the same state tend to resemble each other, so the better figure allows for that: p = 4.9e-6. The site tested 29,403 pairs, and testing so many turns up some flukes. The q-value allows for that too. For this pair it is 1.7e-62.

Do nearby places look alike?

Moran’s I measures how much nearby places look alike: 0 means no map pattern, and higher means neighbours are more similar. For the part of each county that the adjustment leaves unexplained, it is +0.20 (p = 0.001). That unexplained part still clusters on the map. So some regional factor shared by both measures is not accounted for.

Did they change together?

Not measurable: at least one of these is published for too few of the years a change needs (2014–2019 or 2019–2023), or for too few counties in both.

Related pairs

Association only. Nothing here shows that either measure changes the other. This describes counties, not the people in them. Two measures going together across places does not mean the same people have both. How the US county data works · Explore Republican share of the two-party vote, 2020 and Robbery rate