Rhode Island 2020 presidential election in review: South County
To see the first post in this series, which explains the background on the overall project, see here.
As of the 2020 census, South County has a population of 125,577. The nine towns that make up this county, known best for white sand beaches and the state’s flagship University of Rhode Island, cast roughly 66,000 votes in the 2016 presidential election and 76,000 in 2020.
Zooming out to look at South County’s recent voting history (h/t to JHKforecasts for the graphic below), it has voted to the left of the state just once since 2000, when Barack Obama won the county by an astonishing 39-point margin in 2008. It is remarkable, given the state’s political geography, that South County was Obama’s best county that year. However, unlike Kent and Providence Counties, which also supported Obama twice, South County shifted hard to the right by 23 points in 2012.
South County is “ancestrally” Republican, meaning that it maintains a history of supporting Republicans at different levels before becoming more Democratic with realignment. It supported Richard Nixon in 1960 over John. F. Kennedy, who won the state by an identical margin to Obama in 2012. After 1960, it went red for Nixon again in ’72 and Ronald Reagan twice. It has supported Republicans in statewide races more recently, including twice for Governors Lincoln Almond (1994, 1998) and Don Carcieri (2002, 2006), as well as Lincoln Chaffee in the 2006 election for U.S. Senate. So, even accounting for the outlier that was Obama ’08, it seems plausible that the rightward swings in 2012 and 2016 could have been the last gasp of ancestral Republicanism in South County.
So who are ancestral Republicans? Some of this was explored in the last post in reference to East Greenwich, a wealthy, highly-educated town that was once a bastion of Republicanism in Rhode Island. The rhetoric of “Country Club Republicanism” in the 20th century explains many, but not all, of the ancestral Republican areas in the United States. Generally speaking, these areas have high median incomes, are less diverse, and have more college graduates than the country as a whole. Simply put, the Republican party has lost these voters at a rapid clip as it has embraced Trumpism, although South County had clearly trended left well before Trump came on scene. Rhode Island’s neighboring states of Connecticut and Massachusetts have far more of these areas, now the home of the Country Club Democrat.
Joe Biden won South County in 2020 by 19 points, which is as close to the overall state margin (Biden +21) as the county has been this century. Remarkably, Joe Biden improved better than Hillary Clinton in every single precinct — 45 in all — in South County.
One area of note that was briefly discussed in the previous post is the Watch Hill section of Westerly. Watch Hill is home to lavish mansions — including one that Taylor Swift calls home — on massive plots of land facing the Atlantic Ocean. Along with a stretch of Warwick, Watch Hill and the neighboring precinct were the only coastal areas of Rhode Island to support Trump in 2016. Biden managed to flip both back in 2020, pushing Watch Hill 17 points to the left, the largest swing of anywhere in South County. As a whole, Westerly went from Clinton +3 to Biden +13.
The largest swing at the municipal level came in North Kingstown, the second most populous town in South County, where Biden did 11 points better than Clinton in 2016. Clinton’s margins there were spread somewhat widely, from -2 to +22. But Biden’s gains came from rebounds in areas where Trump was strongest, either in front or within double digits of Clinton in 2016. Of the 6 precincts where this was the case, the average swing to Biden was 12.1 percentage points.
The town of Richmond was the only municipality that flipped in South County in 2020 (West Warwick was the only other flip statewide), going from Trump +8 to Biden by just 3 votes. Surely this has to be one of the closest, if not the closest, municipal results in all of New England. The two precincts in the town were almost exact inverses of each other — 2901 was Biden +5 and 2902 was Trump +5 — with Biden winning thanks to the higher population of 2901.
The two municipalities that remained in Trump’s column in 2020 were Exeter and Hopkinton. Hopkinton’s 5.4 point swing to Biden was the smallest county-wide, and Trump received exactly 50 percent there in both 2016 and 2020. Biden improved in both of these towns but could only flip one precinct — 1403 in Hopkinton, a beautiful area of the state that contains most of the Arcadia Management Area. This is as close as you can get to “God’s Country” in Rhode Island. Hopkinton is another town won by Senator Jack Reed in 2020 but lost by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse in 2018.
Last but not least, I have to give a nod to the University of Rhode Island, which is situated in the most populous voting precinct in all of Rhode Island. With the new census numbers, South Kingstown 3206 contains 8,516 people, which is much larger than normal and makes drawing maps with current precincts a challenge. Look for this to be split up into several precincts for the new legislative maps, but watch for funny business — it is sometimes tempting for lawmakers to play games with college campuses on maps to dilute the voting power of the students. This precinct was Clinton +25 in 2016 and Biden +33 in 2020.
Here are some other fast facts on South County presidential election results:
- Biggest Swing Right (2016–2020): None
- Biggest Swing Left (2016–2020): Westerly precinct 3604 (Watch Hill) D+17
- Best Trump precinct: Exeter precinct 1102 (Trump +6)
- Best Biden precinct: New Shoreham precinct 2201 (Biden +58)
- Most total votes: South Kingstown precinct 3208 (2433 votes)
- Most Biden votes: South Kingstown precinct 3208 (1546 votes)
- Most Trump votes: Richmond precinct 2902 (1184 votes)
