DENVER (KDVR) — The United States has long seen urban votes swing Democrat and rural votes swing Republican, and Colorado is no exception. Household wealth, however, predicts votes more accurately than urban proximity.
Generally, the country’s county-by-county voting map looks like a big, red ocean with little blue islands cropping up around metropolitan areas with higher population densities.
Colorado’s red/blue divide does follow the national urban/rural divide, but not cleanly. Urban votes do go blue, but they aren’t the only areas that do so. Furthermore, some metro areas voted Republican.
Most counties that voted Biden did contain one of the state’s 100 most populous cities.
Colorado’s 64 counties have an average density of 150 people per square mile, but the Front Range metro counties skew that average. Only nine counties have population densities over 100 people per square mile – Denver Arapahoe, Broomfield, Adams, Jefferson, Douglas, El Paso and Larimer.
Half of Colorado – 26 counties – cast a majority of their votes for Joe Biden this election. All but two of the top 10 most densely populated counties voted for him – Denver, Broomfield, Arapahoe, Jefferson, Boulder, Adams, Larimer and Pueblo.
Biden also pulled some of Colorado’s resort counties – Summit, Gilpin, Pitkin, Eagle, Lake and La Plata.
Colorado has two notable exceptions to the rural/urban divide: the Western Slope and the Colorado Springs metro.
Colorado Springs is the state’s second largest city, and Grand Junction the state’s largest city in the western region. Nonetheless, both El Paso and Mesa counties voted for Trump.
A more reliable indicator of political affiliation is household wealth.
Seventy-five percent of the Colorado counties with the highest household median income voted for Biden.
Vice versa, 80% of Colorado’s poorest counties voted Trump.