The New York Times today has a story asking “do you live in a political bubble?” It provides an “extremely detailed map of the 2016 presidential election.” My state of North Carolina is considered “one of the swingiest of the swing states” and the Old North state saw multiple visits from both Clinton and Trump (creating traffic nightmares every time they stopped by for a visit!)
Neither major party presidential candidate came to Watauga County in 2016 – Clinton sent her daughter to visit close to the election. (In 2012, Obama himself came to visit Watauga County; but Romney won the county with a margin of less than 900 votes out of the nearly 28.000 votes cast.)
Trump won North Carolina in 2016 by a slim margin and there are certainly many counties in the state that are political bubbles.
Watauga County is not one of them. And it narrowly went for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Watauga’s neighboring counties of Ashe, Avery, Wilkes and Caldwell all were decisively for Trump, which left Watauga as a purple island in a sea of red:
Midterms approach… and they appear to be equally unpredictable.
Watauga County, USA 