How America's Metro Areas Voted

America’s contentious Electoral College may be organized around states, but its economy is organized around metropolitan areas. U.S. metro areas house more than 85 percent of the nation’s population and generate 90 percent of its economic output. Just the top ten metros account for more than a quarter of the U.S. population and more than a third of national economic output.

How did those metro areas vote in the 2016 election? Election returns are not typically collated by metro area, but county-level results are available. My Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI) colleagues arrayed the county-level data from Dave Leip’s 2016 Presidential General Election Results to America’s 350-plus metros. (Note that while there are still some vote tallies yet to be certified, the overall shares of the vote at the metro level are unlikely to change much at this point. And because of the large number of individual metros, any unforeseen shifts in final vote tallies will not significantly change the analysis here.)