The Non-Metropolitan Hinterland of America Won the Vote for Donald Trump

There exists a correlation between the intensity of economic activity in U.S. counties and it’s inhabitants either voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. In the “less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed a massive 64 percent of America’s economic activity as measured by total output in 2015,” writes Mark Muro for the Brookings Institute.

“By contrast, the more-than-2,600 counties that Donald Trump won generated just 36 percent of the country’s output—just a little more than one-third of the nation’s economic activity.” As our infographic shows, there was a similar tendency in 2000 when Al Gore and George W. Bush were in the race, albeit it wasn't as pronounced as it was in this year's election.